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The History of Third-Party Candidates in the United States
From Whigs to the DSA.
Christopher David Ryan (@hellocdr)
Teen Vogue's May 2018 digital cover investigates the unprecedented number of young people taking up the mantle of politics and running for office. From profiling the young people running and why to what is the DNC and the RNC and how to vote, we take on every aspect of political engagement as it pertains to you.
Running! is an ongoing Teen Vogue original series about getting involved in government.
The two political parties that we know in America today — Democrats and Republicans — have largely dominated the landscape of United States politics for 165 years, since the 1853 inauguration of Democrat Franklin Pierce. Republicans have had 19 presidents in the White House, beginning with Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1861, and Democrats have had 15, the first of whom was Andrew Jackson, inaugurated in 1829. Thirty-four of our 45 total presidents have been from one of these two parties.
But even prior to the system that we recognize in modern times, there was a two-party system in the earliest days of the republic. Five of the first six presidents were members of either the Democratic-Republican or Federalist parties, a dynamic that arose as the nation's first two-party system, even as some of the founding members wanted to avoid party-based politics altogether. Only America's first president, George Washington, was elected without a party.
In the modern era, third-party candidates have struggled to contend for the presidency and are a rare sight in Congress. They struggle due to not being able to keep up with the funding of the major parties, and even successful third-party candidates often have to align themselves with the major party that leans their way. Why is it so hard for third-party candidates to make an impact in national races? We're glad you asked.
The bulk of third-party candidates to hold the highest office were the Whigs, a group formed in opposition to President Andrew Jackson by a coalition of slave owners, abolitionists, businessmen, farmers, and industrialists. The party eventually divided over the issue of slavery, splitting into groups of northern and southern Whigs. A modern version of the Whig Party advocates for a centrist position, which falls in between liberalism and conservatism.
Several third parties have arisen over the years as single-issue parties. The Free-Soil Party arose before the Civil War to oppose the expansion of slavery to the West. The modern-day U.S. Marijuana Party seeks to decriminalize the use of cannabis for adults 21 years old and over. The Prohibition Party was created in the 1860s to advocate against the manufacture and sale of alcohol; it still exists, and its platform is also against "illegal" immigration, anti-marriage equality, anti-choice, and, yes, still attempting to reinstate the prohibition of alcohol, along with tobacco and cannabis.
Other U.S. political groups — like the Socialist Party, the Libertarian Party (of 2016 candidate Gary Johnson), and the Green Party (of 2016 candidate Jill Stein) — build out broad platforms from economic, bureaucratic, and environmental issues. The Green Party runs candidates in federal, state, and local elections. The Socialist Party is perhaps best known historically for its 1912 presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, who was jailed for speaking out against World War I; it's not to be confused with the Socialist Party USA, which has built a political infrastructure across the country and ran a candidate in 2016.
Many of the most successful third-party candidates on the national level came from progressive politics on the left. The Greenback-Labor Party, the Populist Party, the Progressive Party (also referred to as the People's Party), and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (which still exists in spirit today after merging with the state's Democrats and is now named the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party). All were organized around working-class, left-leaning issues and found ways to win races for the U.S. House of Representatives from the late 19th century through the first half of the 20th. (These groups had more moderate success in the Senate.)
What keeps modern third parties out of the running in many elections may be money. Democrats and Republicans have already raised hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2018 election cycle through the parties themselves and their fundraising committees — a seemingly impossible amount for third-party fundraising]. By comparison, data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, independent, nonprofit organization shows that the Green Party has received only $1,200 for the 2018 cycle; their data shows that the Libertarian Party has pulled in only $1,916 in the 2018 cycle.
These levels echo the funding differences among these four parties in the 2016 presidential election. Then-Republican-candidate Donald Trump's 2016 campaign committee raised more than $333 million dollars over the course of his campaign, with another $75 million coming from outside sources, totaling more than $408 million, based on the data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic-nominee Hillary Clinton almost doubled that total with $794 million, with more than $563 million coming from the campaign committee's own efforts and another $231 million from outside groups, according to their research.
Neither of the two third-party candidates with perhaps the greatest name recognition in the 2016 election — the Libertarian's Johnson and the Green Party's Stein — came even close to these figures in their fundraising efforts. Based on the Center's data, Johnson raised slightly more than $13 million total, and Stein raised only $3.7 million — a fraction of what the major-party candidates raised, but still more than three times as much as she raised in her 2012 run for president.
Major campaign contributors in the 2018 cycle tend to lean one way or the other. The owner of Uline Inc., a distributor of shipping, industrial, and packaging materials, has donated more than $26 million in the 2018 cycle, almost entirely to Republican fundraisers. Richard Uihlein, who owns the shipping company, donated $100,000 to a PAC for Republican candidate Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, and has been supporting far-right, Tea Party candidates for years.
On the Democratic side of fundraising, unions contend with financial-investment firms as the top donors. Soros Fund Management is an investment firm that shares its name with conspiracy-theory target and board member George Soros. Soros has been falsely accused of paying protesters, but the conspiracy theorists behind those bogus claims may not be tracking the $10 million the investment firm with his name has already given, largely to Democrats, in the 2018 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The Center for Responsive Politics data also indicates that costs in federal elections are steadily rising in both presidential and midterm years. Between 2000 and 2016, the total cost of the presidential and congressional elections more than doubled, a clear sign that money will continue to influence who has a chance to seize a seat at the table.
Despite the history of Whig presidents and progressive candidates' historical success in Congress, third-party candidates face steep challenges when it comes to mounting a successful bid for a national race. Chief among these may be fundraising.
Bernie Sanders, who is notably registered as an Independent as a senator but ran as a Democrat in 2016, often discussed his grassroots fundraising in the 2016 election, and the Center for Responsive Politics data indicates that roughly 57% of the $229 million (about $134 million) raised by his campaign was from donations totaling less than $200; he raised more than $97 million (just over 40% of the total) from larger individual donors.
Barring major campaign finance regulation or a grassroots fundraising effort that outdoes Sanders without the support of wealthier donors, it's unclear if a third-party candidate could ever mount a campaign for a major federal office. Currently, the Senate's only two members who aren't a Democrat or a Republican, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, are both officially independent.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to reflect that donations to the Republican party, including Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, were made by Richard Uihlein and not Uline Inc., a shipping company. Uihlein is the owner of Uline, but a representative clarified that the donations were made as personal contributions from a private citizen.
More from Teen Vogue's May 2018 digital cover:
Meet the Young Politicians Running to Save America
The Democratic and Republican National Committees, Explained
How to Vote for the First Time
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