this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Here is the nuance that is missing:
First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.
One reason this happens is because, in this sort of system, voting for a third party candidate that aligns more closely with your views rather than the best choice of the major party candidates statistically increases the likelihood that the candidate furthest from your views will win. A significant, sustained third party that is more to your liking than the Democratic Party would ensure easy GOP victories for as long as all three parties ran their own candidates, even if the GOP never won an actual majority of votes. (We saw Bill Clinton win both elections in the 90s with much less than 50% and no candidate getting 50% due to a major third party candidate).
Another reason is that even if societal circumstances lead to a third party doing well enough to win it all, what you would end up with is having one of the existing major parties collapse, you’d be back to two parties, and the new third party would become watered down into ultimately the same thing it replaced. We’ve also seen this in American history.
In summary, there is tremendous systemic pressure that causes the two-party system. It’s not that our politicians are tricking us and politicians in Europe under different election systems can’t or won’t do the same. If we changed our voting system to e.g. Ranked Choice, not only would third parties be possible, they would be inevitable. But if we don’t change the system, then voting third party is like forcing two strong magnets together that are trying to repel. Even if you’re able to do it briefly, it’s completely unstable and will correct itself as soon as possible.
The oversimplified version of all this is “voting third party is voting for Trump”. I can see why it’s frustrating because it’s not literally true — however, anyone who is interested in maximizing their best interests, i.e. by having the winner be someone as good as possible, is statistically increasing the chances of the worst candidate winning by voting third party over preferred major party, while our voting system remains in place.
So ultimately, a slight rephrase to “voting third party instead of Democrat helps Trump win” is true.
You can excuse your "yeah Biden does it but Trump will do it worse" narrative all you want, the truth is that if somebody can't vote for what they believe in because your "only choice is blue no matter who" your "democracy and even the illusion of choice is already dead - and I still won't be voting for Blue MAGA.
Thank you for your prime example thereof though, in using such a bloated write up - not to decry a broken system that needs to be dismantled and reworked to include more than far right and mid right "parties", of course, but to blame Trump on anybody left of genocide Joe who won't vote for genocide regardless of whose doing it.
Blue MAGA.
My post exactly decried a broken system. I called it a systemic problem! And in fact, it is the people who try to solve it by voting third party who are not realizing the system is broken such that doing so only hurts themselves. The only way to fix it is to figure out a way to have a new voting system. I even gave an example of an alternative one!
I think your response really underscores how we got to the situation where everything in politics is just soundbites and insults and pithy slogans. Actual reality can be wordy to talk about, but people like you can’t be bothered to read it! And then you reply with a new pithy insult like “Blue MAGA”. Take a second to think before you react!
this claim is not falsifiable. it's a tautology with no genuine predictive power. it's not science, it is storytelling.
everything you said after this was also wrong