I thought about this in response to a comment someone made and postured a position in which the RNC and DNC are really just two monopoly companies at this point (link). I know there’s protection for political parties, but is that what these really are now with how they’re structured (kinda like they’re ticketmaster/livenation for politicians at this point)? I couldn’t find an easy answer and trying to dive deeper keeps pulling up irrelevant articles.
There are other political parties, but because of the way American elections are structured, they have basically no chance of gaining any influence on a large scale. Dividing the vote just reduces the chances of your preferred party in the current system. If a “Republican-but-not-Trump” party would gain popularity, it’d divide the vote 50/25/25 and the Democrats would overwhelmingly win.
Third parties have a handful of representatives but they’re effectively powerless on a large scale.
This is very difficult to fix as it would require restructuring elections to remove the third party disadvantage. Neither party currently in power is a fan, because they only stand to lose votes when such a system is organised. I don’t think it’ll ever happen unless the USA collapses or we get some kind of united world government or something.