Third party hype is back! In a Washington Post op-ed, pollster Mark Penn predicts “new movements and even parties that shake up the political system” in the US:

Thursday’s elections in Britain could be a harbinger of what is likely to come to America in the not-too-distant future: new movements and even parties that shake up the political system…

Today, about 40 percent of Americans are political nomads, wandering from party to party in search of a permanent home…

There is also a structural problem — socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters believe, especially after what happened with health care, that they have no clear choice: They must sign on with the religious right or the economic left. It is just a matter of time before they demand their own movement or party.

Similarly, AP writer and third-party hypester Ron Fournier claimed a few weeks ago that Florida governor Charlie Crist’s decision to run for the Senate as an independent foreshadows a third party surge:

Charlie Crist’s departure from the Republican Party is not just a Florida story; it’s an American story — a tale of two parties driven by their ideologues, squeezing out moderate candidates, alienating independent voters and isolating the place in U.S. politics where most things get done: the middle…

Record numbers of people tell pollsters they are independents. The public’s approval of both parties is at an all-time low. Will more politicians follow voters out of the major parties?

But as I’ve argued many times before, third parties and third party candidates are highly unlikely to succeed in the US due to the structure of the American political system. Here’s TNR’s Jon Chait demolishing Penn’s analysis:

What’s missing from this explanation is the structure of the political system itself, where the combination of first-past-the-post voting and the electoral college makes third-party campaigns extraordinarily difficult. Under the right conditions, a third-party challenger might have a chance once in a while, but over time the structural forces favoring the two-party system will invariably reassert themselves. This is political science 101 stuff…

[P]ollsters and public opinion experts — a group that apparently excludes Penn — understand that independent self-identification largely reflects a desire not to be seen as a closed-minded, automatic vote. It does not, however, reflect actual voting independence. Most self-identified independents are at least as partisan in their voting behavior as self-identified Democrats or Republicans. It’s largely a class phenomenon, with wealthier and more educated voters being more likely to call themselves independent, but not more likely to go astray in the voting both. The rise of independent self-identification has little to do with voters moving toward the center or the parties moving toward the extremes.

As such, while third party movements or candidacies may occasionally succeed, the major parties are exceptionally difficult to dislodge in the absence of a major issue (like race) that divides them internally. As such, it’s far more likely that the parties will head off any threat, especially as the economy improves. Don’t believe the hype.