It solves the 'wasted vote' or 'spoiler' dilemmas that otherwise plague third parties, and allows citizens who don't fit neatly into the Democratic or Republican boxes to nevertheless participate constructively in politics".
Historian Peter Argersinger argues that this helped "maintain a significant third party tradition by guaranteeing that dissenters' votes could be more than symbolic protest".
[14] That success produced a counter-reaction from the dominant major parties, who then used state legislatures to enact bans against fusion in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.
One Republican Minnesota state legislator said: "We don't propose to allow the Democrats to make allies of the Populists, Prohibitionists, or any other party, and get up combination tickets against us.
"[15] In southern states, fusion was largely banned by Democrats who supported Jim Crow, in an attempt to prevent political alliances between newly-enfranchised Black voters and poor white farmers.
[19] In Twin Cities Area New Party v. McKenna (1996), the US Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting electoral fusion does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Their immediate goal was to provide a way for New Yorkers who despised the Tammany Hall political machine to support Franklin Roosevelt without voting for the Democratic Party.
In its first showing at the polls, the party garnered a significant amount of the vote in New York City but was not important with regard to Roosevelt's victory.
In the 1937 election cycle, the ALP built on it past performance by electing members to the city council, and by delivering so many votes to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia that the New York Times ran a front page article declaring that the ALP held the balance of power in city and state politics.
In the 1944 presidential election, fusion provided CIO unions in New York an opportunity to build and back a labor party, an uncommon occurrence in the US.
[37] Prior to 1958, Oregon practiced a form of fusion that required the state to list multiple nominating parties on the candidate's ballot line.
The lawsuit gave rise to legislation[38][non-primary source needed] to allow candidates to list up to three party labels after their name.
For example, if Bob Jones is running for school board in a primary election as a Democrat and secures both enough votes from members of his own party as well as enough write-in votes from members of the Republican Party, then electoral fusion occurs, and Bob will appear on the ballot as both a Republican and a Democrat.
For example, in May 2023, Stephen Zappala lost the Democratic primary for Allegheny County District Attorney to challenger Matt Dugan.