Latest news with #Duverger'sLaw
Economic Times
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Economic Times
View: Can Elon Musk really play party pooper?
Xciting times ahead It's not long ago that Elon Musk contributed $300 mn to Donald Trump's re-election campaign and subsequently rose to prominence in Washington DC. But their relationship soon devolved into sour animosity. The Trump-Musk feud has intensified after the Tesla boss announced the launch of America Party. On July 4, Musk asked his X followers if they wanted independence from the US' two-party system. Over 1.2 mn people replied. 'By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it!' he posted. 'A party to represent 80% in the middle,' Musk added. However, who are these 80% Aam Americans? Do they belong to the middle class financially, or are they people who don't think the Republican or Democratic parties see or represent them? The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) only rekindled the Trump-Musk dispute. But capturing the Oval Office is not the target of an enraged Musk. Rather, he outlined a potential political strategy to seize a few delicate Senate and House seats to have 'the deciding vote' on important legislation. 'One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,' Musk wrote on X. Every two years, all 435 US House seats and around one-third of the Senate's 100 members are up for election. Thus, Musk might succeed in clipping Trump's wings in the second half of his presidency following the midterm elections next the Republicans appear more concerned than the Democrats. Trump considers Musk's new party strategy 'ridiculous' and claims that he has gone 'completely off the rails'. But how, if at all, can Musk succeed? On multiple occasions, Musk has made comparisons with Greek general Epaminondas' victory at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. 'By using a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,' Musk it's easier said than done. Every American president for more than two centuries has belonged to one of the two political parties: Federalists or the Democratic-Republicans, the Democrats or the Whigs, or since Abraham Lincoln's time, the Democrats or the Republicans. Independent and third-party candidates frequently spice up election how ingrained the two-party binary is in American politics, in the run-up to the 1996 elections, the Halloween Special Treehouse of Horror VII episode 'Citizen Kang' of The Simpsons suggested that Americans would vote for an alien from space rather than a third-party candidate. 'Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos,' Homer Simpson sociologist Maurice Duverger proposed the famous Duverger's Law, which states that two-party systems are typically preferred in single- ballot plurality-rule elections (like first-past-the-post) held in single-member districts. Duverger's Law has generally held up in the US throughout history and doesn't appear to be about to fail, even though it doesn't hold in places like handling of federal employees and job cuts as DOGE boss made him unpopular. His Nazi salute also created controversy. Additionally, Musk ought to have realised that money is not the only ingredient in winning votes. He contributed at least $3 mn to a Wisconsin Supreme Court election campaign in March. By framing it as a 'People versus Musk' contest, the Democrats rallied voters. And the Musk-supported Republican candidate lost by a margin of 10%.Nevertheless, the Progressive Party of Theodore Roosevelt garnered 27% of the vote share in 1912, and Ross Perot received 19% of the vote in his 1992 independent presidential campaign, which contributed to the defeat of George H W Bush's re-election campaign and the triumph of Bill Clinton. Undoubtedly, Musk has too much money to spend on a political gamble. In addition, owning a prominent social media platform can be an X-factor in today's Trump's popularity, present MAGA dominance, America's age- old political system, Duverger's Law and Musk's financial clout are all being tested. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. 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Politico
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Dear Elon: Here's What You Need to Know About Third Parties
Dear Elon, I read with great interestyour X poll asking whether America needs 'a new political party that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle?' And after 80 percent of those who responded agreed with you, you declared it 'fate' and concluded: 'A new political party is needed in America.' Welcome to the cause of multiparty democracy. I guess? See, you're thinking about it all wrong. This idea of an unrepresented 80 percent in the middle of the electorate? If it were that easy, No Labels would have Joe Manchin in the White House by now. Sorry to say this, but a single third party is just a spoiler, dude. It'll probably take five or six parties to represent that theoretical 80 percent. And major electoral reform. But look. I get your outsider's tendency to start with what looks like an obvious outsider's solution. It's just that what's wrong with American politics is a bit more complicated, including the broken logic of our two-party system and the myth of the moderate middle. Yes, our party system is a disaster, stuck in a doom loop of escalating partisan warfare. No wonder your X poll found wide support for a new party. So have others. Gallup has pegged support for a third party at around 60 percent for a while now. Others find support closer to 72 percent. Meanwhile, we're seeing record-high levels of alienation from the existing parties. We're up to 38 percent thinking neither party fights for people like them. But, that 80 percent in the middle figure? Here's why that's too high. Sure, at the surface level, lots of voters say they are 'moderate' and 'independent.' But the Venn diagram of those categories is smaller than you think. And even those who say they are moderate? Most hold many not-moderate policy views. The bottom line is that Independents are not reliably centrists. Disaffected partisans are not centrists. And swing voters are all over the ideological map. Sure, some support for a middle party exists. But it's nowhere near enough to displace the other major parties, especially in a system of single-winner elections. But look, I get it. I hear this persistent myth over and over — that there is some 'deactivated middle' out there of independent voters, who would spring to life if only they had somebody to vote for. It's the myth that launched a thousand doomed nonpartisan quests for a hidden secret knob that will make everything okay and reasonable again. Alas, there is no secret knob. Changing our party system is hard work. The real problem is how we hold elections in the country. The United States uses single-winner districts for elections. With only one winner, votes for minor parties are wasted. So all the energy, money and attention goes to the two major parties that can win. Third parties become spoilers and mostly refuges for cranks and weirdos. Political scientists call this Duverger's Law. You may remember the panic around No Labels early in 2024. The organization was seriously exploring running a third-party centrist candidate, such as Joe Manchin, for president against Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Despite raising about $25 million, No Labels could not convince a single plausible candidate to run. No plausible candidate wanted to risk being a spoiler. RFK Jr., as you will remember, might have captured that spoiler energy. But he realized he had no shot of winning. So he joined Trump, like you did. As long as we have our current system of single-winner plurality elections, third parties have no meaningful chance to do anything more than show up as occasional spoilers. To actually build a sustainable and healthy multiparty system in the United States means investing in the two electoral reforms with the most pay-off: fusion voting and proportional representation. Taken together, these reforms would make room for new parties, like your America Party, to emerge. Fusion voting was once universal throughout the U.S. and still features prominently in several states: more than one political party nominates the same candidate on the ballot, allowing voters to support their preferred candidate without having to support one of the two major parties. Typically, this means a minor party and major party 'fuse' together to cross-nominate and support the same candidate. A ballot line means real power for a minor party. That's because under fusion voting, votes get counted separately for each party and then aggregated for the total, so winning candidates know where their votes came from. A minor party whose votes make the difference between winning and losing gains tremendous influence. Proportional representation is an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them. If one-third of voters back a political party, the party's candidates win roughly one-third of the district's seats, and the districts are made larger so they have more than one representative. Today, proportional representation is the most common electoral system among the world's democracies. (And in case you're wondering about ranked-choice voting? I once thought that it had real potential. But the more evidence I've seen, the less potential impact I see. So I changed my mind about it.) Re-legalizing fusion voting in states that have abandoned it and enacting proportional representation are long-term projects, Elon. That's not really your schtick. But you are an engineer, so you will at least appreciate that we have a party system problem. And a party system problem requires a party system solution. Again: There's no secret knob. Maybe you are serious about this third party thing. Maybe what you really want is not to become a majority party but just to disrupt the current duopoly. That's something you could actually do. What it would take is creating a party authentic to your brand, with an actual constituency, unlike the mythical middle. For instance, you could organize the techno-libertarian futurist angry young men who worship you. Instead of the America Party, call it the Colonize Mars Party, and siphon off votes from Republicans in swing districts. Realistically, such a party might get 5 percent. Targeted strategically, you could do some serious Brazilian jiu-jitsu on the president who dissed you. You could give Democrats back some power and expose the vulnerability of our two-party system to a billionaire like yourself with an axe to grind. But then what? Here's what I worry about: Our parties are already so weak and hollow. Oligarchs like you have too much power. And if our two major parties collapse even further, maybe we just wind up with a totally chaotic system where parties come and go as a free-for-all of billionaire vanity projects. That way lies authoritarianism. Weak parties make for a weak democracy. So here's my hope: Maybe you do just enough damage to the party system to make it clear that we need actual reform to prevent total collapse. The history of reform is, after all, also the history of crisis. As I noted in a recent post, 'My readings into complex systems (and history) point to an unfortunate pattern: Sometimes collapse is necessary for renewal.' Maybe we are at that moment. Maybe you are the pyromaniac who will burn some of the dry tinder necessary for new growth just to see it burn. Let's hope it's a controlled burn. Or maybe everything is already on fire. In which case… who knows? I'll be honest, Elon. You're not the hero we'd want. But you might just be the hero we need. I'm not counting on it. But stranger things have happened. This article was adapted from a post on the Undercurrent Events substack.
Newsweek
07-07-2025
- Automotive
- Newsweek
Elon Musk's America Party Is Dead on Arrival
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Billionaire Elon Musk's announcement of the America Party following his split with President Donald Trump over the fiscally ruinous One Big Beautiful Bill reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of American political mechanics. While Musk's frustration with Republican fiscal hypocrisy is entirely justified—the legislation adds over $3 trillion to the national debt while gutting programs working families depend on—his proposed solution ignores both the structural realities governing our electoral system and the unprecedented opportunity currently before him. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump listen to a question from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump listen to a question from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025, in Washington, problem with Musk's third-party approach lies in what political scientist call Duverger's Law, which tells us why some countries, like America, only have two political parties. Devastating to Musk's plans is the fact that this isn't a matter of voter preference or campaign financing—it's a mathematical inevitability built into our electoral system's structure. When electoral districts only have one seat for the taking and it goes to the candidate with a plurality of votes, a stable two-party system is all but guaranteed. More fundamentally, American political parties are remarkably durable institutions precisely because they serve essential functions within our electoral system. The Democratic and Republican parties have weathered civil wars, depressions, world wars, and countless scandals not through accident but because they provide organizational infrastructure, fundraising networks, and voter identification systems that third parties cannot replicate. Attempting to replace these institutional frameworks represents a decades-long project with vanishingly small chances of success no matter how much money is thrown at it. Yet Musk's frustration reflects a real crisis within the Republican Party that creates extraordinary opportunities for internal disruption. The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill represents a systematic betrayal of the working-class coalition that brought Republicans to power. The legislation strips health care from millions through Medicaid cuts while providing massive tax breaks to the wealthy, forcing working families to fund benefits they'll never see. This makes traditional Republican incumbents uniquely vulnerable to primary challenges from candidates offering authentic economic populism. The timing for a hostile takeover of the GOP couldn't be better. Trump's constitutional inability to seek another presidential term creates an impending leadership vacuum within the party just as his signature legislation begins harming many of its most loyal voters. Without Trump's unique personal loyalty among working-class supporters, other Republicans will struggle to maintain a coalition built on contradictions between populist messaging and plutocratic governance. History demonstrates that successful party transformation occurs through internal disruption, not external competition. The Tea Party movement proved that well-funded primary challenges could reshape party priorities within a single election cycle. Trump himself provided the ultimate template by seizing control of the Republican Party from within, completely remaking it around his vision and priorities. This approach succeeds because primary elections operate under different dynamics than general elections. Lower turnout means motivated activists can have outsized influence. Incumbent advantages are also weaker there. Moreover, voters willing to participate in primaries are often more ideologically committed than general election voters. A well-funded operation targeting Republican incumbents who supported fiscal irresponsibility could achieve dramatic results with relatively modest investments. Musk's business background should make this approach intuitive. The corporate world offers countless examples of activist investors who acquired relatively small stakes in companies and used them to force dramatic changes in strategy and leadership. Republican primaries represent the political equivalent—low-cost, high-impact opportunities to reshape institutional priorities through targeted intervention. The alternative—attempting to build a third party from scratch—reflects the same kind of political naïveté Musk has displayed throughout his brief involvement in government. His belief that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could cut a trillion dollars in federal spending demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of budget realities, just as his third-party proposal reveals ignorance of electoral mechanics. Instead of wasting resources on a venture doomed by structural realities, Musk should pursue a strategy that actually works in American politics: identifying vulnerable Republican incumbents who voted for fiscal irresponsibility and funding primary challengers committed to genuine conservatism. This approach offers immediate impact, requires far less capital than third-party construction, and takes advantage of a party that is headed for significant disarray. Nicholas Creel is an associate professor of business law at Georgia College & State University. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
News18
06-07-2025
- Business
- News18
Leave Well Enough 'Elon'! Musk Has Launched America Party; Now Here Are His Biggest Challenges
Ballot access laws A primary obstacle is ballot access laws. Each US state has complex and often deliberately difficult regulations for recognising political parties and allowing their candidates to appear on ballots. These requirements range from collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures from registered voters within strict deadlines to achieving certain percentages of votes in previous elections. For example, in California, a new party must either register 0.33% of the state's voters as members (approximately 75,000 people) or submit signatures from 1.1 million voters. Maintaining this status necessitates ongoing efforts, such as retaining the registration threshold or securing at least 2% of the vote in a statewide race. Such state laws inherently favour the two major parties—Democrats and Republicans—rendering the establishment of a new national party a multi-year endeavour costing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and grassroots organising. Duverger's Law The America Party must also contend with Duverger's Law, a political science principle stating that plurality-rule electoral systems with single-member districts tend to produce two dominant political parties. This structural reality leads voters to often favour major parties to avoid 'wasting" their vote on a third-party candidate unlikely to win, even if they align more closely with the third party's platform. This creates a powerful self-reinforcing cycle that has consistently marginalised third parties like the Green Party and Libertarian Party, despite their decades-long existence. Finance and organisation Financial limitations and organisational infrastructure represent another daunting challenge. Although Musk's personal fortune exceeds $350 billion, once a party attains national recognition, individual donors like Musk would be constrained by Federal Election Commission (FEC) caps on political contributions. Currently, individuals can only contribute $10,000 annually to a state political party or $44,300 annually to a national party committee. Establishing a comprehensive national infrastructure—including state-level committees, staff, and volunteers across 50 states—requires sustained, widespread financial support that surpasses a single billionaire's initial investment. Existing third parties, despite years of effort, operate on relatively modest budgets compared to the multi-billion dollar expenditures of the Democratic and Republican parties. Brand value Moreover, public perception and brand recognition are crucial. While Elon Musk is globally recognised, his public image is often polarising. Critics argue that his brand may be too tarnished to inspire a broad-based movement, particularly among those outside his immediate fan base or those who view him as too closely associated with specific controversial tech or social issues. His recent public falling out with Donald Trump and criticisms of both major parties, though potentially appealing to some, also alienate others. Vision Lastly, the absence of a clear, broad ideological foundation beyond 'anti-uniparty" sentiment could impede long-term growth. While many Americans express dissatisfaction with the two major parties, translating that generalised discontent into a cohesive political platform that attracts diverse voters across various policy issues has historically been challenging for new parties.
