Ask Lemmy

They don't represent anyone's interests except their own.

Two party system is great for polarizing the society.

More precisely: The reason for the two party system: FPTP voting. The Brits do the same shit, and have the same problems.

The way it feels now (more cult-like than political and representing the populace) automatically and unavoidably stems from this FPTP issue. It automatically reduces the whole field to a reduced number of options, and while each reduction step takes longer than the last, this will ultimativley lead to a one-party state. It's not a question of IF, it's a question of WHEN and the REP program for 2025 to basically turn the government upside down to get unbeatable is trying to achieve this very single party state.

Two parties that are, if I'm not mistaken, the Right and the Rightest.

Didn't the USA see any leftist ideology as radical?

We technically have more than 2; but nobody ever votes for the other parties, and the other parties are almost never given the opportunity to debate or have big ad campaigns. 🤷🏻‍♂️

And to be fair: Some of those other parties are even more narrow minded than the two big ones.

The two party system isn’t really codified in law, it’s just kind of a side-effect of the way we vote and the way government is organized. Due to those two things, it’s hard to change.

It's an inevitable conclusion of our winner take all voting system. "The man with the most votes wins." If 4 candidates run, and they get 22% 22% 16% and 40% of the vote, the man with 40% of the vote wins the race, and 60% of the population didn't get the candidate they voted for.

Now imagine you've got a red, orange, green and blue party. Orange voters get together and decide "You know, the Red party's platform is pretty similar to ours, what if we didn't run a candidate next time and instead encouraged our voters to vote for the Red candidate instead? The blue candidate won with 40% of the vote, but our two parties put together would have 44%.

In the next election with three candidates, the red candidate wins 44% to 40%, prompting a similar conversation at the Green party headquarters. Soon enough there are two parties.

We're one of if not the oldest representative democracy in the world today; our constitution is 250 years old, there's some old bugs still in the code base.

Jokes on you, in the end they both represent the same interests

Basically because we were early adopters to modern republic systems. We tried something new because parliament was a bit too kingy for our tastes. But due to its simplicity it became really easy for two parties to wipe the floor with everyone else. And basically the only times they’ve changed was at the start and again shortly before our civil war. Neither party has ever had good reason to change the system, which would require massive agreement to change our constitution. So nobody does.

For example, politically I’m a syndicalist, but the democrats are pro union, pro environment, pro woman, and pro lgbt, all of which with a big asterisk but still I consistently vote for them because the greens didn’t win with Nader so they’re definitely going to lose now. So I dutifully vote Democrat because the only other party that has a chance is the republicans and they hate me and everything I believe in.

If we could do it again we’d do it better but in our defense we didn’t really have anyone to model off of

American here. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

As an American, I find it amazing that countries can have more than two active parties but also have a plurality voting system.

First Past the Post voting makes it more likely: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo?si=X-8oz1K6iYxKhBeB