If America had a multiparty system, which party would you join/support? (poll])

What we have now in America is called a “first-past-the-post/winner-take-all” system combined with a “single-member-district” system: The legislature’s jurisdictional territory is divided into geographic districts of roughly equal population, and each district elects one representative by majority-or-plurality vote. (“Plurality” meaning you can win the seat with fewer than 50% of the votes cast, so long as you get more votes than any other candidate for the seat.) That’s the system we use to elect the House, every state legislature, and most other multimember policymaking bodies. (Some county commissions and city councils are elected “at large,” which is less democratic still – that’s another discussion.)

The problem with that electoral system, from any third-partisan’s point of view, is that it naturally forces a two-party political system. Consider: Suppose, in your state’s next election to the state legislature, 10% of the voters vote Libertarian (or substitute Green, or Socialist, or Constitution Party, whatever, same mechanics apply) – how many Libertarians get elected? None, because there are not enough Libertarians in any one district to form a plurality. No political party, therefore, can make it save by being a “big tent” party – which leads to the confusion as to, e.g., just what the GOP stands for these days, when it includes libertarians and paleocons and neocons and theocons and bizcons and those factions don’t always see eye-to-eye. That is why America has always had a two-party political system, except when it had a one-party system. There is no room for more than two.

Under a proportional representation system (which most of the world’s democracies use, in one form or another – there are several forms), OTOH, if the Libertarians get 10% of the votes, they get (more or less) 10% of the seats.

If we had proportional representation, it would allow aa multiparty system to develop. I think the emergent lineup in Congress and the state legislatures might look something like this:

Libertarian Party: libertarian – consistently, on economic and social issues, but probably less radically ideological than it is now; even with PR it would have to moderate somewhat to hope to win even 5-10% of the vote.

Constitution Party: Social-religious conservative and paleoconservative; anti-abortion, pro-school-prayer, etc.; nativist and anti-immigrant; economic-populist – trade-protectionist, anti-big-biz, anti-Wall-Street, anti-Fed; isolationist/pacifist in foreign/military policy. The paleocon America First Party – formed by Pat Buchanan’s faction when the Reform Party broke up – is just barely around any more; I suspect it would merge with the Constitution Party. (White Nationalists would find their home in this one – they are not numerous enough to form a successful party of their own even in a PR system, and this would be the nearest thing to their world-view.)

Republican Party: The remnant after the libertarians and paleocons exit. Pro-big-business-interests; hawkish-neoconservative in foreign/military policy.

Democratic Party: The remnant after the lefties exit, see below. Moderately liberal, meaning neoliberal, trade-globalist – pro-biz like the Republicans, but moderately pro-welfare-state; liberal-internationalist in foreign/military policy.

Green Party: Environmentalist, decentralist, pacifist, etc.

Working Families Party: Social-democratic/progressive; pro-organized-labor; sympathetic with the Greens, but different from the Greens in their emphasis. (Not a socialist party, but actual socialists – the sort who want socialism instead of capitalism – would find their home in this one, not being numerous enough to go it alone even in a PR system.)

I think that covers the whole spectrum of political factions/ideologies currently present among the general population in America – or at least, the population of people who think about politics at all.

It would certainly make for a more interesting Congress, wouldn’t it? Every committee would have representatives from every party in it.

Of course, there would be no majority party in Congress or in any state legislature – not ever again, probably – so, no bill would get passed unless two or more parties got behind it. Which is not necessarily a bad thing (especially from a Libertarian POV).

E.g.: Wanna legalize pot? Fine, at least with this system you can get that bill to the floor; the Libertarians will sponsor it and the Greens will (for this one issue, at least) be right with them; but you’ll have to craft a case to sell it to a majority.

So: What party would you support? (I’d be Working Families.)

I know nothing about Working Families except what you’ve posted here and what’s at the wikipedia link, but they seem closest to something I could support more than halfheartedly (which is all the Democrats get from me now, a “lesser of two evils” sort of support).

Well, just think of the WFP as a general place-holder for all non-Green American politics to the left of Obama, Clinton, and the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council. I named it because it’s the most active social-democratic/left-progressive party in the field at present – though active in only two or three states. It’s an institutional successor, more or less, to the New Party of the 1990s.

On Politics1.com, you can read about all the national-level third parties currently active or semi-active (some existing only as websites, apparently) in the U.S. The Libertarians, Greens, and Constitution Party are the “Big Three.”

The only confusion I see about what the GOP stands for these days has to do with the fact that the news media are very bad at making it clear that this is not your father’s GOP; hell, it’s barely your older sibling’s GOP. Anyone still expecting it to be the party of Ronald Reagan, let alone Bob Dole and Howard Baker, is being sorely misled, but that’s what the MSM is there for.

It’s got nothing to do with any big-tentism on its part, because it doesn’t have any to speak of.

What makes you think that’s what the MSM is there for?

Single choice only? Seriously?

Well, even in a PR system you can only vote for one party at a time.

Coffee party.

Agreed. They’re for drug policy reform, healthcare, welfare, and affordable housing? Sign my ass up.

And just imagine if every presidential debate had six candidates . . . Unwieldy, but much more interesting.

That brings up another thing – Instant-Runoff Voting: For filling a single seat, presidency, governorship, mayorship, etc.; though it could also be used to elect legislators. The way it is now, if there are more than two candidates in the race, you have to pick just one – which presents the “spoiler” problem – in 2000, a vote for Buchanan was a vote for Gore and vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. With IRV, you get to rank-order the candidates by preference; if your first choice does not get a majority, your vote still counts to elect your second choice. E.g., you could have voted “1 – Buchanan; 2 - Bush; 3 - Gore; 4 - Nader”; or, “1 - Nader; 2 - Gore; 3 - Bush; 4 - Buchanan”; or whatever order-of-preference seems best to you. (Approval voting is the same thing without the rank-ordering.)

See also Electoral fusion: Simply, one candidate running as the nominee of more than one party (and, perhaps, on more than one ballot line). This strengthens a third party by putting it in a position to offer its endorsement to a major-party candidate (conditional, presumably, on the candidate adopting public positions somewhat closer to the third party’s), which could make all the difference in close races. Fusion is now illegal in most states, however.

I realize I could have selected “other” for my choice but instead, I didn’t vote. Here’s why–I think that instead of choosing from parties that already exist in the USA this poll would be more telling if instead we chose from parties that already exist in a place with proportional representation and/or a parliamentary system. For example: the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan (?), Israel, etc.

I think that the menu of parties we could choose from in the USA if we had a genuine multi-party system would be pretty different from the current status quo: two big parties that have an actual chance of winning an election and twenty other little and essentially meaningless (in the bigger scheme of things) ones.

As I understand it (which is not very well) many industrialized democracies have their pretty-far-right party, their really-far-left party, and the other 3 or 5 or 8 are in between. And you might have two or perhaps three centrist parties to choose from.

The current “third parties” in the USA were mostly formed on the extreme margins of the GOP and Democratic parties which occupy the huge middle (middle, but not centrist in terms of Earth-normal politics—more like center-right).

If we United Statians were to ever have proportional representation new parties would form–some of them breaking off of the Big Two–and there would be more choices in the middle ground.

OK. I’ll choose “other” and say “Labour” in roughly the UK or Canada style.

I don’t know, really. Maybe I’d be a swing voter, or start my own, even smaller, party. I considered saying, “I’ll join the Working Families Party, because BG is!” which I think makes a good example of how votes actually often work.

I decided to look at the poll results before picking:

There was a 6th vote for Working Families while I was formatting my post.

OK, I guess that says something about the board, and those of us who respond to BrainGlutton threads?

I’d join the Surprise Party.

[spring-loaded cream pie pops out of voting machine into RandMcnally’s face]

I voted other. If I could choose from another country it would be the Lib Dems (UK). The Democrats (US) could get my vote if they became less militaristic.

Socialist Party.

Other - my new Professional Management Party.

What do they stand for, exactly?

Sounds kinda technocratic. What’s it all about?

Propping up a Tory government at present.

They betrayed their voters pretty heavily when they joined the coalition.