4 ms·

Third party starts to look a lot more appetizing then it's not a clear cut sane-vs-lunatic scenario. When there is no lesser of the two evils people will go loo

Third party starts to look a lot more appetizing then it's not a clear cut sane-vs-lunatic scenario. When there is no lesser of the two evils people will go looking elsewhere rather than take the easy path. It gives me a LITTLE hope that this third party support is so high. It means we may have fewer "party no matter what" voters, and the politicians MAY have to actually pay attention to the people...

ceejayoz 3y ago
> Third party starts to look a lot more appetizing then it's not a clear cut sane-vs-lunatic scenario. There are always lunatics; there'll be folks in NY who hold their nose and vote for a Democrat because the House is tight and they've heard of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Or for a Republican in Kansas, because they don't want AOC being in the majority. As someone pointed out elsewhere in the thread, one person's lunatic is another's hero.) > It gives me a LITTLE hope that this third party support is so high. It shouldn't. Look past the headline (to the first chart); polls have showed fairly consistent majority support for a third party for decades.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  It's the curse of the third party. Most people imagine themselves to be fairly moderate and centrist, but when push comes to shove, about 70-80% of the population would rather vote for the extremist on their side of the aisle over the moderate on the other side of the aisle.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    That's not it. It may be helpful for the Americans in this thread to look at the UK, which uses FPTP but has meaningfully successful third parties anyway. The lack of them in the USA isn't to do with FPTP but more fundamental. The reality is that politics is essentially bipartisan. The left/right divide is the core of politics and the only one that actually matters in the absence of regional independence movements. Therefore, what we see is that third parties usually struggle to differentiate themselves to voters. This can be seen most clearly with the Lib Dems who are one of the main third parties in the UK. They tend to be used as a protest vote and few would be able to articulate what they actually believe. Arguably they believe nothing at all, as they have in the past reversed their position on core manifesto promises, fought against implementing referendum results (despite having "democrats" in the name) and so on. What do the Lib Dems actually stand for? What is the big difference between them and Labour or the Tories? It's unclear. This doesn't mean you can't have different third parties. You can. The SNP is a clear example of a third party that grew from nothing to take over Scottish politics. But it seems that regional independence is one of the only things that is big enough to cause this, as typically the national level parties will not want to support a regional independence movement (would reduce their own power and take up a lot of time), but voting is regional. Even there though, the SNP is basically just a clone of Labour plus that one additional policy. If Scotland were to become independent, you'd rapidly see the two party system re-establish itself there along left-wing and really-left-wing lines, because this is the only axis that matters. In Europe where FPTP often isn't being used, you do see more parties, but this doesn't result in less partisan or more harmonious politics. If anything it seems to be slightly the opposite. Germany for example has major problems with people publicly debating whether the AfD should be banned, there are physical attacks on its members, and although PR is supposed to encourage collaboration and compromise none of the other parties are willing to work with it despite it being the second most popular party or even in some parts the first most popular party. The AfD is not particularly extreme though, and its policies aren't so different to the Republicans in many ways. This problem crops up in other European countries as well, it's not unique to Germany. So a third party wouldn't fix anything in the USA. Nor would PR or more exotic voting schemes. People might occasionally use them as a protest vote, as they do already today, but there's no fundamental third ideology for a third party to express, and anyway who needs a new party when the two big ones are so internally democratic? Easier to take over one of them than make a new one.
    - NoGravitas 3y ago
      > The AfD is not particularly extreme though, and its policies aren't so different to the Republicans in many ways. One of these two subclauses has to be false, lol. (It's the first one. The first one is false.)
    - philistine 3y ago
      You're getting everything wrong. Your whole logic rests on a fundamentally myopic statement: that politics are bipartisan. They're not. Simple exploration of politics in the US and around the world reveal that politics are a fluid dynamic and are reduced to bipartisan ideas because it helps to explain them. It doesn't define them. The reason third parties exist in other democracies is because of whipping. In the UK, in Australia, in France, in Canada, in Germany, in Israel, the MPs are whipped. What does that mean? That means that party representatives have to vote with their group, otherwise they run the very real risk of being evicted from that group. When was the last time that a Democrat lost their (D), have been evicted from the Democrats because they voted differently? Even now, no Democrat would get evicted from the party for voting for a Republican Speaker. The US whips very differently, and so all the fuel of the third parties exists within the two big political families.
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        You're agreeing with me, the reason the US has two parties is because they barely have any specific identities or policies beyond being left/right. They don't really bother with manifestos, they routinely see people totally at odds with the party elites mount leadership challenges - which can work - and they don't whip, as you observe. In a system in which parties stand for little, you don't develop third parties. But even in countries with tighter party discipline, like the UK, third parties struggle to justify their existence and stand out from the crowd.
giantg2 3y ago
The only way it gets to the lunatic vs sane stage is because the primary failed or was biased. Fixing that (especially at the presidential level since it spans states and time) would help immensely. Also, each side is voting for the person they think is more sane, so it's partially a perspective problem. There may be some people in the middle, but not enough to win a 3rd party because that 63% who support the idea of a 3rd party all envision something different.
dylan604 3y ago
What about the scenario when the 3rd party is even more insane than the other two?
jghn 3y ago
> It means we may have fewer "party no matter what" voters, and the politicians MAY have to actually pay attention to the people... Unless it means that those people view "their party" as being too moderate. On the left you have groups like the Green Party who view the Democrats as being too far right. On the right you have MAGAs who view Republicans as the radical left.

ceejayoz 3y ago

> Third party starts to look a lot more appetizing then it's not a clear cut sane-vs-lunatic scenario. There are always lunatics; there'll be folks in NY who hold their nose and vote for a Democrat because the House is tight and they've heard of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Or for a Republican in Kansas, because they don't want AOC being in the majority. As someone pointed out elsewhere in the thread, one person's lunatic is another's hero.) > It gives me a LITTLE hope that this third party support is so high. It shouldn't. Look past the headline (to the first chart); polls have showed fairly consistent majority support for a third party for decades.

jcranmer 3y ago
It's the curse of the third party. Most people imagine themselves to be fairly moderate and centrist, but when push comes to shove, about 70-80% of the population would rather vote for the extremist on their side of the aisle over the moderate on the other side of the aisle.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  That's not it. It may be helpful for the Americans in this thread to look at the UK, which uses FPTP but has meaningfully successful third parties anyway. The lack of them in the USA isn't to do with FPTP but more fundamental. The reality is that politics is essentially bipartisan. The left/right divide is the core of politics and the only one that actually matters in the absence of regional independence movements. Therefore, what we see is that third parties usually struggle to differentiate themselves to voters. This can be seen most clearly with the Lib Dems who are one of the main third parties in the UK. They tend to be used as a protest vote and few would be able to articulate what they actually believe. Arguably they believe nothing at all, as they have in the past reversed their position on core manifesto promises, fought against implementing referendum results (despite having "democrats" in the name) and so on. What do the Lib Dems actually stand for? What is the big difference between them and Labour or the Tories? It's unclear. This doesn't mean you can't have different third parties. You can. The SNP is a clear example of a third party that grew from nothing to take over Scottish politics. But it seems that regional independence is one of the only things that is big enough to cause this, as typically the national level parties will not want to support a regional independence movement (would reduce their own power and take up a lot of time), but voting is regional. Even there though, the SNP is basically just a clone of Labour plus that one additional policy. If Scotland were to become independent, you'd rapidly see the two party system re-establish itself there along left-wing and really-left-wing lines, because this is the only axis that matters. In Europe where FPTP often isn't being used, you do see more parties, but this doesn't result in less partisan or more harmonious politics. If anything it seems to be slightly the opposite. Germany for example has major problems with people publicly debating whether the AfD should be banned, there are physical attacks on its members, and although PR is supposed to encourage collaboration and compromise none of the other parties are willing to work with it despite it being the second most popular party or even in some parts the first most popular party. The AfD is not particularly extreme though, and its policies aren't so different to the Republicans in many ways. This problem crops up in other European countries as well, it's not unique to Germany. So a third party wouldn't fix anything in the USA. Nor would PR or more exotic voting schemes. People might occasionally use them as a protest vote, as they do already today, but there's no fundamental third ideology for a third party to express, and anyway who needs a new party when the two big ones are so internally democratic? Easier to take over one of them than make a new one.
  - NoGravitas 3y ago
    > The AfD is not particularly extreme though, and its policies aren't so different to the Republicans in many ways. One of these two subclauses has to be false, lol. (It's the first one. The first one is false.)
  - philistine 3y ago
    You're getting everything wrong. Your whole logic rests on a fundamentally myopic statement: that politics are bipartisan. They're not. Simple exploration of politics in the US and around the world reveal that politics are a fluid dynamic and are reduced to bipartisan ideas because it helps to explain them. It doesn't define them. The reason third parties exist in other democracies is because of whipping. In the UK, in Australia, in France, in Canada, in Germany, in Israel, the MPs are whipped. What does that mean? That means that party representatives have to vote with their group, otherwise they run the very real risk of being evicted from that group. When was the last time that a Democrat lost their (D), have been evicted from the Democrats because they voted differently? Even now, no Democrat would get evicted from the party for voting for a Republican Speaker. The US whips very differently, and so all the fuel of the third parties exists within the two big political families.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      You're agreeing with me, the reason the US has two parties is because they barely have any specific identities or policies beyond being left/right. They don't really bother with manifestos, they routinely see people totally at odds with the party elites mount leadership challenges - which can work - and they don't whip, as you observe. In a system in which parties stand for little, you don't develop third parties. But even in countries with tighter party discipline, like the UK, third parties struggle to justify their existence and stand out from the crowd.

giantg2 3y ago

The only way it gets to the lunatic vs sane stage is because the primary failed or was biased. Fixing that (especially at the presidential level since it spans states and time) would help immensely. Also, each side is voting for the person they think is more sane, so it's partially a perspective problem. There may be some people in the middle, but not enough to win a 3rd party because that 63% who support the idea of a 3rd party all envision something different.

dylan604 3y ago

What about the scenario when the 3rd party is even more insane than the other two?

jghn 3y ago

> It means we may have fewer "party no matter what" voters, and the politicians MAY have to actually pay attention to the people... Unless it means that those people view "their party" as being too moderate. On the left you have groups like the Green Party who view the Democrats as being too far right. On the right you have MAGAs who view Republicans as the radical left.