It was on the US national day on Friday that the world's richest man, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, began to realize his threats to form a new party. This happened through a vote on his own platform X, which over 1.2 million voters responded to. Over 65 percent gave a thumbs up for the America Party.
The centrist party is to stand for reduced national debt, defense modernization with the help of AI and robots, deregulation and freedom of speech, according to a post. Additionally, "pro-tech" and natalism are mentioned - increased reproduction as a means of ensuring the survival of humanity. Musk himself has at least twelve children with three different mothers.
Musk was born in South Africa and can therefore not stand in a presidential election. But he is far from the first to start a third party.
New parties are sometimes created, but there is a very, very small chance that they will be successful, says Dag Blanck, professor of North American studies at Uppsala University.
Falls on the electoral system
This is because the American electoral system is not proportional like in Sweden. A candidate wins all or nothing in the different states and the electoral votes decide.
They (third parties) always fall on the fact that the electoral system is rigged against them, says Blanck.
In 1992, the Reform Party's Ross Perot, billionaire and businessman, took home 19 percent of the votes in the presidential election won by Democrat Bill Clinton - without getting any electoral votes.
Many of them (Perot's voters) would probably have voted for George Bush the elder, notes Blanck.
In this way, a third-party candidate can weaken a presidential candidate that voters would otherwise sympathize with. Trump probably considered whether he should take over the Reform Party, but chose a more successful path, according to Blanck.
What he did instead was to take over an existing party.
In recent presidential elections, the Libertarian and Green Party candidates have received some or a few percent support, without seriously challenging the dominance of the Democrats and Republicans.
Want a new party?
In a Gallup survey from last fall, 58 percent of Americans stated that they are in favor of forming a third party. This is because they believe that the established parties are doing a poor job of representing them.
And in a fresh measurement from the polling institute Quantus, 40 percent of Americans say they are open to supporting Musk politically. Support is even higher among Republicans: among these, 23 percent say it is "very likely" and 34 percent say it is "fairly likely" that they would support the America Party.
Tina Magnergård Bjers/TT
Hanna Rasmusson/TT
Facts: Elon Musk's relationship to Donald Trump
TT
Elon Musk is the world's richest man and founder of, among other things, the electric car company Tesla and the space company SpaceX. He donated enormous sums to President Donald Trump's election campaign and socialized almost around the clock with Trump after the election victory.
During the spring, he has led the White House's efficiency organization Doge.
Musk has been warning of the need for a new party ever since his close relationship with the president began to falter in the spring and he left Doge. In recent weeks, the two have quarreled publicly.
Musk has criticized Trump's recently approved state budget, both for increasing the national debt and for the reduced support for the electric car sector. Trump has, among other things, threatened to withdraw Musk's companies' government contracts and to deport Musk. It is very unclear how the latter would be done, as Musk has American citizenship.
