The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties: Poised for Political Revival? By Tamas, Bernard . New York: Routledge, 2018. 212 p. $165.00 cloth, $48.95 paper.

The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties: Poised for Political Revival? By Tamas Bernard. New York: Routledge, 2018. 212 p. $165.00 cloth, $48.95 paper.

Surveying the electoral landscape in 1856, newly minted Republican Abraham Lincoln offered his private assessment of the presidential race featuring Democrat James Buchanan, Republican John C. Fremont, and third-party Know Nothing candidate, former president Millard Fillmore. In a confidential letter, Lincoln wrote, “With the Fremont and Fillmore men united, here in Illinois, we have Mr. Buchanan in the hollow of our hand; but with us divided, he has us” (David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, 1995, p. 194). Lincoln was proved right: the split in the antislavery vote gave Buchanan both Illinois and the presidency.

Lincoln’s observation is prescient because it points to the importance of third parties in the nineteenth century. The Anti-Masons, Free Soilers, Know Nothings, Greenback, and Populist Parties helped define American politics for their times. Most famously, the merging of the Populist and Democratic parties in 1896 precipitated a party realignment that gave Republicans an even stronger grasp on power.

Bernard Tamas asks the vital question: What happened to such third parties in the twentieth century? Of course, third parties played a vital role in key presidential contests: Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968, and Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. Even in close elections, such as the Trump–Clinton race in 2016, third parties made a difference. But in 2020, third-party candidates were relegated to their more customary role of perennial gadflies in presidential politics.

Tamas examines third parties and their fall from grace by collecting data on the presence...