When it comes to federal elections, third party candidates are almost assured a defeat. And yet the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Reform Party -- these underdogs always appear on the scene ready for a fight. So why run if you're not going to win? What do third parties do to American politics?
Our mediators for this one are Marjorie Hershey, Professor of Political Science Emerita at Indiana University and Geoffrey Skelley, Elections Analyst at FiveThirtyEight.
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TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.
CPB grant: [00:00:00] Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:04] When we were interviewing one of the guests for this episode, Nick, you mentioned this archival recording.
William Jennings Bryan: [00:00:14] Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:17] Yeah, that's something I stumbled on a while ago accidentally, and I was confused because there's this guy, William Jennings Bryan, who was the 1896 Democratic nominee. But he was also the populist nominee. He was part of a presidential race that had two candidates, but three parties, which I did not realize was possible.
William Jennings Bryan: [00:00:39] But this is not a contest between persons.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:42] Yeah, I looked into it, Republican, Democrat and Populist.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:00:47] You know, we were on the gold standard and they wanted silver to be an option with a sort of an easier exchange rate for them. Thus, the famous speech, Cross of Gold Speech.
[00:00:58] This is Geoffrey Skelley.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:01:00] An [00:01:00] elections analyst at 538.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:02] We have gotten a lot of questions over the years about third parties in American politics. Think the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Reform Party.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:11] Right. These are parties we've heard of, but they don't actually make a ton of headway in elections.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:01:16] The third party success that we've seen historically at various points has often come about because of a party schism where there is a deep divide within one of the major parties.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:29] Back when William Jennings Bryan ran for president, the deep divide was gold.
William Jennings Bryan: [00:01:35] We will answer their demand for the gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the bow of labor of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:47] Bryan's cross of gold speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention killed. Supposedly [00:02:00] after he finished
[00:02:01] There was a moment of awed silence before the place erupted with applause and cheering.
[00:02:10] And "for he's a jolly good fellows" for and now accounts vary on this one. But at least half an hour, possibly an hour. Delegates hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him around the hall. See,
[00:02:24] Bryan was arguing against the rigid gold standard in favor of something called bimentalism, which is basically introducing silver into the economy to increase money supply and stabilize prices. And this idea did not originate with the Democratic Party. In fact, a portion of the Democratic Party was fervently committed to the gold standard. Bimentalism was at the core of the populist party platform.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:02:52] If you go back to like the late 19th century, there was the populists who were doing fairly well in some parts [00:03:00] of the country that influenced the Democrats particularly. That's part of how William Jennings Bryan ended up being the 1896 nominee for the Democrats was pushed by populists that especially had to do with monetary policy, which doesn't sound all that exciting now, but it was pretty exciting back them.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:18] So Bryan wins the Democratic nomination on a populist idea and then the Democrats just kind of take that idea.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:28] Yeah, but because Bryan reflects what the populists want. They still give him the presidential nomination, even though he already has a nomination. And when Bryan loses, the Democrat Party is established enough to survive. But the populist party isn't their ideas and their members are more or less absorbed into the Democratic Party.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:03:53] Third parties have their own missions in terms of what issues are important to them and what policies they want to [00:04:00] see pursued. So given the fact that most third parties are pretty small in this country, they're their end goal is to try to expand their appeal, expand membership, get more notice for for the issues that are important to them. And historically speaking, third parties have had the most success when there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the major parties. And that has sometimes led the major parties to grab hold of whatever issue it was that that was propelling the third party success to sort of bringing them into the fold in a way. So third parties can can sometimes influence the major parties.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:44] See, this is what I struggle with because I know that influence is important. Yes. But if you know, you're not going to win ever. Actually, no, I don't know that for sure. Has a third party candidate ever won.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:56] Let's find out. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:58] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:59] And this is Civics 101, the [00:05:00] podcast about the basics of how our democracy works. And when we talk about American democracy, about this participatory government, what we're really talking about is, by and large, a two party system. We do have third parties, but in the U.S., Republicans and Democrats rule.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:05:20] When we talk about third parties in any other country, we wouldn't be using that term.
[00:05:31] We'd be talking about minor parties because of the fact that in most other democracies, almost every other democracy, the third party would be a major party.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:41] This is Marjorie Hershey.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:05:42] I'm a professor of political science emerita at Indiana University, newly emerita.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:50] In order to understand third parties in the U.S., it helps to first understand what makes it so hard for a third party candidate to win.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:05:58] You have to get a plurality. [00:06:00] You have to get the most votes in order to get anywhere.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:06:03] You keep getting 10 percent of the vote. People stop voting for you because why vote for a party that doesn't get any representatives? Only a party that can normally expect to get most of the votes will be able to maintain itself. So that means the party that usually wins obviously stays, and the party that has at least a shot at replacing it stays. All the other parties get nothing and they go away.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:32] Okay. And that's how almost every state votes for the Electoral College. Right. So basically, if you're running with a party that is perceived to be an unlikely winner, that perception alone will make you an unlikely winner.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:45] There's actually a political science theory about this.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:06:47] Duverger's Law or
[00:06:50] However, you actually pronounce his name in French. I usually hear people say, Doo-ver-ger, you know, just butcher it. It's basically just the idea that a two party political system [00:07:00] pushes people towards those major parties because they might view a vote for a third party as a waste of a vote. Because if the end goal of an election is winning, you want to try to build as large a coalition as you can without sacrificing the goals that your coalition has.
[00:07:17] I mean, that's the entire idea of parties basically in a winner take all system like we have. That is a real pressure point that pushes people to really embrace that idea to the fullest and thus have two major parties.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:36] So because we're a two party system, we vote the way we do and because we vote the way we do, we remain a two party system. But the thing that Jeffrey just said, if the goal of an election is winning. If the goal of an election is winning. Why run as a third party candidate at all? And what's the point?
Marjorie Hershey: [00:07:53] You know, probably their psychic benefit or people wouldn't do it. But I think most people who run as [00:08:00] minor party candidates or as independents do so because they're just really very intensely committed to a set of issues and they are willing to take all the costs of running, which are substantial and only in part in money, but just in energy and emotional commitment and everything else in order to expose people to this point of view that they believe is the truth.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:27] This is something that I found kind of remarkable about third party candidates that they pretty much know they won't end up in power. But they so believe in their message that the run is worth it to them.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:08:40] They're more like organized interests in that sense.
[00:08:48] Typically because of the fact that they do not worry a great deal about preparing a victory speech on election night, they expect to lose. And in fact, they -- their wishes are carried out. [00:09:00] They do lose on election night that there is not much point in having a platform like a major party that deals with virtually everything under the sun because you're not trying to appeal to everybody under the sun. You know pretty well as a libertarian that there's a pretty narrow slice of folks out there.
Gary Johnson Interviewer: [00:09:18] What exactly does it mean to be a libertarian in a short summary?
[00:09:22] As you can as you can explain that?
Gary Johnson: [00:09:24] Very broadly speaking, libertarian, fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, skeptical when it comes to our military interventions, when we support regime change in my lifetime, I can't think of one single example where that has worked out. And then supporting free market, the opposite of crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is when government picks winners and losers, free market, more U.S. jobs, not less U.S. jobs. That's pretty quick.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:09:52] And that you're probably thinking if I can just get the loyalty of that slice of folks, they'll [00:10:00] grow over time. But you're probably not deluding yourself into thinking that a majority of people in the United States are libertarian.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:08] There's always a chance, though, right? Rocky can beat Apollo Creed. There's a chance that the populist party could have found its footing in the 19th century, made a real go of it. There's a chance that libertarianism is gonna get big enough to throw its hat in the ring in a meaningful way, but they'll just have to make their platform a bit broader.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:10:27] Yeah, I think they probably would. Which is why most of them don't believe that that's a good idea. They don't want to become mushier. They want to stand for this specific kinds of stands on issues that they believe most heartily in. And so most of them are what political scientists call purists.
[00:10:50] People who are motivated by the issue, not by loyalty to the party.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:58] But it hasn't always been this way. [00:11:00] Right. We didn't start out with Republicans and Democrats. We started out with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and then Federalists and Democratic Republicans. And then we had the Whigs and the Democrats and then finally the Republicans and the Democrats. So, yes, it's always been a two party system, but it's parties replacing one another. How did that happen?
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:11:21] The parties weren't necessarily as ideologically sorted as they are now. And by that I mean, you know, historically you had, for example, in the Democratic Party, you had sort of more liberal big city Democratic bosses, especially like the East Coast, allied with Southern Democrats who were definitely conservative. And so that that was an interesting coalition. And on the other hand, you might have more conservative Midwest and Western Republicans allied with more liberal Northeastern Republicans. And so that was a coalition, too. And there are a lot of reasons why that was the case. But in modern times, the parties have become much more well [00:12:00] aligned in terms of liberal conservative than they were for much of the 20th century.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:05] There was a time when the parties simply weren't as well-established as they are right now. There was a little more room for party transition in the past. The last time a presidential candidate was elected from a new party was in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln won as a Republican.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:24] It's just crazy to me that the Republican Party was once one of these minor third parties. How they do that?
[00:12:31] How'd they become a major party so quick?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:32] The first Republican to run for president was actually four years before Lincoln. John Fremont in 1856. And it was because of that election that the Whig Party, which was the major party at the time, ended up dissolving because you had this issue, the left, a lot of people really fed up with the parties and wanting another option. But unlike with the William [00:13:00] Jennings Bryan election and the gold standard issue, the issue in 1856 successfully brought a new party to power because that issue was enough to tear an entire country apart.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:13:12] Whigs also were basically destroyed by the slavery issue because Southern Whigs were pro-slavery. And so they increasingly found themselves allied with Southern Democrats who were pro-slavery as well. And Northern Democrats increasingly found themselves allied with to some extent with Northern Whigs who were opposed to the expansion of slavery.
[00:13:38] That situation caused the Whigs to sort of fall apart, and the Republican Party basically came out of a lot of former Whigs in the north.
[00:13:50] And so that was basically -- it was basically on this coalition of those forces that ended up backing Lincoln in 1860 and how he got elected [00:14:00] at the end of the day.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:01] So we haven't had a truly viable third party since the country was the most divided it's ever been, which is the issue of slavery.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:14:09] And it then in 1858 essentially replaced the Whigs. So it might have been that the Republicans might have formed and then become part of a three party system or maybe a four or five party system. But we didn't. What we ended up with in 1860 was another two party system, but with one of the two parties different from the one that had existed 10 years before.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:40] So that was the last time a party was actually replaced. But I do want to be clear.
[00:14:46] Third party power remained and remains a significant force. For example, the Republican Party is what it is today because of a third party. Back when Teddy Roosevelt was rejected by the Republican [00:15:00] Party and formed the Progressive, also known as the Bull Moose Party in 1912, he took a bunch of supporters with him, and the party ideology of the Republicans started to shift to the right.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:13] But what about the local level? I've definitely heard of Libertarian or Green Party state legislators getting seats.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:19] Yeah, that happens. Elections are a lot easier for minor parties when the national government isn't at stake.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:26] What about like Bernie Sanders? He's a member of the Senate and the national level, but he's a self-described socialist, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:33] Well, he defines himself as a socialist, yeah, but he ran for his Senate seat as an independent. He's running for the presidency right now as a Democrat. It wouldn't do him any favors at the ballot level to call himself a socialist. An independent is significantly different from a third party. It's a lot easier to win as an independent at any level than it is to win as a third party candidate.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:15:57] Independents are a different story. The [00:16:00] state legislatures have not worked as hard to make it tougher for independent candidates because of the fact that independent candidates are usually a one off. They're a person who is running for one office without a whole slate of other people. Running along with that person so they're not as much of a threat if one independent gets elected. The chances are he or she will be defeated the next time round. And it's no big deal for the major parties.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:28] This brings us to the other hitch when it comes to third party candidacy, the major parties actively make it difficult for a third party candidate to even be an option for voters, while a third party candidate may be miles away from a win. They can still ruin a major party. Candidates run. There's a thing called the spoiler vote. That's a real threat. You steal voters away from a major party candidate.
[00:16:56] It's the state legislators who make the election rules so [00:17:00] effectively. It is the parties who make the election rules.
Marjorie Hershey: [00:17:05] You know, there are endless ways in which Democratic and Republican state legislators can make up rules to make it tougher for non Democratic or Republican candidates. If you were a minor party trying to get on the ballot in some states, you would have to get way more signatures on petitions to get your candidate on the ballot than if you're a Democrat or Republican. And keep in mind that the officials who determine whether those signatures are valid are all Democrats or Republicans, the secretaries of state in each of the states. And it's very common for a partisan secretary of state to simply cross out a whole bunch of those names and say that there's something the matter with this. You know. This person doesn't exist or their middle initial is on the petition, whereas their middle initial is not the name that they used [00:18:00] to register to vote. So that's illegitimate.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:02] There are the third parties aren't posing a real threat. Why work so hard trying to keep them off the ballot?
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:18:06] You know, the 1912 election is press one, the most obvious examples because Theodore Roosevelt ends up running in the Republican primary.
Theodore Roosevelt Campaign song: [00:18:13] Where ready for Teddy again, boys, for the presidential chair.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:18:19] Against his basically handpicked successor, William Taft.
William Taft Campaign Song: [00:18:26] Get on the raft with Taft boys, get in the winning boat.
Geoffrey Skelley: [00:18:29] Who'd run in 1908 after Roosevelt didn't seek another term.
[00:18:34] And so Roosevelt runs against him in the primary, loses the Republican nomination. It was very ugly battle for the Republican nomination. And then Roosevelt goes and runs as a third party candidate. He runs as the progressive candidate. There's some other complications in there that are not worth getting into. But the point is that there is this very obvious split within the GOP. And Roosevelt actually ends up winning more of the popular vote than Taft does [00:19:00] in that 1912 election. But the end result and this is where you get into trouble in in a winner take all sort of system, is that the Republicans were splitting the vote all over the country. And so Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic nominee, wins a sweeping victory in the Electoral College, even though he only won 42 percent of the popular vote.
Woodrow Wilson Campaign Song: [00:19:18] While on the street
[00:19:20] or on the car, while at your home or at the bar, it's Wilson, Wilson, Wilson, that's all.
[00:19:32] So third parties are more than an ideological force. They can actually determine the outcome of an election if they're on the ballot.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:38] Third parties have real teeth. A lot of people think that Ralph Nader was responsible for Al Gore's defeat in Florida in the infamous 2000 election, for example. But I want to get at a bigger question, too. Like, sure third parties make for political trouble here and there. But if they really can't win. [00:20:00] Right. If if having the choice of a third party candidate isn't really having the choice of a third party candidate. Are we less Democratic than nations where you really can vote your third party candidate into powerful office?
Marjorie Hershey: [00:20:15] Well, I hate to do this to you, but that sort of depends on what we want to define as democratic. On the one hand, the argument for a multi-party system is that when you go to the polls to select a candidate, you don't have to compromise as much.
[00:20:33] Ok, if you're a libertarian Republican, you get to be a libertarian. You don't have to be a Republican of whom a proportion of the party is libertarian, but a proportion is not. So in choosing a candidate, you get to express your views in a more pure fashion. On the other hand, in a multi-party system, the chances are pretty good that a single party [00:21:00] is not going to get a majority.
[00:21:03] That party that gets the most votes is going to have to join with one or more other parties in order to get a majority. And the thing is, you, as a minor party supporter, can't be sure in advance of the election which parties your party is going to coalesce with.
[00:21:24] So although it may be more small "d" democratic in quotes in advance of the election, when you're making up your mind as to what candidates to support, that may not be as small "d" democratic after the election when a coalition has to form in order to govern. Some people would use a different definition of democratic and say what we can really expect of voters is that politics is not a biggie for most people most of the time. For [00:22:00] most people, the biggies are, you know, do I have the ingredients for dinner and when am I gonna get the laundry done? And that means for the rest of us who would rather watch basketball, we need to have a pretty clear sense of what it is that we support without having to do that research. And what that is, is provided by is a party identification. And while that might seem to be not too satisfying as far as our ideals of public service are concerned, basically a democracy is a system that gives you a choice. And if you have to spend a huge amount of time researching every candidate, A, we know you're not gonna do that. And B, that means you're not going to have a choice because you're not going to bother to to become involved in it. So a two party system in some ways makes [00:23:00] the choice easy.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:01] So on the one hand, it's not necessarily a bad thing that we default to a two party system and on the other, that doesn't mean that third parties don't have any power. They pose just enough of a threat that they end up being one of the more effective methods of shifting party ideology. Third parties have an ability to mess with major elections. They can spoil votes. They can ruin another candidate's chances.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:29] It's a super effective way to influence how a major party evolves. Sure. Maybe a libertarian is not going to see their candidate in office, but they can vote for a Democrat who adopts libertarian ideals in order to woo voters. And then the party shifts.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:43] Yeah. So it's worth paying attention to these obscure names or parties that you see on the ballot. I mean, in 20 years, their ideas could be governing the country.
[00:24:06] Civics 101 [00:24:00] was produced today by me, Hannah McCarthy with you, Nick Capodice. Help in this episode from Jacqui Fulton.
[00:24:13] Erica Janik is keeping the dream bimentalism alive. She just won't let it go.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:16] Don't blame Maureen McMurray for anything because she voted for Kodos.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:19] Music in this episode by Chad Crouch, KieLoKaz, Verified Picasso, Lobo Loco and Patrick Patrikios.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:26] Entries for our student contest are pouring in.
[00:24:30] Keep them coming. Go to civics101podcast.org/contest.
[00:24:33] You could win.
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