The last debate made a lot of noise, and from what I understand, a lot of Americans were not happy with it. Something like "we have two choices and both are worse" could be heard often. But you have other parties, don't you?
Based on what I've heard so far about the "default" candidates, it must be that the other parties have Hitler, a coma patient, and a severed duck's foot as candidates, no less
Are they really that bad? Who are they and what do you know about them? And why do you never vote for them? And usually never even mention them, for that matter (years ago it was really a surprise to me that you have more than two parties)
And, if possible, I suggest to avoid the topic of DvsR, overheated political issues, arguing or discussions (I don't think I can fully understand them and you will probably just have a bad time). This question is not about them, but specifically about your outsiders and what you personally think of them and what you think others think of them 🙂
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Sometimes we do. There’s always a small percentage of votes for some other party. In rare cases it’s a substantial percentage, at least of the popular vote – the 1992 election is a good example.
But I’d say the real answer to your question is that the two biggest parties are great at playing the fear card. Lately it’s always, “This is the MOST IMPORTANT election in the HISTORY OF AMERICA!”
Republicans: “A third party vote is a vote for Sleepy Joe Biden and he’s gonna be the end of us! You can’t do that! Be responsible and help save America!”
Democrats: “A third party vote is a vote for Adolf Trump and he’s going to be the end of us! You can’t do that! Be responsible and help save America!”
I’ve known many people who from an ideological standpoint align more closely with some party other than Democrat or Republican, but have felt like “Ugh I just can’t let Candidate XYZ win so I have to vote for this other thing”
The major parties also have mountains more funding for campaigning.
They do sometimes. But most of the time, it doesn’t make sense. Most third party candidates are not viable. The last viable one was 1992 when Perot ran.
Third parties in the US are generally laughed at and waved aside. Whether it’s right or wrong to do so is up for debate and there are definitely a small minority of voters who support third parties. But it is largely accepted that there are two options and the others have little to no chance of winning. There are exceptions in US political history as some other commenters have noted but it is rare.
Part of the issue is that these parties generally receive very little attention in the media. The last major story I can think of about any of them is when Trump was booed at the Libertarian Party convention.
With that said, when the topic of third parties does come up, people often think of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. But these parties have little to no political power at the federal level with a grand total of zero members of third parties in Congress in the present-day (I’m not including the four independents). So they only get attention during presidential elections, and they are often looked at as a distraction that steals votes from mainstream parties, or as a bunch of goofball eccentrics playing pretend politics.
We don’t vote for parties. We vote for candidates. Other countries have parliamentary democracies with proportional representation. We have an election where there is one winner and everyone else loses. It makes more than one party very difficult.
We do have 3rd parties, and people do vote for them, however they are often a bit silly so they don’t gain a ton of traction. Also the Ds and Rs have more money than God so they just crush the little ones most of the time.
Some people do. But, our electorate is also very familiar with the spoiler effect. They know that a vote for the third party that they prefer might make it more likely for the major party that they do not prefer to win. Because both major parties are well aware of this, they lean into it with their campaigning.
Also, I’ve found that the third parties rarely have anyone that I’d actually like to vote for. Anyone who is a serious candidate that I’d entertain supporting tends to campaign within one of the major parties as a primary challenge. They have a mixed bag of results. Sometimes, they don’t accomplish much. Sometimes, they become an influential faction and steer the party platform. Sometimes, they even become the main candidate. However, this tendency to campaign within the party means that when it comes time for the general election, the candidates I prefer are throwing their weight behind one of the major parties. The people who are running for the third parties tend to be kooks that I wouldn’t vote for even if they had a serious chance of winning.
Is it time for the daily ‘I don’t understand US politics but will tell you how to fix them’ question?
For major positions like president none of the third party candidates have a realistic shot at winning, so it’s generally in your best interest to vote for whichever of the major parties skews slightly closer to your positions.
(For president specifically it’s probably for the best that none of the third party candidates are in position to capture any electoral votes, given the mechanism in place to decide the election if nobody has a majority.)
There are over 20 nationally recognized parties, dozen more at the State and Local level, and the ability for people to run independently.
The issue is that we have a first past the post, winner take all voting system. This kind of system always results in two major parties. You have whatever party is in power, and their primary challenger. The parties can switch positions, and a third party can replace one of them as happened when the Republican Party replaced the Wigs, but you will always have two that float to the top and most of the time voting third party just means that the one in power tends to stay in power.
What’s the point? The electoral college are all Dem or Rep, and the third parties are amateur hour.
The problem with 3rd parties in general is the FPTP system we have, and the RNC and DNC are huge organizations that have enough money to outspend any 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc challenger.
The majority of americans are woefully low information/low attention voters. They dont pay attention until the few months leading up to an election, specifically a presidential election. The D and R nominees tend to be very high recognition people, i.e. Biden and Trump this year. Then they vote R or D. There are obviously people who vote for another candidate.
The problem is, even if the 3rd candidate gets enough votes in one state to win it, if it prevents one of the other candidates from getting to 270 votes, its not the highest that wins, it then goes to the house state coalitions and they vote by state for president.
Partly, yes, they are that bad. The main third party candidate this time around has literal brain worms and won’t stop implying The Jews are behind COVID. In 2008, the Greens ran on a platform of finding Tupac’s killer. More importantly, though. America doesn’t use a parliamentary system, so coalition politics doesn’t exist.
It’s easy to understand why people don’t vote 3rd party.
The first party to have voters vote 3rd party, will lose everything in the next election.
This video here, while never mentioning the US, does a very good job of describing our election system. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo) . Our first-past-the-post system, which we use for the vast majority of our elected offices nationwide, (but there are a few exceptions), will inevitably result in a two-party system driven primarily by negativity and fear.
I feel like Duverger’s Law should be added to the FAQ.
Some people do vote for third parties, but in general, they really are that bad and are made up of fringe weirdos who I wouldn’t trust to run my local library board. Case in point, the Libertarian Party, which is somehow the third largest party in the country despite being full of bickering edge lords who produced farcical candidates.
Then you’ve got the Green Party, which faces pretty much the same issues.
Then there’s the Constitution Party, which basically wants to establish a theocracy.
The fact is that these parties are neither serious or palatable to the average American. Maybe a serious third party will come along and supplant one of the other two?
I’d rather vote for someone who has a chance of winning and will at least have a cabinet and VP that mostly do things I favor than vote for some noncredible candidate with no chance of winning and a wacky platform.
The simplest condensed answer is that the way our elections work makes it so that third parties have a very hard time getting traction. It’s a winner take all system. And there is no majority required to win. Just a plurality. Which is the further complicated by the electoral college making some votes worth more than others.
So if the Democrat candidate get 42% of the vote, Republican candidate get 43%, and a third party candidate gets 15%. The Republican candidate wins.
So to combat that, each major party moves further to the left or right to paint the other as the villain and pushing the narrative that one of them will win so a vote for a third party is just taking votes away from one of the others.
Because of that. Most independents and 3rd parties end up aligning with one of the two major parties to try and prevent the other party from winning. (See Bernie Sanders)
It’s so entrenched in our politics now that we would have to change how our elections work in order for third parties to be viable.
I personally favor ranked choice voting. But that’s unlikely to take over at the federal level anytime soon.
Because a third party candidate won’t win in a first past the post system.
If I vote for a third party candidate and then you decide not to we’ve split the votes and it’s likely another candidate we both agree sucks will win.
FWIW, where I live in the US absolutely people do vote for 3rd party candidates in local elections (Green, DSA, etc.)
Most people do not vote for 3rd party Presidential candidates because those candidate are frequently people who have not held elected or any government office before and they don’t have a record to run on. Just enough money to get on a ballot. It’s often seen as a vanity run or someone just trying to take votes from the party they want to see lose. Especially because they don’t have to compete in Primaries.
It is SO EXPENSIVE to run a national campaign, and that is largely the role of the party, to help their candidate win. In Europe, I think it is more common for the candidate to be seen as working in service to a party and its platform. It’s the opposite here. Elected officials can vote any way they like, regardless of party, so you have representatives who sometimes vote with their party and sometimes do not.
Instead of a party for every ideology and the parties forming coalitions of other elected officials, you have 2 parties that try to build coalitions of voters.
It seems more common at the local level.Â
Local politicians just can’t continue to be competitive as they move into broader areas without aligning with an established party.Â
Many of us do, your question reflects a fundamental ignorance of US politics.
Stone house phenomenon
It’s throwing away your vote, thus supporting the greater of two evils. The stakes are too high for that right now.
“Party” in the US means “coalition” in parliamentary systems. The 3rd parties here in the US are like the parties in other countries that are so fringe, people don’t want to go into coalition with them.
You’ve got Libretarians trying to abolish driver’s licenses and age limits on sex with minors, Greens nominating nut jobs and foreign stooges, and the Constitution party wanting to go full theocracy in a way that skeeves out most Bible thumpers. These are not serious people.
Hi, you’ve got u/mustang6172’s prewritten response.
The president should be a career politician. Career politicians don’t run third-party campaigns because losing represents career suicide. So the candidates who actually run third-party campaigns are either Russian puppets [Stein, West] or want to wipe out autism by banning vaccines [Kennedy].
Two elections ago I voted for the Green Party candidate and it turned out she was a Russian spy. So yah.
Well the third party candidate making the most noise is anti-vax and had brain worms sooooo
Trump is sort of a third party candidate disguised as a Republican. He’s by no means a traditional Republican, though he has helped transform the party. The Democrats have been more successful at keeping third-party-like candidates off the Democratic ticket, such as what they did to Bernie Sanders or RFK Jr. Most Americans see voting third party as a waste of a vote.
We have a winner takes all first pass the post system which mathematically all but guarantees a shift towards a two party system. People vote strategically for someone with a chance of winning over who they actually like. The country has now become so polarized that at a presidential level, both sides see either Biden or Trump as basically the devil incarnate.
The only people that vote for third parties are idealists. Realists will back a party that has the best chance of winning that will push enough of their core issues forward.Â
No one ever gets everything they want in a democracy. So why not just vote for the best chance to get the main things done?