By Rylie Oswald
Richard Davis, author of Beyond Donkeys and Elephants, on how minor political parties influence elections. Davis also discusses why more voters don’t vote for them.
What are the key differences between minor parties and the Democratic and Republican parties?
They’re not major parties, which means that is defined as a party that basically has a chance of winning. For most of them, it’s either that they are single issue. They might focus on a particular issue, like abortion or the environment. Or they are ideological in nature, and they tend to be therefore more extreme in ideology. They’re more likely to be extreme left, extreme right. There are some, and there have been more of those recently across the world, that are moderate, centrist parties that kind of appeal to people in the middle.
Major parties tend to be broad based and get a broad swath of voters in them. In doing so, they tend not to be terribly ideological. They may be more left or more right. Democrats are more left, Republicans more right, but they’re sort of center-left and center-right so that they can appeal to the center. That’s something third parties—except for the centrist parties—tend not to do. They tend to be really, very narrowly focused ideologically and can’t really appeal to a broader base of voters.
Beyond Donkeys and Elephants divides the parties into two categories: national and state parties. How do state parties work in elections?
They tend to really only focus on state elections. They may endorse a presidential candidate, but it’s not likely to make any difference really. Nowadays, they tend to be focused on state offices, because it’s something that is manageable. A national party organization takes a lot of money to put together, but you can put a state party together with a lot less expense. But there has to be something sort of unique about that. There has to be a kind of a vacuum that they’re filling within the state.
It could be, for example, that one of the two major parties really isn’t competing. Another party comes in and begins competing. Or a large segment of the electorate feels not represented by either of the two major parties. An example is New York state. New York state is quite diverse, and third parties there are representing the diversity of the state.
Another factor is, how easy is it to form a third party in the state? How easy is it to get on and stay on the ballot? There are states that make it difficult for other parties to compete. Ohio has been one of those, while New York is an example of a state that’s made it easier.
Another [example] is fusion voting. That is where a third party can endorse a candidate who also is a major party candidate. That means people who want to vote for that candidate can do so on either a major party or minor party line. That offers an opportunity for more votes for the minor party.
In Vermont, for example, The Progressive Party can endorse Democrats and vice versa. That allows them to be able to get candidates who are running as a Democrat to appeal to Progressives as well to get their endorsement. That increases the candidate’s appeal, but also helps the minor party gain more credibility by attaching itself to a major party candidate. Once in office, the major party candidate may be more attentive to the interests of the minor party voters.
How do minor parties affect the races of the Democratic and Republican candidates?
It depends on how much appeal the minor party has. Let’s say in New York state a candidate is running on the Democratic ticket and they also want to pick up the Working Families Party nomination. That’s a progressive party. The Democratic candidate would have to adopt more progressive positions to gain the support of the minor party. This would mean the Working Families Party gets more of its issue positions into policy.
Now, in a state where you have a centrist party, then it might lead them to be more centrist, because they want to pick up the support of the centrist voters in the centrist party. That’s how it can affect the race if fusion voting is possible—getting a major party candidate in the race who is closer to the views of the minor party. Most states don’t allow fusion voting because they don’t want to encourage minor parties.
There is a downside to appealing to the minor party for its endorsement. For example, in New York, If the Democratic candidate is appealing to the Working Families Party, that may make them too liberal for the general electorate. They could lose the election if they are viewed as too extreme. So, candidates have to weigh whether they want that. It could hurt the candidate if he or she is perceived as too close to a party that is seen as more extreme.
Why do you think more people don’t vote for minor parties?
Because many people don’t have much information about minor parties. Minor political parties have a harder time getting publicity, getting attention from the press. The assumption is, “Why should we cover them?” So, the publicity they sorely need is lacking.
Another problem is that usually these parties field candidates who people don’t know because the candidates, unless they are independently wealthy, aren’t going to be able to afford the kind of advertising that a major party candidate gets. The donor base for minor parties tends to be quite small compared to the major parties.
Another is just the idea that they’re not going to win, so why waste a vote. Voters have to believe the minor party can win. If a minor party candidate can overcome that sense of a wasted vote, then what becomes important to the vote is whether the party platform or the individual candidate’s views are closer to the voters. If the voter perceives the candidate is closer to their views and can win, then the odds increase that he or she will cast a vote for that minor party candidate. But those are high hurdles—the view that they can win and voter knowledge of the candidate to understand that the candidate’s views are closest to their own.
There have been times when minor party candidates have won. In 1998, professional wrestler Jesse Ventura won the governorship in Minnesota on the Reform Party ticket. David Zuckerman, a member of the Vermont Progressive Party, was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2022. A statewide win is rare, but state legislative and local municipal wins for minor parties are more common. Liberal Party and Conservative Party candidates have won in New York. Working Families Party candidates have won in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Libertarian candidates have won in various states.
Do you think voters will ever be more willing to vote for minor parties instead of major parties?
I think that’s possible. It would be interesting to see if the Republicans—like Liz Cheney and others who are unhappy with the Trump dominance of the Republican Party—decide to form a third party that is a truly conservative party, not a Trump-oriented party. They didn’t do that this year, although Cheney has raised the possibility for the future. I think they didn’t do it this year because they wanted to get rid of Trump, and the best way to get rid of him would unite with the Democrats and defeat him at the polls.
The economic conservative and social conservative Republicans might say, “This party is a bunch of extremists, and we need to form another.” I think they’re probably more likely to say, “Let’s take it back.” But it depends on whether they are successful in doing so. I think it’s always a possibility. The fact that it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
The reason why some minor political parties tend to come and go is that the issues around them tend to be absorbed by the major parties because they see the threat and they want to deal with it. When Ross Perot ran in the 1990s on the looming budget deficit, both parties addressed that issue more seriously to blunt Perot’s appeal. The Reform Party that he formed in the mid-1990s was successful in electing Jesse Ventura in 1998 and then in electing some people at lower levels but fizzled out. Ross Perot walked away, Jesse Ventura walked away, and they just didn’t have the leadership anymore and the two major parties coopted the issue. That is the problem minor parties face.
