Elon Musk has the money and, at least for the moment, the motivation to steer America's politics away from its two dominant parties. But long-standing obstacles to third parties, as well as his own unique profile, could prove too formidable.

Musk, irritated for several weeks over the amount of spending in U.S. President Donald Trump's budget bill, seemingly reached a breaking point as it was signed into law on July 4. The following day, Musk announced on X, the social media platform that he owns, that "the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."

The relationship between Trump and Musk has burned white hot over the past year. The Tesla and SpaceX founder spent about $290 million US in the 2024 presidential campaign to help elect Trump and other Republicans.

The president then controversially allowed a team led by Musk — none of them confirmed by the Senate — to go through government agencies looking for inefficiencies and opportunities to slash public sector spending and workers.

Trump has called Musk's third party "ridiculous" and said the billionaire had gone "completely off the rails." The Republican president — who in his decades of public life has previously been affiliated with the Democratic Party and the now-defunct Reform Party — may doth protest too much.

People are down on the 2 parties

On the surface, Musk's idea would have support. Gallup has been polling Americans since 2003 on whether a third major political party is needed in the United States, and it has found, on average, that 56 per cent supported the idea. The peak rate was recorded in 2023, at 63 per cent, with the tallies for 2017 and 2021 close behind, as the sentiment seems to bubble up more intensely in non-election years.

The Pew Research Center has asked similar questions over the years. In a 2023 survey, it found that nearly half of respondents aged 18 to 49 wish there were more parties to choose from. The rate plummeted among the older cohorts, with only about one-fifth of respondents 65 and over thinking more parties were desirable.

There are caveats, however.

The percentage of survey respondents who identify as Independents has been comparable or greater than those identifying as Democrats or Republicans since the late 1980s. But despite considerable efforts by the Green Party and Libertarian Party, among others, there are only two parties on the ballot in every state, in nearly every midterm of presidential election year.

When push comes to shove at election time, voters appear to be concerned about "wasting" their vote in a system where there isn't proportional representation and the vast majority of House districts are not competitive.

That has only seemed to strengthen recently, as 5.6 per cent of Americans voted for presidential candidates who were not Democratic or Republican in 2016, but less than two per cent did so in the last two presidential elections.

Demand-side questions

Musk, in his rationale for a new party, has coined the term the "Porky Pig party," accusing Democrats and Republicans alike of runaway spending and a love of "pork" — pet projects for their districts or states.

"When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy," he said.

But since Musk's announcement, political scientists and analysts have questioned that sentiment, given that the antipathy and differences between the parties seem far greater than, for example, in the 1980s — when the Democratic Party still had former segregationists in its midst, and the Republican Party had socially liberal "Rockefeller Republicans," who would likely be unpalatable in today's version of the party.

"When the two parties seem to cross paths during their perpetual process of slow realignment, it presents an opportunity for a third party. But when the two parties are far apart, it's a radically different picture," Kevin Kruse, a political historian at Princeton University, wrote on his Substack.

If there's a middle way desired, Kruse said, the challenge is "that every single voter has a different understanding of what that 'middle' represents."

It was a point expounded on by a trio of analysts writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2018, based on studying decades of data. "Many Americans who want a new party are not unhappy centrists but instead are voters looking for something more left, right, or populist than what currently exists," they wrote.

Musk's fixation on budget issues seemingly doesn't make him any different than Republicans from the past, such as Jack Kemp.

"At this point, Musk isn't offering anything voters can't find in the right wing of the Republican Party or, barring that, in the Libertarian Party, " Ed Kilgore, a veteran political analyst with New York Magazine, wrote on Monday.

Musk also doesn't seem to be offering a path that is more populist or MAGA than the president — he's already talked about supporting Republican House Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the few in the Republican Party who occasionally criticize Trump.

The Elon problem

It's not clear if voters would care greatly who founded a political party, but if anyone tested that proposition, it might be Musk.

Musk's favourability was about 20 percentage points underwater in a recent YouGov poll — 55 per cent had an unfavourable view, compared with 35 per cent who had a favourable view — and an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in May found that Musk's unfavourability jumped by about 20 percentage points among Independents since December.

As friction between Musk and Trump began to play out in the spring, YouGov then asked respondents who they'd side with between the two men. Trump held a solid edge with those identifying as Independents, and it was overwhelmingly the response even with those who said they were non-MAGA Republicans.

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Terry Haines of market analyst Pangaea Policy put it more bluntly, characterizing Musk as "radioactive."

Haines, in conversation with Yahoo Finance, said Musk has "torched his brand with both the most engaged people on the left and the most engaged people on the right. That's hard to do, but this is an unusual guy."

Pope "Mac" McCorkle, a professor of public policy at Duke University, acknowledged that challenge in an interview with NPR and said any Musk party would somehow have to navigate "sending a message to Washington" while de-emphasizing its founder, who currently posts on social media incessantly.

"A couple percentage points can matter," McCorkle said, "especially in midterms, [when] some of the MAGA base is not going to be interested if Trump is not on the ballot."

Systemic issues

In recent days, Musk has posted of the possibility of a "laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts" in his efforts, to increase the chances of being "the deciding vote on contentious laws." The sentiment has some logic, given what seems to be an increase in tiebreaking votes in the Senate in recent years.

As outlined by Reuters last year, in the decentralized U.S. election system, the two major parties have made the prospect of new entrants more difficult at the state level. There are specific and Byzantine hurdles of getting on the ballot for each of the 50 states in terms of residency and signature requirements, and qualifying one time doesn't grant a party status the next time out — as three-time presidential candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party and others have found.

Political analyst Richard Winger of Ballot Access News said in an NPR interview that while the Libertarian Party managed to get on more than half of the House district ballots in 2000, no third party has done so for more than a quarter of the House's 435 seats.

Even Musk's America Party name may be a non-starter, according to a post at Election Law Blog, as New York state forbids parties with "American" in the name, while in California, the name may be too similar to the already-registered American Independent Party.

Political scientist Lee Drutman, who has long pushed for ways to break the "doom loop" of the two-party system, lamented this week that third parties in the U.S. have been "mostly refuges for cranks and weirdos."

It remains to be seen if Musk —who as recently as late May was talking about spending less on politics after his millions did not achieve a desired outcome in a Wisconsin election — will rise above that characterization.