WASHINGTON (TNND) — Fresh off frustration with a lack of progress cutting government spending and a major blow-up with President Donald Trump, billionaire and recently departed cost-cutting chief Elon Musk is questioning whether he should start a political third party as he debates whether to stay involved with U.S. politics.
Musk is a relative political newcomer who quickly had his support for Trump’s campaign turn into a high-profile role as a temporary government employee with the sole mission of cutting government waste. But he and the president appear to be splitting up after Musk criticized Trump’s signature tax cut and spending bill and lashed out against the White House and Republicans in a series of social media posts.
Trump and Republican leadership have shown little appetite for mending the relationship, leaving Musk to decide whether he will continue to be involved in politics with both major parties in opposition to him.
On Friday, Musk floated creating a new political party after his fallout with the White House after starting a poll on X asking whether the country needed a new party to represent a majority of voters.
“The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle! And exactly 80% of people agree. This is fate,” Musk wrote, citing the responses to his survey. He later said he would call the group “The America Party.”
Musk already founded a political action committee called the America PAC that was used as his main source for dumping at least $250 million to support Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election. Its organization as an independent super PAC allows Musk to put unlimited money into it, but donations to formal political parties are capped at under $1 million.
Musk had previously said he planned to roll back his political spending but left his options open if circumstances changed, which came before the blow-up with the Trump administration.
“If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it,” he said last month. “I do not currently see a reason.”
Whether Musk follows through with a push to start another political party or backs out of his involvement with politics altogether in the years ahead. But he is far from the first high-profile person to push for another alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties that dominate American politics.
Satisfaction with the two major parties has been slumping for years with a growing share of voters saying that neither represent their interests and stronger support for more parties to proliferate. However, third-party candidates still struggle to gain traction in the U.S. with the two-party system giving Democrats and Republicans distinct advantages over other challengers.
A new party would immediately run into issues accessing ballots in all 50 states as it tried to navigate a patchwork of rules and laws that govern elections. Getting onto all 50 states’ ballots is a massive and expensive endeavor that has hurt independent campaigns and parties, such as Robert F. Kennedy’s longshot independent presidential bid last year before he ultimately dropped out to support Trump and became his secretary of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy had the backing of a super PAC and a wealthy vice presidential nominee to help afford the expensive endeavor, a luxury that many other independents and third parties have been unable to afford.
Musk questioning the need for another political party comes as Americans are supportive of having more options on the ballot and say Republicans and Democrats do not do a good job representing them. An annual survey conducted on the issue by Gallup has found a majority of Americans agree another major party is needed for 12 consecutive years.
The 2024 election brought the highest support ever for another major party to emerge after a steady flow of polls found voters didn’t want Trump or then-President Joe Biden to run for a second term even though the two were overwhelming favorites to win their parties’ primaries. By Gallup’s measure, support for a third major party reached a record high of 63% in 2023 before dipping back toward its longer-term average of 58% last year.
Despite a general dissatisfaction with the American political system and many of its institutions, it has been difficult for third party candidates to win significant support in elections with voters far more likely to tell pollsters they would vote for one than they are to actually cast a ballot for someone outside the two major parties.
But there are still efforts to get more outside candidates into elected posts and on the ballots across the country.
Former Democratic presidential candidate and Forward Party founder Andrew Yang told Politico said he reached out to Musk in hopes of working together on creating a new political party.
“I want to work with people that recognize that America’s political system has gone from dysfunctional to polarizing to even worse. And at this point, the fastest growing political movement in the United States is independents,” Yang told Politico. “They feel like neither party represents them, and the two-party system is not delivering what they want to see.”
