Is it the same way in Canada? (Serious question.)
Not really. We routinely see massive swings in seats during elections. The last PC government was virtually wiped out when it lost.
In the U.S., how many incumbents lose in the house in a given election? A handful. Most are elected with more than 55% of the vote. Many, many politicians have survived decades in office. It’s as close to a lifetime job as you’ll find in politics, so long as you don’t get indicted or wind up one of the unfortunates in a key state for the other party where massive resources are brought against you and a superstar candidate is parachuted in or found locally.
In the next election, only about 5% of the seats in the house are even competitive. Of those, maybe half will switch parties.
Just to back this up, if I may quote the March 6 edition of The New Yorker:
Although Wikipedia seems to show three losing incumbents. Either way, handful.
Why are incumbents so much more secure in the U.S. than in Canada? Is there anything different about our election laws? Or is it simply a difference in political culture?
BTW, if the Dems die, it is just possible the Working Families Party (which, at present, exists as an active organization only at the state level in New York, Connecticut and Oregon) will step into their shoes.
Look, all these third parties, the Greens, Labor, the Libertarians, the Socialist Workers Party, the Sunshine and Puppydog Party, and god knows what else, are non-entities. Most of these “parties” are pretty much one guy in a basement with a typewriter and a xerox machine and a webpage. It’s what they do instead of watch sports on TV. There might be more libertarians, but they aren’t ever going to be a viable party, because most capital L Libertarians are cranks for whom fine points of dogma are more important than creating a movement.
The Democratic Party isn’t going anywhere. If the Democratic party implodes there won’t be a “coalition” of third parties forming an alternative, because all those third parties put together won’t make up 1% of the voters.
An imploded, absolutely destroyed and discredited Democratic party would still be more than 20% of the voters, just by inertia. It would be taken over and reborn as a new party with the same name.
Look at the Republican party. How much resemblance does today’s southern, religious convervative pro-business party have with Lincoln’s northern liberal antislavery party? Heck, how much does today’s southern conservative Republican party resemble the northern liberal Republican party of the 1950s?
If we ever do have a third party destroy one of the major parties it is much more likely to be a new creation like the Reform Party rather than a growth in popularity of one of these basement parties.
And why is that? Because anyone who doesn’t agree with the platform of either major party who has any political talent or ambition or desire to actually govern will never ever ever in a million years join one of these fringe parties. They’ll join one of the major parties that they disagree with least and be a “maverick”. There are plenty of people in office who routinely vote against their party. Anyone who actually wants to govern, who wants to hold office, who wants to win elections, will join a major party and try to change the major party to suit them, rather than join a minor party they agree with 100%.
And let’s face it, a reasonable person isn’t going to find one of those hypothetical minor parties that they agree with 100%, because these minor parties have decidedly minority platforms. Reasonable people join a major party, cranks form a minor party. The trouble with joining the Libertarian party is that you’ll be surrounded by Libertarian cranks. The trouble with joining the Socialist Workers Party is that you’ll be surrounded by Socialist cranks. If you want to find reasonable libertarians or socialists you won’t find them in the Libertarian party or the Socialist party.
Sure it’s circular…no reasonable people want to join a crank party, so the crank parties are full of cranks rather than reasonable people, which means that reasonable people don’t want to join them. Positive feedback loop.
As my own personal guess I’d say a more reactionary party would come to replace them if that ever happened. Something more to the left of the current democrats. I feel one of the reasons support for the democrats is wavering is because many want to be republican light. They are abandoning and going soft on many of the core principles of liberalism, so if another party took over it would be more dedicated to them the same way the republicans developed a very core based party in the 90s.
I don’t see libertarianism going anywhere anytime soon as people aren’t willing to give up federal aid and state aid. Social libertarianism sure, but not economic.
But its not going to happen anytime soon.
What is worth asking is how has this happened before? There are no whigs in the US anymore.
In terms of their current active membership, no. But they might appeal to a great many voters.
But that “crankiness” does not apply to the Working Families Party, if you’ll investigate. Nor to the Labor Party, feeble as it is. Nor even to the (larger branch of) the Greens.
A big factor is Gerrymandering. In the U.S., electoral district boundaries are decided by the elected officials themselves. Frankly, I think this is insanity. Imagine you are an incumbent Democrat, and I’m an incumbent Republican. My district has a pesky area of liberals which votes Republican, and makes it difficult for me to win election. You have some pesky conservatives in yours. So we get together and come up with a plan - we’ll re-draw the two districts so that your conservatives wind up in mine, and my liberals wind up in yours. Voila - two districts that are now much more likely to vote for the incumbents (us), while leaving the liberal/conservative seat split the same.
This type of wheeling and dealing has gone on all across the country, with the effect that U.S. districts are often bizarre zig-zaggy lines that run all over the place willy-nilly, picking up areas of voters that are of like minds. So you get ‘safe’ Democratic seats, and ‘safe’ liberal seats.
Compare those to Edmonton voting districts.
In other countries, there are generally bipartisan or non-political bodies that determine electoral boundaries. For example, the U.K. has the Boundary Commissions, which get together from time to time to re-examine political districts as population shifts. They put together their set of recommendations for new boundaries, and Parliament can either accept them or reject them, but not amend them. In Canada, Elections Canada is responsible for maintaining electoral boundaries, and they act in a nonpartisan fashion with well-defined rules.
Insanity doesn’t begin to cover it.
I meant liberals which vote Democrat.
In Florida this November, we’ll be voting on a state constitutional amendment that would have the redistricting done by an independent commission of non-officeholders.* See http://www.committeeforfairelections.com/.
*It would be composed as follows:
3 members nominated by the majority party in the state Senate.
3 members nominated by the minority party in the state Senate.
3 members nominated by the majority party in the state House of Representatives.
3 members nominated by the minority party in the state House of Representatives.
3 members nominated by the state Supreme Court, from a list of nominees provided by the state’s five appellate District Courts; all of whom must be persons who in the previous two years have been registered voters – but not registered with either major party.
So, in effect, a board of 6 Democrats, 6 Republicans, and 3 independents. And ten members must agree on any redistricting plan.
Of course, Arnold tried an amendment like that in California and the voters didn’t buy it.
But maybe that was because they didn’t trust the salesman.