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Because the US voting system practically only allows two parties. You will never get a diverse political landscape with First Past the Post that dominant. Fixi

by Faark 8y ago

Because the US voting system practically only allows two parties. You will never get a diverse political landscape with First Past the Post that dominant. Fixing that might be nice, but is probably also a distraction from more urgent matters... since it would be very expensive (in terms of political capital) to make parties give up their own monopoly.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> You will never get a diverse political landscape with First Past the Post that dominant. The UK has multiparty democracy of sorts with FPTP; the US Presidential system (as opposed to a Parliamentary system) reinforces and more strongly nationalizes the local duopoly effect that FPTP naturally encourages.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  France has a similar presidential system and even there are other parties with double digits votes. It's a purely cultural thing. You could argue the duopoly prevents extremism by straightjacking the political options, but after the Tea Party takeover the GOP and now Trump, that has been thoroughly debunked.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > France has a similar presidential system. It's a purely cultural thing. But France doesn't use simple one-round FPTP for either the Presidential or legislative elections, and doesn't combine the elections, either, using a two-rond majority-runoff system for each election (with additionally what amounts to a minimum threshold by eligible electorate size, rather than just share of turnout, for legislative seats for first-round wins.) Majority-runoff has a far less strong push to duopoly thaneither simple FPTP or the US Presidential election system. It's not purely a cultural thing; to the extent it's cultural, it's largely cultural adaptation to structural incentives. > You could argue the duopoly prevents extremism by straightjacking the political options, but after the Tea Party takeover the GOP and now Trump, that has been thoroughly debunked. I wouldn't have argued that in the first place for other reasons, but Trump would, at worst, only debunk an absurdly absolutist version of that; electoral systems may structurally disfavor certain outcomes but they rarely absolutely prevent any particular ideological outcome.

by Faark 8y ago

dragonwriter 8y ago

> You will never get a diverse political landscape with First Past the Post that dominant. The UK has multiparty democracy of sorts with FPTP; the US Presidential system (as opposed to a Parliamentary system) reinforces and more strongly nationalizes the local duopoly effect that FPTP naturally encourages.

JetSpiegel 8y ago
France has a similar presidential system and even there are other parties with double digits votes. It's a purely cultural thing. You could argue the duopoly prevents extremism by straightjacking the political options, but after the Tea Party takeover the GOP and now Trump, that has been thoroughly debunked.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > France has a similar presidential system. It's a purely cultural thing. But France doesn't use simple one-round FPTP for either the Presidential or legislative elections, and doesn't combine the elections, either, using a two-rond majority-runoff system for each election (with additionally what amounts to a minimum threshold by eligible electorate size, rather than just share of turnout, for legislative seats for first-round wins.) Majority-runoff has a far less strong push to duopoly thaneither simple FPTP or the US Presidential election system. It's not purely a cultural thing; to the extent it's cultural, it's largely cultural adaptation to structural incentives. > You could argue the duopoly prevents extremism by straightjacking the political options, but after the Tea Party takeover the GOP and now Trump, that has been thoroughly debunked. I wouldn't have argued that in the first place for other reasons, but Trump would, at worst, only debunk an absurdly absolutist version of that; electoral systems may structurally disfavor certain outcomes but they rarely absolutely prevent any particular ideological outcome.