Why Third Parties Lose for Seekers

Dear reader — Americans say they want more choices and then vote for one of two. People usually blame the voters for that. It's mostly the rules, and the rules are weirder than you'd think, because almost none of them are in the Constitution. This guide takes two famous third-party runs that look alike on paper, Ross Perot in 1992 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, and shows why one got nothing and the other came second. Then it covers the tendency behind it, the other walls in the way, what changing the rules would and wouldn't do, and what third parties have actually won.

Everything factual is tagged in the full Study Guide as Settled, Disputed or Popular myth, with a source.

The Rules Aren't In The Constitution

Article I, section 4 hands the mechanics of elections to the states: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations." For president, Article II says each state appoints electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct."

It's a house rule that got grandfathered in, like nobody touching the thermostat.

So nothing in the Constitution says the winner of a state gets all its electoral votes. That's a choice. In 48 states and DC the statewide winner takes everything. Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1992 split theirs: two to the statewide winner and one for each congressional district. For the House, Congress passed a law in 1967 requiring single-member districts. One seat, one winner, whoever gets the most votes. Every one of those can be changed by an ordinary law.

Two Runs, One Rule

In 1992 Ross Perot ran as an independent and got 19,741,065 votes, about 19 percent, the most for anyone outside the two big parties since 1912. Electoral votes: none.

Same game, different map: it's not how many people like you, it's whether they live in the same place.

In 1912 former president Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive "Bull Moose" ticket after losing the Republican nomination to President Taft. He won about 27 percent and 88 electoral votes, second place, ahead of the sitting Republican president, who carried only Utah and Vermont. Woodrow Wilson won with 435 electoral votes and about 42 percent of the popular vote.

The difference wasn't charisma. Roosevelt's votes were concentrated in particular states where he finished first. Perot's were spread across all of them, and he finished first in none. Under winner-take-all, a party with a quarter of the vote in a few states beats a party with a fifth of the vote everywhere.

You can see it at smaller scale too. In 1948 Strom Thurmond's States' Rights ticket got 39 electoral votes with about 2.4 percent of the national vote because it was concentrated in the Deep South. In 1968 George Wallace got 46 electoral votes with 9,906,473 popular votes, again from a regional base.

Duverger's Law (A Tendency, Not A Law)

When one seat goes to whoever gets the most votes, voters and donors figure out fast that a vote for a candidate who can't win is a vote that doesn't count. So voters drift to the two strongest candidates, third candidates lose money and attention, and over time fewer candidates run. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger described this in his 1951 book on political parties, and it's called Duverger's law.

Which is the only kind of law that has ever held in politics.

It's a real pattern. It's also a tendency, not a law of nature. Canada and India both elect their legislatures by plurality in single-member districts, and both have more than two significant parties, mostly because parties are strong in particular regions. Closer to home, Vermont and Maine each sent an independent to the Senate. The political scientist Gary Cox argues the pressure works district by district, and how far it carries up to a whole country depends on how offices connect. Whether it's a rule or a pressure is something scholars still argue about.

The Spoiler Question

The fear of a spoiler is why a lot of people pass on a third candidate they like. Both sides have a favorite example. Many on the right say Perot handed Bill Clinton the presidency in 1992. Many on the left say Ralph Nader handed George W. Bush the presidency in 2000. Both stories rest on a counterfactual: where would those voters have gone, or would they have stayed home?

The 2000 numbers aren't in doubt. Florida certified Bush the winner by 537 votes, 2,912,790 to 2,912,253, and Nader got 97,488. But what Nader voters would have done without him, and the butterfly ballot and the halted recount, all matter. For 1992, a study by Dean Lacy and Barry Burden found Perot drew more votes from Clinton than from Bush, and the effect on turnout is disputed. Both are tagged Disputed. Neither is a case where one side has simply got the facts right.

The 1912 version is similar. Roosevelt and Taft together got more than half the popular vote, more than Wilson, and the standard story is that the Republican vote split. Roosevelt's Progressive voters weren't all Taft voters waiting for a home, so "he handed Wilson the win" is a story, not a proof.

The Other Walls

Winning votes isn't the only hurdle. Getting on the ballot is a state-by-state obstacle course, with different signature counts and deadlines in every state. The debates are run by a private nonprofit, the Commission on Presidential Debates, created in 1987 by the chairs of the two major parties. For 2016 and 2020 it required a candidate to average at least 15 percent in five national polls, and no third-party candidate met that bar either year. Public funding treats the parties differently too: major-party nominees get their general-election money up front, and a minor party gets money after the election only if it won at least 5 percent. That's how the Reform Party got roughly $29 million for Perot's 1996 run, after his 19 percent in 1992.

To get on the ballot a new party runs fifty separate scavenger hunts, each with its own signature count and deadline, before it gets to lose the election.

One side says these are reasonable screens: a ballot with fifty candidates would confuse voters, a debate stage needs a limit, and a threshold like 15 percent just asks a candidate to show real support first. The other side says the rules are written and run by the two parties, and a poll threshold you can't meet without the exposure the debate would give you is a loop. Both have a point, and both can name examples.

Would Changing The Rules Help?

Reformers have a few ideas. Ranked-choice voting lets you rank candidates so a vote for a long shot isn't wasted. Maine has used it for federal elections since 2018. Fusion voting lets a candidate appear on more than one party's line; the Supreme Court held in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party in 1997 that states may ban it. Multi-member districts with proportional representation would give a party with 20 percent about 20 percent of the seats, but federal law requires single-member districts for the House, so Congress would have to repeal that.

None has a clean record. Ranked-choice voting reduces the spoiler worry but hasn't by itself produced strong third parties: Australia's House uses ranked preferences and is still dominated by two main blocs. Proportional systems give small parties seats but turn elections into coalition bargaining after the vote.

So should we change the rules? One side says millions of voters dislike both parties and feel forced to pick one, and a system that fits two parties because of its arithmetic, not because the voters wanted two, is a design flaw worth fixing. The other says two big parties force coalitions to form before the election, inside each party, where you can see who's bargaining with whom, and proportional systems tend to produce many small parties and deals after the vote. Third-party ideas already find their way into the major parties. Everybody is arguing from something real here.

What Third Parties Do Win

Third parties rarely win elections, but they've won a lot of arguments. The People's (Populist) Party's 1892 Omaha platform called for a graduated income tax, and the Sixteenth Amendment authorized one in 1913. The Progressive Party's 1912 platform called for women's suffrage and the direct election of senators, and the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and the Seventeenth in 1913 delivered them. The pattern: a third party raises an idea, the major parties notice where the votes went, and one of them adopts it.

Third parties are the R&D department. They test the idea, then a big party ships it with a new logo.

That's the case for the current system and the case against it. It shows how third parties matter without winning, and it's also what critics point to as proof of how hard it is to win directly. How much credit third parties deserve, compared with the broader movements behind them, is something historians haven't finished arguing about.

Where To Start

Read the two-runs section first. If you remember one thing, make it this: Roosevelt and Perot didn't differ in how many people liked them. They differed in where those people lived. Then read the section on the other walls and decide for yourself whether they're screens or fences.