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Article: Third Parties
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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THIRD PARTIES
THIRD PARTIES.
The American political system has rarely been kind to third parties. No third party has won a presidential election in over a century. From the point of view of the two major parties, minor parties have functioned more as irritants or sideshows than as serious rivals. Parties such as the Libertarian Party, the American Vegetarian Party, the nativist Know-Nothing Party, and the agrarian Populist parties have been most valuable as safety valves for alienated voters, and as sources of new ideas, which, if they become popular, the major parties appropriate. In the historian Richard Hofstadter's classic formulation: "Third parties are like bees: once they have ...