How to Win as a Third Party
Why is it that third parties tend to get crushed in all U.S. elections?
The overwhelming dominance of the two big parties is caused, first, by the first-past-the-post electoral system, which (unlike all other electoral systems, such as Approval, Range, or PR) translates the tendency to believe that only two parties have a chance of winning into a firm reality. It’s also caused by various laws that can make it hard to get on the ballot, by the fact that third parties don’t have the massive networks of social connections and lobbyists that the big two enjoy, and and by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan organization that implicitly excludes third parties (there’s a big difference between “bipartisan” and “nonpartisan”).
To overcome all those roadblocks requires not only that the Democrats and Republicans be unpopular, but also that the new party become very popular, and quickly. Unfortunately, the politics of the biggest “third parties” in America (the Libertarian Party and the Green Party) are generally unappealing to at least half of Americans, because they are too ideological.
We know a pure left-wing or right-wing third party can’t win: the Green party generally can’t pick up Republican voters at all, and while the Libertarian party can pick up some Democratic voters, we saw in the last election that even against Clinton and Trump, both among the most unpopular candidates in history, Gary Johnson got only about 3% of the vote. So although Bernie might pick up more votes than Gary, the bias against third parties is tremendous, and it’ll take a very unconventional strategy to win.
I do believe a third party could be viable, but it would require a different strategy than Bernie Sanders is known for.
What might work
First of all, a third party will only have a chance if the approval rating of Congress remains low, and if the 2020 presidential election plays out similarly to 2016, with two D/R candidates that are not well liked. Otherwise, the bias against third parties is insurmountable.
Just as importantly, a third party must toss out all the popular ideologies that divide the United States. It must not be distinctly liberal or conservative. It must, in fact, attract both liberals and conservatives to campaign for it. It must reconnect America and build a new “center wing” built on what Americans actually want, not on what millionaires and billionaires cutting $2,700 checks want.
Here’s what I think the new party should do:
- Speak in a way that shows you understand voters and care what they think. Where possible, share their anger and look like you are somehow one of them — as a billionaire, Trump did this masterfully when, for example, he looked like the common man while making Hillary (tiny net worth compared to Trump!) out to be a greedy, lying bastard. To do this, it would help to have a deep familiarity and even appreciation of conservatives’ rhetoric and memes, without buying into their assumptions and conspiracy theories.
- Focus anger on systemic corruption and propose a comprehensive solution to it. Tell voters on the Left that their hatred of the Right would be better spent on Congress, and vice versa for the Right. This is a crucial thing that any third party must do to contrast itself with the existing parties and to actually fix corruption. “Drain the Swamp”, which Trump won’t actually do, is a phrase that the Left can appreciate as much as the Right. A third party could drain the swamp for real.
- Focus on fighting cost disease (which all Americans are inclined to agree on, at least before the specifics are discussed) more than creating subsidies (which are fairly unpopular on the Right, except for existing subsidies created by Republican administrations).
- And in general, champion crossover issues that a majority of Americans (liberals and conservatives) support. Strangely, when I Google “policies supported by strong majorities of Americans” or “liberal conservative crossover issues”, I don’t immediately find any lists of such issues. It’s as if it never occurred to anyone to gather a list together! So off the top of my head, consider these issues: getting money out of politics (yes, many conservatives are sick of it too); the politics of time (e.g. requiring employers to offer two weeks of vacation time per year); the politics of the family (is paid maternity leave a particularly partisan issue?); reducing Wall Street’s influence in D.C. and avoiding the privatized profit + socialized losses a.k.a. too-big-to-fail pattern; government mismanagement (e.g. don’t promise to slash the Defense Budget — highlight the mismanagement of the budget and the ways the current budget leaves the country vulnerable in large-scale war, and promise audits); or background checks for all gun sales (supported by 85 percent of gun owners). On health care, no course of action is supported by most Americans, but the most popular option is federally funded health care.
- Use neutral rhetoric, consistently avoiding partisan words and phrases like “a woman’s right to choose”, “the death tax”, “cultural marxism”, “the living Constitution”, or “cis male” (I am sorry, but even “transgender” may be grating to conservative ears.) Vigorously oppose the worst conservative ideas, but do your best not to appear liberal (as difficult as this might be given that the Right consistently labels the center, i.e. average American policy opinions, as left-wing). See also these pages.
- Do not assume Americans are informed. For example, what percentage of our federal budget would you guess goes to foreign aid? Many Americans make guesses as high as 25%! And when asked what percent it should be, they may say it should be “reduced” to 10%! The actual foreign aid budget is less than 1%. Another example is climate change, where many people think that only 50% or 60% of climate scientists believe global warming is caused by humans. The true number is up to 97%. So the party needs to constantly be aware of which facts are misunderstood, and repeat those facts in ways that appeal to emotion. That is, one must know the techniques that make misinformation appealing, and repurpose them for spreading truth. I’m not so good at this, but I’ll suggest that every policy statement should have built-in mechanisms to counteract common false beliefs. And, of course, every politician needs to learn about popular falsehoods and how to take them into account when speaking. For example, Clinton said she would increase the number of Syrian Refugees accepted to 65,000, which conservatives said was a 550% increase — and this is true. Instead, Clinton should have refused to give a firm number and just said “we should accept no more than one quarter as many Syrian refugees as Canada has already accepted, per capita”. The “one quarter limit” actually allows more refugees than she actually proposed, but it makes it harder for conservatives to spin her proposal as being unreasonably high, especially since Canada is not one of the top countries to have accepted refugees. Of course, this doesn’t prevent outright lying; Trump claimed Hillary wanted to let in “620,000” refugees “without vetting”, but hopefully by 2020 more people will become wary of pathological liars. The problem is, even when people distrust Trump, there will still be a large subculture with the same attitude toward facts.
- Do not support any policies that a large minority of Americans are strongly against (if American are against a policy because they are misinformed, the party shouldn’t support it unless they can change popular feelings about the policy.)
- Champion issues that only the Left or Right pushed in the past. For example, the Right loves to eliminate burdensome or unnecessary regulations, while the left doesn’t care as much about that issue, so the new party should strongly support the elimination of bad regulations. Likewise I assume there exist liberal ideas that most conservatives don’t oppose; I just don’t know what they are (we need to understand the other side better.)
- Promote good ideas ignored by the major parties and the media, such as Electoral Reform and the UBI. Begin to rebuild the anti-monopoly tradition.
- When proposing a good and important policy that hurts a small but significant group (e.g. a clean energy policy that could put coal miners out of a job), it should be tied to a plan that temporarily, but strongly, compensates the disadvantaged group. (e.g. free education, relocation, and unemployment benefits for five years for every coal miner that is laid off.)
- When asked about divisive issues, such as abortion or the death penalty, party members need to say “look, our job is to bring Americans together and make this country prosper. On issues like this, one side wins and one side loses. So I prefer to stay out of it. The most I can say is, let’s be moderate, let’s look for compromise that a majority of Americans can accept.” When pressed, the candidate can admit their personal opinion, but say it’s not on the party’s agenda and point out that other members of the same party disagree.
Everybody Wins!
The strategy I propose is summed up in by the slogan “Everybody Wins”: It would focus on giving a majority of Americans what they want while minimizing the number of “losers”.
All of the above are rhetorical and policy strategies. Equally important, though, is how to raise the billion dollars or so that will be needed to compete with the Republicrats on ad buys and campaign staff.
Simply by aligning itself with what Americans actually want and not being Republicrat, the new party could attract a lot of goodwill, but on election day, people won’t believe it can beat the big parties unless it can convincingly act like a big party. Remember, under first-past-the-post, belief is reality: most people will not vote for their favorite party if they believe that party will not win. But I have no advice about how to raise a billion dollars, so I will shut up now.
Conclusion: I would love a non-ideological, moderate, fact-centric, “everybody wins” third party to fluorish. However, I think it might be easier to just fix corruption in Washington, especially if a viable third party continues not to emerge. See here:
