Elon Musk’s threat this week to form his own political party isn’t the first time he has flirted with the idea.
In 2022, just before he became heavily involved in Republican politics, Musk mused about striking out on his own politically in a series of social media posts saying he didn’t feel at home in either the Democratic or the Republican parties.
“A party more moderate on all issues than either Reps or Dems would be ideal,” Musk posted on X, then known as Twitter, in May 2022.
It was a short-lived dalliance. After a blip of media coverage, Musk never followed through on the idea for a third party and instead began pouring money into right-wing groups.
But now he is returning to the idea of a third U.S. party, with him and President Donald Trump feuding again over the Republican megabill that could increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion.
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk wrote Monday on X in a post that had more than 42 million views within a day. The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday and will be deliberated upon in the House, where Republican leaders hope to pass it by July 4.
Musk has posted at least eight times this week promoting the idea of a new political party. He said his party would focus on reducing the national debt — which he said neither Democrats nor Republicans were capable of doing. He said the two major parties acted in concert like a “PORKY PIG PARTY!!”
Musk didn’t elaborate on his plans beyond the name “America Party” and the focus on debt. He didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. Experts told NBC News that Musk would face an uphill battle if he chose to actually try to build a new party.
Trump responded to Musk’s announcement with a threat to cut government support for Musk’s businesses, saying his administration might “eat Elon.”
And Musk’s unpopularity, including among those who don’t identify with either major party, would make him an unlikely person to launch a third political party. Among political independents, 59% viewed him unfavorably and 29% viewed him favorably in a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters last month.
His standing in the public has, if anything, gotten worse since he left his job in the Trump administration a month ago, according to a tracker of his popularity run by statistics writer Nate Silver.
But Musk has access to vast resources as the world’s wealthiest person, largely because of his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, and he controls a significant media outlet in X. Those assets could come in handy for launching a political party.
The number of registered independents and third-party members is also growing as voters break from the two-party system at increasing rates, according to an NBC News analysis of voter registration data.
The Democratic and Republican parties have had a near-stranglehold on the American political system for decades, and while independents have been elected to Congress, including two currently in the Senate, they generally caucus with the major parties and don’t operate as true third-party candidates. The major parties regularly change state laws or take other steps to block third parties from getting on the ballot.
Richard Winger, who helps run Ballot Access News and is a longtime advocate for easier ballot access for third parties, said he wasn’t sure what to make of Musk’s announcement.
“He’s so flighty,” he said. “He’s achieved a great deal in life, but to look at him in politics, he seems so unserious.”
Last year, Musk became the biggest spender in Republican politics, giving more than $290 million to help put Trump back in the White House. He has also pushed right-wing politics around the globe, including a German party that has downplayed Nazi atrocities. But he has distanced himself from many Republicans after he stepped away from the Trump administration a month ago.
Few third parties have found major success.
A handful of small third parties, such as the Libertarian and Green parties, hold conventions and run candidates for office, but their wins are few. Many other attempts at third parties, such as former President Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party in 1912, haven’t lasted.
The American system is an outlier globally. Democracies in Canada, Europe and elsewhere usually have multiparty systems, often with parties forming coalitions with one another to win control in legislative chambers.
Bernard Tamas, a political science professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia, said Musk would have to overcome many hurdles to establish a third party.
“It’s not like running a business,” he said. “It’s got to be more like a social movement. It’s got to be kind of a grassroots thing, where people are motivated and energized to fight.”
And although Musk appeared to help energize some Trump voters in swing states last year, a truly competitive third party would involve a far larger organization than Musk’s super PAC.
“Even if he could put in the money, he cannot replicate the amount of institutional structure that these two parties” have, Tamas said. “It’s an open question whether he can do it or not, but money is not enough. Money is not the only obstacle in front of third parties.”
At least one third-party organizer, Andrew Yang, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2020 Democratic primaries for president, has expressed an interest in teaming up with Musk, and Musk said in 2022 that he supported Yang earlier. But it’s not clear that Musk is still interested. Yang, who didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday, criticized Trump’s budget bill as a symptom of wider problems, writing on X, “So many people hate this bill; it’s a great example of how messed up our political system is.”
Yang’s Forward Party hasn’t enjoyed widespread success, but it does have a handful of members in elected office around the country, including a state senator in Utah.
The laws for setting up political parties vary by state but generally require organizers to gather thousands of signatures and meet other requirements. In Texas, where Musk lives, a party would need to identify about 81,000 supporters — which experts said is achievable with enough time and money.
“You can hire paid petitioning firms and you can get people on the ballot,” Winger said. “Especially since it’s so far from the next election, he has oodles of time.”
But the requirements have lately gotten worse, he added, with several states raising the requirements for third parties or independent candidates to get on the ballot.
“When the country is feeling good and calm, the ballot access laws tend to get better. When there’s a lot of anxiety, the laws get worse. This decade has just been horrible,” Winger said.
“We had an excellent decade in the 1990s,” he said, recalling the rise of billionaire presidential candidate Ross Perot and his Reform Party aided by changing state laws.
Perot won 19% of the popular vote in 1992 as an independent candidate for president, running largely on the platform of reducing the national debt. And although he didn’t win any electoral votes or create a lasting competitive third party, he did push deficit reduction to the top of the national agenda, and the federal budget was briefly balanced at the end of the century. He died in 2019.
Trump himself once flirted with a third-party run. In 2000, he explored pursuing the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, claiming that his polling was “unbelievable.” But he quit the race after four months, saying the Reform Party was controlled by “fringe” extremists and likely to be shut out of national debates.
Musk didn’t cast his first ballot in an election until 2016, when he was 45 years old.
Tamas said one possible scenario is Musk’s launching a third party that then gets co-opted by a major party competing for the same voters. Tamas said third parties that have succeeded in accomplishing their goals usually disappear within 10 years.
“What you’re doing as a third party is you’re supposed to be causing pain,” he said. “You’re supposed to hurt them and hurt them by causing them to lose seats or lose elections, and then, once they lose, the hope is they co-opt whatever the third party is selling. They change themselves in order to stay alive.”
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