Where I'm from there's two political blocks that are made out of 3-4 parties each. This means that it's very easy to first pick the general side, left or right

Where I'm from there's two political blocks that are made out of 3-4 parties each. This means that it's very easy to first pick the general side, left or right, and then you can throw your actual vote on the party whose profile you like the most. For example, both blocks have a party that is profiling itself on environmental concerns, so you can vote "green left" or "green right" if you want. Also, there's no first-past-the-post nonsense, each electoral district has several mandates, and there's a few spare mandates that are used to make sure that the final parliamentary mandates pretty accurately reflect total popular vote of each party, while still maintaining regional representation. This means every vote counts, and voting for a party that gets 5% of the vote is perfectly fine, they'll get 5% of the seats. As it should be. I really don't get the whole winner-takes-all mentality of the American system. I think it would be an incredible boost for democracy if there were more parties. If you could have an actual Tea party, one Christian Values party, and one fiscally conservative party, instead of those being factions inside the Republicans, fighting for control, and whichever faction "wins" gets to set the agenda of the entire thing.