I’m sure I am not the first to think of this, but I really value the critical thinking and knowledge here, so:
Do you think that the current wrangling for what the Republican party stands for could result in a splintering of the party, which could then attract an element of labor from the Democratic party, resulting in a viable, if minority, third party? I wonder because it looks to me like that’s not as crazy as it sounds.
AND, could that be a good thing, since it would drive compromise and consensus building?
It’s really hard to have a viable 3rd party in a winner take all system. If the GOP were to split, you’d either get one overwhelming part that is viable and a tiny bit that isn’t, or you’d get two medium sized parties, neither of which is “viable” relative to the Democrats.
I do find myself wondering how willing the two half-parties would be to stay split, regarding its impact on their electability. Obviously they’d never win a presidential election again while split, but do you suppose their split base would be able to continue to elect enough of either one or the other of them to state and local positions enough to continue making it a paying gig?
The two established parties have enacted restrictive ballot access laws that ensure they stay on the ballot and make it difficult for others to get on the ballot.
It’s a fundamental feature of the way that the US winner-take-all system is implemented that three parties are unstable and will collapse into two.
It’s possible for the equilibrium to get so far out of whack that there are extra parties for a short while, and for the new equilibrium to stabilize on a different pair of parties than before the chaos. But, given time, three or more parties simply aren’t stable from a game theory perspective.
The ballot access laws are almost irrelevant. Even without those, winner-takes-all would still ensure we’d have exactly two relevant parties.
Which is not to say that they’ll always be the same two parties. When the dust settles, the two parties we end up with might be two different mixes of the current parties. You might, for instance, end up with one party that’s in favor of both abortion and gun rights, and one party that wants to restrict both. Or any other combination, based on all of the various issues.
What you will have is changes in the two parties. Consider the Southern Democrats: Not that long ago Democrats totally dominated Southern politics; now the South is overwhelmingly Republican. Likewise in the next couple decades moderate and liberal Republicans will mostly leave the party and become Democrats.
But then you have to ask, why doesn’t that game theory apply in other countries that use First-Past-the-Post electoral systems, like the UK, Canada, India and the Philippines? Those countries all use FPTP and have multi-party systems. It’s true that you generally have two large dominant parties with several smaller ones in the Legislature, but I’m not aware of any other FPTP system that has “two and only two” parties. The US is the only one with a duopoly.
That to me says that there’s something else going on in the US to explain the “two and only two” party system.
There’s certainly been a bit of “sorting” in the last few decades, with liberals shifting to the Democrats and conservatives shifting to the Republicans, but what makes you think “in the next couple decades moderate … Republicans will mostly leave the party and become Democrats”? ISTM that it’s about as likely as moderate Democrats (like the WV Governor) leaving the (Democrat’s) party and becoming Republicans.
My proposal for third parties is roughly the 10-20-30 model. Here’s how it works:
When you start, run ONLY in local elections.
When you’ve taken 10% of the seats in a locality, try running for a state office.
When you’ve taken 20% of the seats in a state, try running for congress.
When you control 30% of the seats in the house or senate, run for president.
In other words, don’t even go for a higher office until you have proven your success at a lower office.
I absolutely think that some third party could start running viably for city councils and the like. But leapfrogging the process and trying for president? Nope.
That’s often conventional wisdom, but it actually isn’t viable either. In any case, there’s nothing wrong with the GOP and Democrats as state parties. The problem is at the national level, where the GOP has gone absolutely nuts and the Democrats want to take a hard turn left. There is a big opening for a third partier to win the Presidency in the massive gap left in the center.
If the LIbertarian Party would moderate, it could easily win a lot of disgruntled GOPers and moderate Democrats. Gary Johnson was a good first step, but they need someone with even more experience. If they could recruit an Evan Bayh or Manchin and get them to accept a few platform items that aren’t extreme(such as opposing warrantless surveilance), they might have something.
The whole political system in the US has been artificially limited by partisan legislation and electoral rules to very effectively exclude or marginalize third parties. Canada and other countries have deliberately made their elections as non-partisan as possible, and consequently are more open to multiple viable parties.
With the exception of the Philippines, the countries you listed are all Parliamentary Democracies as opposed to Presidential Democracies. Third parties are much more viable under that form of government.
In most states, the primary system allows anybody to receive a major party nomination so long as they can get actual voters to support them. There is no party leader who can veto the nomination, no clique of dues-paying members with final say, etc. Quality candidates who are viable with the local voters will probably be able to win one primary or the other, so the third parties end up attracting only loony extremists and sore losers.
Occasionally a viable candidate does lose a primary, but their strength will be in their personal brand, so associating with the extremists and losers in one of the third parties would be a hindrance.
There are plenty of states where third parties have ballot access and regularly run candidates. They still don’t ever win.
He just created the template; it seems in the US you attach like a leech to either political party and forge your own identity. It’s far more democratic and authentic than the bogus choices offered before.
Looking at it from outside it seems as though the parties, as parties, have relatively amorphous and reactive, rather than proactive, structural and organisational identities - which means they’re relatively open to capture by insurgent candidacies, so no need for third parties, you just launch a campaign for nomination by the existing party that looks most potentially responsive.
Which is consistent with what I said at the beginning. There is more going on to explain the US duopoly than just First-Past-the-Post.
The congressional-presidential system is another significant factor. Only one person can be president, the unitary executive, unlike the parliamentary system, where the executive is more collective. That need to win the presidency has a significant effect on the party system. But even then, it doesn’t explain why other parties can’t win seats in the legislature.
If the Libertarian Party were to moderate, they wouldn’t be the Libertarian party. They’d probably be absorbed into the Republican Party. And Evan Bayh? Puh-lease. If your goal is to put the entire country to sleep, he’d be an excellent candidate.