So you want to start a new political party that “actually represents the 80% in the middle”? Good luck.

An open letter to Elon Musk

Dear Elon, 

I read with great interest  your X poll asking whether America needed “a new political party that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

And this was interesting: after 80% agreed with you (out of 5.6 million(!)), you declared it “fate” and concluded: “A new political party is needed in America.” 

Welcome to the cause of multiparty democracy.

I guess???

Except, you’re thinking about it all wrong. This idea of an unrepresented 80% in the middle? If it were that easy, No Labels would have Joe Manchin in the White House by now.

It is not that easy.

It’ll probably take five or six parties. And major electoral reform.

Sorry to say this, but a single third party is just a spoiler, dude. 

But look. I get your outsider’s tendency to start with what looks like an obvious outsider’s solution.

It’s just… a bit more complicated.

The broken logic of our two-party system and the myth of the moderate middle

So, our party system. Yes, it’s a disaster. Stuck in a doom loop of escalating partisan warfare and alienating every else in the process.

So no wonder your X poll found wide support for a new party. Probably a little too high. But not totally off. 

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? Yeah… not so much. 

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. 

I wrote a whole FiveThirtyEight essay on the “Myth of the Moderate Middle,” if you really want to dig into it. But here’s the bottom line:   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 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. 

But: yu 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. 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.

And 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. 

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. 

The reforms that could actually make a difference: fusion voting and proportional representation 

To actually build a sustainable and healthy multiparty system in the United States means investing in significant electoral reforms. Or more specifically: it means investing in the two reforms with the most pay-off: fusion voting and proportional representation. Taken together, these pro-parties reforms make room for new parties to emerge.

Regular readers of this substack will be familiar with these ideas. But for the new or still confused…

Fusion voting?  “Fusion voting refers to a process that 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 candidate’s vote total is the sum of the votes they received on each of their nominating party’s lines.” (Thanks for the pithy summary, Protect Democracy)

Want more from me on fusion? Read: 

- We need more (and better) parties

- The Case for More Parties (Boston Review)

Proportional Representation? “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 seats. Today, proportional representation is the most common electoral system among the world’s democracies.” (Thanks again for the pithy summer, Protect Democracy)

Want more from me on proportional representation? Read:

 - How did American democracy become a broken game without winners? And what should we do about it? Support for democracy in America has fallen to alarming lows, even as voters desperately seek change. Proportional representation could re-energize our democracy

- “How to Fix America’s Two Party Problem” (New York Times) 

(And if 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 and enacting proportional representation are long-term projects, Elon. Probably not for you.

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. 

An Elon Musk-inspired third party is either playing with fire or trying to light a match in the rain. 

Maybe you are serious about this third party thing. Maybe you want disruption. If so…you could create a party authentic to your brand, with an actual constituency.

You could organize the techno-libertarian futurist angry young men who worship you. Start a Colonize Mars Party, and siphon votes from Republicans in swing districts. What a funny prank that would be! Legalize comedy, again, dude!

Realistically, such a party might get five percent. But targeted strategically, you could do some serious Brazilian jiu-jitsu on that doofus in the White House. 

You can simultaneously give Democrats back some power and expose the vulnerability of our two-party system to a billionaire like yourself with an axe to grind. (I outlined this possibility over at Vox.com, “The big reason why Republicans should worry about an angry Elon Musk. What Elon Musk’s retribution could look like)

That’ll show Donald Trump. He thought he could just kick you to the curb when he was done with you!

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 weak democracy. 

So here’s my no-longer-secret hope (since I am now revealing it to the world): 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. And 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. But let’s hope it’s a controlled burn.

Or maybe everything is already on fire. In which case… who knows anymore? LOL. Comedy is legal, but the joke’s on us. 

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. 

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