I’m speaking specifically about the US. Do those other democracies have the same FPTP electoral system as the US, or some other system that makes third parties viable?
There’s a variety of systems, America’s is far from special beyond the amounts of money involved. The UK has FPTP and over a dozen parties in Parliament.
As far as I can tell the main blocker to a successful multi party democracy is people like you promoting a self-perpetuating circular logic.
The UK has FPTP and over a dozen parties in Parliament.
They don’t use it everywhere. And even then in the House of Commons (where it is used), out of 650 seats, only one 3rd party (and independents) is in the double digits. 80% of the seats are 2 parties, the same 2 parties that have traded power for the past century.
Some other parts of their government do have other voting methods or even proportional representation, allowing other parties to govern.
They also have recall elections(/no-confidence) and more common prime-minister resignations (and probably tons of other rules that change how political power works), meanwhile we have the Electoral College for the presidential election which further ensures a 3rd candidate can be a spoiler assuming they can even win in 1 state.
No, it’s the system. It’s basic math. Acknowledging the features of the system does not make one responsible for the existence of those features, and ignoring them doesn’t make one virtuous.
It’s certainly “basic math”, in the sense of “unsophisticated” or “simplistic”. You’re persisting in treating something as a hard truth, that categorically isn’t.
You are incorrect. It is basic math in that the principles that govern its behavior are fairly low-order and easy to understand. You are not utilizing more “sophisticated” math, you’re just ignoring simple facts. A truth being simple does not make it less true.
I’m speaking specifically about the US. Do those other democracies have the same FPTP electoral system as the US, or some other system that makes third parties viable?
There’s a variety of systems, America’s is far from special beyond the amounts of money involved. The UK has FPTP and over a dozen parties in Parliament.
As far as I can tell the main blocker to a successful multi party democracy is people like you promoting a self-perpetuating circular logic.
They don’t use it everywhere. And even then in the House of Commons (where it is used), out of 650 seats, only one 3rd party (and independents) is in the double digits. 80% of the seats are 2 parties, the same 2 parties that have traded power for the past century.
Some other parts of their government do have other voting methods or even proportional representation, allowing other parties to govern.
They also have recall elections(/no-confidence) and more common prime-minister resignations (and probably tons of other rules that change how political power works), meanwhile we have the Electoral College for the presidential election which further ensures a 3rd candidate can be a spoiler assuming they can even win in 1 state.
That’s an astonishing amount of pettyfogging and nitpicking, that doesn’t even come close to dismantling the underlying argument.
No, it’s the system. It’s basic math. Acknowledging the features of the system does not make one responsible for the existence of those features, and ignoring them doesn’t make one virtuous.
It’s certainly “basic math”, in the sense of “unsophisticated” or “simplistic”. You’re persisting in treating something as a hard truth, that categorically isn’t.
You are incorrect. It is basic math in that the principles that govern its behavior are fairly low-order and easy to understand. You are not utilizing more “sophisticated” math, you’re just ignoring simple facts. A truth being simple does not make it less true.