Even with ranked choice the US will remain mostly two partied like the UK and some provinces in Canada. The parties are both so dominant already and well whipped, and not much chance coalitions form in this climate when these two parties aren't even in agreement of the same facts of reality. Maybe a centrist coalition designed to spoil dem votes.
I'm a fan of ranked choice voting, but I feel the need to add that the de facto 2 party system in the US functions similarly to political bloc majority government formation in European democracies. The difference is the US names the coalitions rather than the individual parties themselves. If you look at either US party you see very different voting trends on platform between different regions, you see sub parties (like justice Democrats or tea party) and a constant shift in platform to keep these groups appeased, very similar in effect to the process of compromise by which majority governments are formed in European democracies. IMO this is a symptom of majority rule and will occur regardless whether you name the parties or name the coalitions. What you wind up with is 2 blocs made up of diverse interests with enough overlapping or converging interest forming through negotiation.
The party system in the US does feel rigged to entrench the two remaining parties in the US. My hope is dropping first past the pole and adding ranked choice will help break up the duopoly.
Still, there are glimmers of hope now and again. Like Ross Pero running as independent or the Bull Moose party.
If the US had an equivalent of lib dems and/or proportional representation and/or ranked choice, would it still be so polarised? Sure, a 2-party state is preferable to a 1-party state, but that's a pretty low bar.
having two strong parties seems like an inevitable artifact of first past the post voting (lesser of two evils thinking, "wasted" votes, etc.), and unless "the people" can constitutionally get something like ranked choice voting done federally, i'm not sure what the way forward is. any thoughts?
And, annoyingly, that requires those parties to lose at least one election so they are incentivized more strongly than ever before to cast the current system in concrete. It pretty much guarantees the see-saw two party system for the foreseeable future. Imagining how America would look under a coalition government is an interesting exercise.
It's inevitable with a two party system. If the US had 20 parties there would be a political tradition to form coalitions. Liberals forming a government with far right Christians- the best medicine for ideology is Machiavellian pragmatism.
The US needs more than two parties. Unfortunately the system is rigged against that, and neither of the two ruling parties are eager to fix the system that keeps them in power.
Unfortunately, until one of those parties self destructs, there is no viable alternative. Then there will be a new duopoly. The constitutionally prescribed structure of the US government and the way in which elections are determined inevitably yields this outcome due to the game theory at play. The only way out is a more proportional representation system. This would result in a dilution of the power of the only people able to enact the change, so their incentives are aligned against improving the system.
> I think in the long run voters tend to learn that voting for third parties isn't safe, so two parties continue to dominate.
The empiricval evidence in countries with long term ranked voting (Australia, say) is that bicameral party systems (only Democrats or Republicans have any realistic chance) wither and die, and smaller blocs have a better chance of survival and impact | influence in the House and Senate ..
Two parties "dominate" in Australia (or rather three parties, which are effectively two - the Nat-Liberals being an Rural-Urban conservative coalition of long standing) but nowhere near the degree to which two parties dominate in the USofA; more importantly minority opinions have gravitas and can sway the major vote - none of this bipolar US Dem-Rep deadlock.
The way US elections are run makes it very hard to have anything except two dominant parties. If Yang is successful (extremely unlikely) there will still be a two-party system, it will just be his party and whichever other one still remains (probably the Democrats since they have more institutional support at the moment).
Most Western countries are like the US, dominated by two political parties. A small handful of others exist, most of them in a permanent alliance with one of the others. In Canada it's Liberals and Conservatives. In Germany it's the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. In the UK it's the Tories and Labour.
The other parties are always forced to make long-term alliances if they want any say. The UK Scottish National Party really wants to opt out entirely and become a separate country, but they're always closer to Labour than the Tories. If there is a hung parliament next time around, the likely Labour majority will make a coalition government with the SNP. They can call it a "multi party system", but those coalitions really just reduce it to two effective sides.
It's just the way electoral math works out. There is one winner and everybody else is a loser. The only way to win is to make allies who put their collective victory over some of their priorities. You can call those allies a "party" or not, but in the end the losers had better set about joining together or they'll keep losing.
The two parties are often called "left" and "right", but the names don't mean anything because the coalitions differ from country to country. The coalitions can be close to arbitrary, and they sometimes switch en masse (such as the realignment of US Southern Democrats to the Republican Party over civil rights issues). But the realignments always eventually come back to one winner and one loser, and the loser starts making long-term promises so that they don't stay the loser.
Political reality in america is that there were multiple changes of ruling party in the last decade and MPs being voted out on specific issues. Of course a representative multi-party system would be preferable, but it's not that it's impossible to achieve anything at all.
The US forms coalitions too, and that's actually part of the problem. Both the democrats and republicans have subparties within them. It is really more accurate to think of democrats and republicans as coalitions. That's why we have people like Bernie being so different from Biden. Or Trump, tea party, and neo libs, being far from classical conservatives. All of which are republicans.
In a first past the post system like the US has it will always mathematically be a 2 party system. Maybe the democrats or republicans actually self destruct and cease being a party and one of those other parties take its place but there can never be a 3 party government in our system as it's impossible.
Doesn't the winner-take-all nature of elections in the US (as opposed to proportional representation by party in countries like Sweden) make a two-party system a natural, emergent outcome? If you're third largest but not near hurdling the 2nd, your only power is by partnering with or joining one of the other two parties.
The problem in the US is that there is no clear majority. Let's be clear, there are more than 2 parties, but the ultimate choice is completely binary: REP||DEM. The one who can dance in the media the best, wins.
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