Elon Musk says he’s starting third party. Poll shows if Americans are interested

After a fiery feud with President Donald Trump, Elon Musk became estranged from the Republican Party, flipping from mega-donor to major dissenter.

Now, the tech titan says he is launching his own political party — and many Americans are interested, according to new polling.

Musk has toyed with the idea of forming a new political movement for weeks.

On June 5, he created a poll on his social platform X, asking, “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Then, on July 4, he made a similar poll, asking if we “should create the America Party?” Around 1.2 million users answered, with 65% saying they supported a new party.

The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla — whose falling out with Trump was triggered by the president’s spending bill, which was recently signed into law — wasted no time in seizing on the results.

“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!” he wrote in a July 5 post. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

The idea of a third-party backed by Musk is an attractive one to a large swath of the country, according to a recent survey from Quantus Insights.

Poll breakdown

The poll — which sampled 1,000 voters June 20-July 2 — asked respondents how likely they would be to support or cast their ballot for candidates with Musk’s America Party.

A plurality, 40%, said they would be very likely (14%) or somewhat likely (26%) to back the new party.

Meanwhile, 38% said they would be not very likely (16%) or not at all likely (22%) to throw their support behind it. An additional 22% said they were unsure.

When the results were broken down by demographics, some noticeable differences emerged, with GOP respondents being the most on board with the idea of a Musk-backed third party.

Male Republicans were the most likely to signal their support for the America Party, with 57% saying they are either very or somewhat likely to back it. Among male independents, 47% said the same. Just 22% of male Democrats said they’d consider supporting the party.

A similar trend emerged among women, with 43% of female Republicans saying they could back Musk’s party, while only 37% of female independents and 21% of female Democrats said the same.

Younger voters were also more likely to say they’d consider switching over to the America Party than their older counterparts, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“The signal is clear: a large slice of the electorate is open to something new, something disruptive,” a Quantus Insights analysis said. “This is not about Musk. It’s about the growing sense that the existing order is failing to represent the country as it truly is, or wants to be.”

History of third parties

Historically, though, third parties have performed poorly in American politics, which is dominated by the two-party system.

In fact, a third-party presidential candidate has only won the White House once, during the 1860 election, when Abraham Lincoln, of the newly formed Republican Party, emerged victorious from a four-way race.

In more recent years, third-party candidates have often been seen as so-called spoilers in U.S. elections.

A notable example is the 1912 presidential race, when former President Theodore Roosevelt ran as the Bull Moose Party candidate. His campaign split the Republican vote, paving the way for Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s victory.

Similarly, in 2000, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was accused off siphoning votes from Democrat Al Gore, a factor many believe contributed to Republican George W. Bush’s narrow win.

Candidates running under the banner of Musk’s new party could face the same fate, Dafydd Townley, a U.S. politics expert at the University of Portsmouth, told Newsweek. The America Party “would likely split the Republican vote, potentially resulting in a Democrat-dominated House of Representatives, at least in the short term, due to the winner-takes-all electoral system.”

This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 10:41 AM with the headline "Elon Musk says he’s starting third party. Poll shows if Americans are interested."