The last time we had a new party win a national election was in 1860 when Republican Abraham Lincoln won. Examine the following conditions and see if any of them apply today:
- In 1860 the Democratic Party was deeply fractured. It actually split into two conventions and nominated two different candidates. Had they been united (as today's Democratic party is) Lincoln would have lost.
- The Republican Party was made possible by the disintegration of the Whig Party after 1852. The Whig Party was divided over slavery and could not survive the the turmoil over slavery. Today's Republican Party has inept leadership, but it has no deep philosophical rift to break it up.
- It took 8 years for ex-Whigs, ex-Democrats and ex-Free Soilers to coalesce around the new Republican party. The Republican party, having not yet built up a strong coalition, soundly lost the 1856 election.
The conditions for a third party to not exist today. Also, in a first-one-past-the-post voting system such as our, it is a mathematical certainty that we'll always have just two major parties. The only way to have persistent third parties is to have a parliamentary voting system or something like approval voting. So any talk of a third party in the current system is just wishful thinking.
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