It’s no accident. Both parties collude to make sure a 3rd does not arise. The saying “voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away” is very, very common. Your classification of these parties as practically irrelevant is very accurate, because I don’t believe any other party has cracked double digit % at the federal level.
I was wondering about that though. I’m not from the US so I don’t understand the depths of the system. But wouldn’t a third party only have to get a super tiny amount of votes, to become part of the government? Let’s say Democrats and Republicans have 48% of the vote. And there is a third party that got 4% (in actual Electors) .
They would either have to include the small party and make some concessions to them, or agree with the other big party on a president.
Like that it should at least be possible to push a single topic through, like free Medicare. And then just work with whichever party is less against it.
US voting system is pretty much all-or-nothing at every level.
There are 100 senators, but each one of them has to win a majority of votes in their state to get elected into office. There’s no representative pool where you vote for a party and X% of the seats go to that party based on their performance in the overall election.
What about regional representatives? Like here in Canada greens are a really small party but their they have some popular MPs in certain ridings so they just have to focus on a single small city like Guelph riding (Which has voted green for MPP in the previous provincial elections.) They win that one riding and they win 1 seat in Parliament.
Could a 3rd party not do something similar in the US? Or are there no such regional elections?
No, we don’t have proportional representation like that. You might be used to a functional government in your country that works for the people. We have ones that work for themselves.
It’s no accident. Both parties collude to make sure a 3rd does not arise. The saying “voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away” is very, very common. Your classification of these parties as practically irrelevant is very accurate, because I don’t believe any other party has cracked double digit % at the federal level.
I was wondering about that though. I’m not from the US so I don’t understand the depths of the system. But wouldn’t a third party only have to get a super tiny amount of votes, to become part of the government? Let’s say Democrats and Republicans have 48% of the vote. And there is a third party that got 4% (in actual Electors) .
They would either have to include the small party and make some concessions to them, or agree with the other big party on a president.
Like that it should at least be possible to push a single topic through, like free Medicare. And then just work with whichever party is less against it.
US voting system is pretty much all-or-nothing at every level.
There are 100 senators, but each one of them has to win a majority of votes in their state to get elected into office. There’s no representative pool where you vote for a party and X% of the seats go to that party based on their performance in the overall election.
What about regional representatives? Like here in Canada greens are a really small party but their they have some popular MPs in certain ridings so they just have to focus on a single small city like Guelph riding (Which has voted green for MPP in the previous provincial elections.) They win that one riding and they win 1 seat in Parliament.
Could a 3rd party not do something similar in the US? Or are there no such regional elections?
Every election in the US is all-or-nothing.
No, we don’t have proportional representation like that. You might be used to a functional government in your country that works for the people. We have ones that work for themselves.