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Elon Musk Revives His Third-Party Poll on X, This Time With a Strategy

by Met Middleson

July 4, 2025

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Elon Musk ” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Elon Musk isn’t just talking about starting a new party, he’s starting to outline a strategy for how it could actually wield power. In a follow-up to his Independence Day poll on creating an “America Party,” Musk suggested a targeted approach: focus on just two or three Senate seats and eight to ten House districts. His logic is clear. With razor-thin majorities in Congress, even a small bloc of new party legislators could end up controlling the fate of contentious laws, serving as the deciding votes to push or block national policy. For anyone who has watched Congress grind to a halt over single swing votes, the potential influence is obvious.

This isn’t the first time a wealthy figure has tried to disrupt the two-party system. In 1992, billionaire Ross Perot spent millions of his own money to launch an independent presidential bid, winning 19% of the popular vote, still one of the strongest showings in modern history, though he secured no electoral votes. Before that, former President Theodore Roosevelt split from the Republicans in 1912 to run as a Progressive, ultimately finishing second ahead of the sitting president. And in 1968, George Wallace’s American Independent Party secured 46 electoral votes and over 13% of the popular vote by dominating in Southern states.

But Musk’s proposal is different from past third-party attempts in two critical ways. First, he isn’t aiming for the presidency or broad national dominance. His strategy is surgical: insert a small group into Congress to control legislation. Second, unlike Perot or Roosevelt, Musk owns one of the world’s largest communication platforms, giving him direct access to millions of voters every day without relying on traditional media filters. That combination of influence, wealth, and infrastructure could allow him to mobilize support and shape narratives at a speed past third-party movements couldn’t match.

Whether this remains a Twitter poll idea or becomes a political force depends on what comes next: candidate recruitment, ballot access battles, and the discipline to sustain a movement beyond personal brand. But if even a fraction of Musk’s followers took it seriously, it could upend the current balance of power in ways neither party is prepared for.