this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Not really. The FPTP system makes that incredibly difficult. You can't get votes without taking some amount away from the closest party.
So existing parties are encouraged to shut down and absorb new parties. And new parties will struggle to get a majority of the old party, let alone a majority of the entire election.
We need a system that doesn't have these nonstarter problems, and that's star + approval voting.
There are several countries that have FPTP voting, but they're not as entrenched at everywhere into two parties the way the US is. The UK, for example, has several regions where one of the two major parties is mostly fighting against a regional party, and the other major party has little to no voting base there.
Not only that, but several southern states have used instant runoff voting since the end of Reconstruction (or not long after). If you look at the makeup of their legislatures over the past 100+ years, you'll see that they are just as filled with Democrats and Republicans as everywhere else.
Point is, FPTP is not the only thing at play.
Sure, that's because there are other factors at play. But FPTP is one of the biggest factors, and in other countries with FPTP it is always the case where there are two dominant parties. Your own example, the UK, has that problem with the conservative & labour parties being the biggest. They always dominate the seats in parliament.
Sure, but a part of why FPTP is so bad is because it gets worse the bigger the election. A small regional election may only have two candidates to begin with, which means any system of voting is esentially equal.
National elections are almost guaranteed to have at least 3 candidates running for a seat, often 4 or 5 if its a seat like the presidency. And that's where you see third parties suffering most.
The fewer the seats there are, and the more national the election is, the worse FPTP gets.
That's because the two parties are so entrenched everywhere else. It's in their interest to dominate and push out 3rd parties in those elections as well.
Agreed, though it is clearly one of the biggest factors in 3rd parties failing. We need reprentational government, and this ain't it.