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Yeah, it's funny - from my superficial understanding political theory predicts that a first-past-the-post system turns into a two party system with the parties
by FabHK 8y ago
Yeah, it's funny - from my superficial understanding political theory predicts that a first-past-the-post system turns into a two party system with the parties getting ever more similar ("median voter theorem"). But that's not what happened in the US in the last decade or so.
But agreed - proportional parliament allows for articulation of important non-majority views (such as the emergence of the Green party in Germany many years back).
- dragonwriter 8y agoMedian voter theorem ignores a lot of critical things, the most critical being that political viewpoints may not be distributed normally (or even with a single central peak) and turnout is influenced by engagement. If you assume engagement (and, thus, likeliness to vote) is driven in part by proximity of the nearest candidates positions to your own, and that political viewpoints are bimodally distributed, you'd actually expect FPTP to turn into a two-party system where parties, even if they start at some point close to each other, drift out toward the two peaks. While still a gross simplification, this seems closer to reality in the US to the premises required for the Median Voter Theorem to work.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoI expect social media trying to drive "engagement" has had a major effect. It appears that in both social media, and in politics, making sure people are as pissed off as possible about the other side drives engagement, and that also means turnout. This coming election in November is going to be very interesting.