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> I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–

> I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a close election, the decisions of New York's Conservative and Working Families parties can make a real difference to the outcome – but certainly at a national level third parties have no real power in the US.) First-past-the-post is a popular explanation, but it can't by itself explain it, since the UK and Canada use it, yet lack a US-style hard two party system (and with the rise of the Reform party in the UK, the British system is becoming less two-party than it has been in a long time.)

0xbadcafebee 19d ago
Even if first-past-the-post could change, it's not the whole ballgame. To get on a state ballot you need thousands of petition signatures, and those signatures can be invalidated on technicalities brought up by major parties' legal teams. To be covered by the media or be included in a debate you need to poll at a high percentage. You can't get public funding to campaign unless you already had a high percentage of the vote in a previous election. Nobody will donate to you because the third party just detracts from the other two that will give the big donors what they want. And gerrymandering ensures the same people keep getting elected. All those roadblocks are in place because the two major parties put them there to prevent 3rd party challengers. The whole thing is rigged. Just to show up and get 1% of the vote, you would need a grassroots national movement to elect someone who was wildly popular, who could build a 50-state network of volunteers (including legal, political, financial, community organizing, etc), sponsored by someone with extremely deep pockets that doesn't want anything from established political figures. And you'd still lose. We have representatives already. The problem is we never hold their feet to the fire. We keep voting for the same useless bastards, and we don't vote them out when they do nothing. Half the country doesn't vote. That's our own responsibility we're shirking. Rather than get a new party, we need to get off our collective asses, and use the existing power we have to force the parties to do their jobs.
consp 19d ago
I dont see how the uk system's small parties are not marginalized. The larger parties still claim outright majorities with 35% of the votes or less (last time 172 seat majority with 33.2% of the votes) so they are irellevant. If I am not mistaken all disruptions to fpp two party systems eventually settle back into them, maybe not the same parties but two nonetheless.
- jfengel 18d ago
  The smaller parties are all aligned with one of the two major parties. In a lot of ways they act more like caucuses than separate parties. Like Bernie Sanders being "independent". That's overstating it, but it's why the largest group always can form a government. They go to the same aligned parties looking for a majority.
nkrisc 19d ago
First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.
- jfengel 18d ago
  It explains why you end up with two parties even if you start with more. The two largest will woo minority parties until they get a majority. And minority party members know they will be marginalized unless they are aligned with the majority (or hope to be in the majority some day.) Changing that will require a radical reconsideration of democracy, like replacing FPtP with... something.
  - skissane 17d ago
    It doesn’t because the UK has FPtP yet doesn’t have a hard two party system. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have nationalist movements that want out of the UK-state independence movements exist in the contemporary US too, but they are very fringe But even England has not just Labor and the Tories, but also the Lib Dems, Reform, the Greens, Restore So England proves you can have multiple parties with real power, with FPtP, even in the absence of regional-nationalist movements
- skissane 18d ago
  I actually think the US hard two party system isn't purely due to first-past-the-post, it is actually due to four interacting factors: (1) first-past-the-post; (2) presidentialism; (3) a deeply-entrenched primary system; (4) cultural homogeneity Point (4) will likely strike many Americans as dubious, but the US doesn't have anything comparable to Québec – there is presently no US state where English isn't the majority language; nor anything comparable to Scotland or Northern Ireland (no state where a significant percentage of its population identify with a competing national identity). So, no matter how much (undeniable) diversity the US has, in the sense that counts for this purpose, it doesn't. Hence: while abolishing first-past-the-post would no doubt do a lot to break the US hard two-party system, it could also be broken while retaining it if something happened to (2) or (3) or (4) instead. But, in US politics, changing (2) or (3) is even more politically fringe than changing (1) is. Maybe that might change at some point though, who knows what the future holds. And (4) will likely eventually cease to be true, but only in the long-run in which we are all already long-dead.

0xbadcafebee 19d ago

Even if first-past-the-post could change, it's not the whole ballgame. To get on a state ballot you need thousands of petition signatures, and those signatures can be invalidated on technicalities brought up by major parties' legal teams. To be covered by the media or be included in a debate you need to poll at a high percentage. You can't get public funding to campaign unless you already had a high percentage of the vote in a previous election. Nobody will donate to you because the third party just detracts from the other two that will give the big donors what they want. And gerrymandering ensures the same people keep getting elected. All those roadblocks are in place because the two major parties put them there to prevent 3rd party challengers. The whole thing is rigged. Just to show up and get 1% of the vote, you would need a grassroots national movement to elect someone who was wildly popular, who could build a 50-state network of volunteers (including legal, political, financial, community organizing, etc), sponsored by someone with extremely deep pockets that doesn't want anything from established political figures. And you'd still lose. We have representatives already. The problem is we never hold their feet to the fire. We keep voting for the same useless bastards, and we don't vote them out when they do nothing. Half the country doesn't vote. That's our own responsibility we're shirking. Rather than get a new party, we need to get off our collective asses, and use the existing power we have to force the parties to do their jobs.

consp 19d ago

I dont see how the uk system's small parties are not marginalized. The larger parties still claim outright majorities with 35% of the votes or less (last time 172 seat majority with 33.2% of the votes) so they are irellevant. If I am not mistaken all disruptions to fpp two party systems eventually settle back into them, maybe not the same parties but two nonetheless.

jfengel 18d ago
The smaller parties are all aligned with one of the two major parties. In a lot of ways they act more like caucuses than separate parties. Like Bernie Sanders being "independent". That's overstating it, but it's why the largest group always can form a government. They go to the same aligned parties looking for a majority.

nkrisc 19d ago

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

jfengel 18d ago
It explains why you end up with two parties even if you start with more. The two largest will woo minority parties until they get a majority. And minority party members know they will be marginalized unless they are aligned with the majority (or hope to be in the majority some day.) Changing that will require a radical reconsideration of democracy, like replacing FPtP with... something.
- skissane 17d ago
  It doesn’t because the UK has FPtP yet doesn’t have a hard two party system. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have nationalist movements that want out of the UK-state independence movements exist in the contemporary US too, but they are very fringe But even England has not just Labor and the Tories, but also the Lib Dems, Reform, the Greens, Restore So England proves you can have multiple parties with real power, with FPtP, even in the absence of regional-nationalist movements
skissane 18d ago
I actually think the US hard two party system isn't purely due to first-past-the-post, it is actually due to four interacting factors: (1) first-past-the-post; (2) presidentialism; (3) a deeply-entrenched primary system; (4) cultural homogeneity Point (4) will likely strike many Americans as dubious, but the US doesn't have anything comparable to Québec – there is presently no US state where English isn't the majority language; nor anything comparable to Scotland or Northern Ireland (no state where a significant percentage of its population identify with a competing national identity). So, no matter how much (undeniable) diversity the US has, in the sense that counts for this purpose, it doesn't. Hence: while abolishing first-past-the-post would no doubt do a lot to break the US hard two-party system, it could also be broken while retaining it if something happened to (2) or (3) or (4) instead. But, in US politics, changing (2) or (3) is even more politically fringe than changing (1) is. Maybe that might change at some point though, who knows what the future holds. And (4) will likely eventually cease to be true, but only in the long-run in which we are all already long-dead.