Fusion voting

The proposal

Fusion voting — cross-nomination — lets more than one party nominate the same candidate, who appears on each party’s ballot line; the votes on those lines are added together. Common in the nineteenth century, it was banned by state statutes around 1900.¹ Five states allowed some form of it as of 2023 — Connecticut, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, and Vermont — with separate ballot lines in Connecticut and New York; most states do not, and South Carolina banned it as recently as 2022.²³ As commonly framed, an amendment would guarantee a qualified party’s right to nominate any consenting candidate and a voter’s right to vote for that candidate on that line, with votes aggregated; a narrower variant would bar state laws forbidding a candidate from accepting more than one nomination.

The evidence

Two polls ask the mechanism directly with a party split. Both are New Jersey. Asked whether the state should “allow third parties to nominate the same person for an office as one of the major parties,” 56% of New Jersey adults were in favor — 55% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, 62% of independents (Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll, 2023).⁴ The six-point party gap is among the narrowest in our research. But it is one state, fielded during a fusion lawsuit there; it cannot carry a national verdict.

Six months earlier, asked whether the state should reinstate fusion voting after a neutral explanation was read, 58% of New Jersey residents were in favor and 27% opposed — 51% of Republicans, 57% of Democrats, 65% of independents (New America / Braun Research, 2022; New America publishes advocacy on fusion). Eighty-three percent had not heard of fusion beforehand.⁵ Across the two direct polls the Republican reading runs 51–55%, both taken in the same state while litigation there was pending.

No national pollster has been found asking the mechanism; the national numbers are proxies for the diagnosis, not the remedy. “A third major U.S. political party is needed” drew 62% — 43% of Republicans, 58% of Democrats, 74% of independents (Gallup, 2025);⁶ “wish there were more parties to choose from” drew 37% — 29% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats, leaners included (Pew Research Center, 2025).⁷

Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (1997) upheld Minnesota’s fusion ban 6–3: “the Constitution permits the Minnesota Legislature to decide that political stability is best served through a healthy two party system.”⁸ State-constitutional challenges have so far failed in New Jersey, where the state Supreme Court declined review on December 9, 2025,⁹ and in Kansas in 2026, with an appeal announced;¹⁰ a Wisconsin suit challenging that state’s 1897 ban is fully briefed.¹¹

Where it stands

The bipartisan floor is Unpolled. The two direct readings, 51% and 55% of Republicans in the same state (New America / Braun Research, 2022; Fairleigh Dickinson, 2023), would sit at the low end of Moderate if they were national — an indication, not a floor. The proxy floors — 43% of Republicans (Gallup, 2025), 29% (Pew, 2025) — are Weak and measure the diagnosis.

• High topline, low floor; support flips with who holds power — on the proxy, Gallup’s 62% conceals 43% of Republicans, and its Republican reading fell from 58% (2023) to 43% (2025) as its Democratic reading rose from 46% to 58%, tracking which party held the White House.¹²⁶ The pattern does not appear on the mechanism: both New Jersey readings have a six-point party gap, running in opposite directions.⁴⁵ Whether a national poll would reproduce that is the unknown.
• Depth and staleness — no survey has named a cost; the more recent of the two direct readings is February 2023, and neither has been re-asked.
• The symmetry test — passes by construction: fusion works identically for a party to the right of the Republicans and one to the left of the Democrats, and New York’s ballots have carried both a Conservative Party line and a Working Families Party line.² An argument, not a measurement — it is unpolled.
• The existential-problem test — open. For: anti-fusion laws, enacted by state legislatures around 1900 against minor-party alliances, removed a route for new parties and left a two-party structure a majority tells Gallup is not adequate. Against: a century of bans in most states and legality in two shows no demonstrated threat-level difference, and the leading research synthesis calls the depolarization claim “more speculative.”¹³
• The why-an-amendment test — partial. Timmons forecloses the federal route and the state route has failed twice, but fusion is legal by statute in New York and Connecticut, and Timmons holds only that states need not permit it. What remains is a case for uniformity and durability.

Framings we tested

The New Jersey ballot-mechanism wording — 55% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2023) — would be Moderate if it held nationally.⁴ The reinstatement wording in the same state reads four points lower among Republicans: 51%, with 57% of Democrats (New America / Braun Research, 2022).⁵ The diagnosis wordings do not clear: 43% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats (Gallup, 2025);⁶ 29% and 46% (Pew, 2025).⁷ Fusion as a constitutional right, or with trade-offs named, has never been asked. None clears the bar, and the closest does not poll what we would draft: both New Jersey wordings ask whether a state should allow cross-nomination, where an amendment would establish the right against every state, permanently — and legislatures of both parties have banned it.

What would move it

In: an independent national poll with party crosstabs asking the mechanism in forward-looking, both-parties wording — “Some states allow more than one party to nominate the same candidate, so that a candidate can appear on more than one party’s line and the votes are added together. Would you favor or oppose a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that right in every state — including for a new party to the right of the Republican Party and a new party to the left of the Democratic Party?” — with a Republican floor of 60% or better, holding at 55% when the costs are named (longer ballots, repeated names, nomination bargaining). Or a state-constitutional ruling striking an anti-fusion law, or a fusion-restoring statute passed by cross-party majorities.

Out: a national poll of the mechanism with a Republican or Democratic floor under 45%, or the New Jersey majorities collapsing under named trade-offs — a rejection on the full-spectrum and depth tests. A state restoring fusion by statute, with the practice taking hold — the statutory list. A finding that fusion’s effects are as modest as the research synthesis suggests — the existential-problem test closed against it.

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