

Why Third Parties Don't Ever Succeed - sasvari
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/print/2012/03/the-inevitable-quadrennial-third-party-shooting-star/255107/

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r00fus
The article doesn't even describe the electoral reality: our first-past-the-
post (also knows as plurality) voting system [1] mathematically suppresses any
but 2 parties.

Condorcet laid this out in 1893 [2], and Arrow [3] improved on it. Wikipedia
has a bunch of information on this.

One can easily only come to the assumption that, like the electoral college,
the voting system in the USA has been designed (or co-opted) to prevent actual
democratic representation. Of course discussion of such is "conspiracy
theory".

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradox> [3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem>

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acviana
There is a nice series of YouTube videos on this topic on the C.G.P. Grey
Explains channel.

One specifically illustrates why the first-past-the-post system inevitably
becomes a two-party system: <http://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo>

You can then click through to other videos on topics such as alternative
voting systems, gerrymandering, and the electoral college.

------
ggchappell
> America has not seen a long-lasting national third-party movement in its
> history, and it won't be seeing one now.

I don't agree. True, it's been a long time. The Democratic and Republican
parties have dominated U.S. politics for over 150 years. But the country is
older than that. Before the mid-1850s the Whigs were a major force; the
Republican Party started as a "third party". So, earlier, did the Whigs,
eventually displacing the Federalists.

It is true, however, that the U.S. has never seen three major parties being
powerful at the same time. When a new party has become powerful, an old one
has always faded away, leaving just two.

~~~
guan
The Republican Party did start as a third party, and it might be useful to
look at how they succeeded:

[http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/06/289913/gop-
as-t...](http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/06/289913/gop-as-the-
exception-that-proves-the-rule/)

They managed to convince a lot of incumbent politicians to jump ship and join
the Republican Party.

