U.S. Political Parties

One one side; Bush

On the other side; An impotent Democratic Congress.

What are the consequences of the lack of a competitive third party in national US politics?

Answer: We are living the consequences: a polarized society run by a government that cares more about party-line posturing and pursuing vague political ideology rather than serving and helping the people it is supposed to represent.

Politics can't be put into a simple Left/Right scheme, and so people shouldn't be made to choose between just two parties. It always works out that too many people don't feel well represented or that they have a role to play. They stop voting. They stop caring. Democracy doesn't work for them.

The consequences of a dual party system is a systemic polarization of elite interests while middle-ground positions are completely marginalized. A third party has to capture the interests of general public voters who already have a vested interest in these two groups. The plurality system of not needing to win by a majority, only by getting more votes than the other candidate, makes it inherently impossible for a 3+ party system to work for the United States. If this were not the case, runoffs would be possible where a second or third choice candidate could still have some weight in the election. As it stands, all third parties will be relegated to the wings of public representation until massive electoral reform is put into play.

People like me are sad because my vote doesn't count. Then again, no one's vote counts

Without an alternative, instead of voting FOR what people believe in, instead of voting FOR what their morals dictate, people end up voting against the "opposition"

They spend their precious votes trying to prevent "the other guy" from winning, but seldom pay attention to the fact that they get almost the same result no matter who wins.

Republican or Democrat, Congress and the Presidents have directed OUR government to bribe foreign leaders, overthrow governments, use all sorts of inhumane weapons, kidnap their enemies, authorize the torture of prisoners, impose crippling embargoes, pillage our resources, take our property, and destroy our economy and environment.

Throughout history, even kings have often failed to survive such disastrous acts; but, in "free" America, the major parties that produce all our presidents continue to receive our approval through millions of votes.

Without real opposition, the two war parties will only continue.

We get to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Remember though, that we have chosen these two parties. There is nothing in the Constitution that calls for only two political parties or even the existence of any political party at all. George Washing was very much against the creation of political parties fearing the very problems that we have today would result from such partisanship.

It was only a little less than a decade and a half ago when we had a strong third party candidate in Ross Perot who was actually leading in the polls for a time. It was only a paranoid breakdown that led to his fall.

We are allowed to vote for whomever we want, in whatever party we want. All we have to do is actually vote for them.

The dark horse candidate is all but dead. The candidate with the most connections, most money, and most favors owns the party nomination for the Democrats and Republicans. Democracy recognizes the ability to shed the norm and vote personally, but the power of these two political parties brandishes a grudge match in which the fate of the country is the real loser.

A noncompetitive party system promotes corruption through a lack of competition. When the Democrats are in power, they can reign virtually unchecked, other than opposition from Republicans, who will challenge this corruption, but lightly, because they as a party know that when they regain power they will be corrupt as well.

The lack of a competitive third party in US politics means that the two big-business parties can frame the debate as they please and ignore the real concerns of the people. Thus flag-burning, gay-marriage and evolution theory are apt to supplant analyses of stolen elections, conspiracy to defraud the nation into war, and economic apartheid as important political campaign issues.

Each party has its own established constituency which it panders to and concentrates on negative campaigning against the other. The system is ossified. There is no incentive to innovate, to think outside the box in terms of policy.

In the UK there are 2 main parties (Labour and Conservative) and a third less influential but still still significant party - the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems are unlikely to be the party of government any time soon but they are trying to grow and have a record of looking for ways to make themselves relevant. One fruitful way to do that is to come up with radical or creative policy ideas. Sometimes these get taken up by the main parties, to everyone's benefit.

Frankly, this question isn't very thought provoking.

The consequence is: Today.

Narrow-minded views, more of the same, and a lack of choices. Less people will vote as a result, thinking "my vote won't matter".

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The longer any group stays in power, the more it gets used to it, the more it will abuse that power, the more holding on to that power becomes its raison d'etre.

The more (stable) groups there are who seek that power, the mor likely it is to change hands, bringing in new ideas and preventing anyone from getting too comfortable.

If people would only begin voting for the person they REALLY want to vote for it would lessen the gap.

Example: Well, I really want to vote for "yada-yada independent candidate", but he/she will never win. Therefore, let me do some math here. Hummm, if I vote for yada-yada , that will take one vote away from the lesser of the 2 "other evils" and add one vote for the "most evil" candidate.

Now, does this kind of voting make sense to anyone? If not, why on earth do most people vote in this manner?

It forces all politicians to play to as broad of a base as possible, eliminating any viability in anything but the lowest-common-denominator issues. Having multiple parties requires coalition governance, which means that you can have a powerful group that has their pet issues, but they have to negotiate with other powerful groups that have different pet issues. Because multiple parties force negotiation at the federal level, power will become less centralized, reducing graft and increasing legislative responsiveness.

Stability.

The lack of competitive third-parties results in a back and forth game that is effective at maintaining the status quo. Lacking real choices and substance, the public is more inclined to vote on personality and are easily manipulated to vote against their own interests. The two-party system can not provide an adequate debate on the issues. Debated issues often become superficial and polarizing yes/no questions even though many solutions may exist. This suppresses the development of solutions and an understanding of the citizens' sentiments, a defeatist attitude among voters, a sense of powerlessness and low voter turnout. This results in oligarchy and plutocracy. This encourages the suppression of competition by gerrymandering and overly restrictive and unreasonable ballot access laws. The duopoly competes for the same cash and middle of the road voters thereby further limiting the debate and maintaining the status quo. In short, it's bad for democracy and progress.

We get an apparent dichotomy when actually the two parties are in cahoots.

#19 is the only one that is looking at this correctly. The illusion of choice keeps the public calm and convinced that voting actually accomplishes something. Stepping out of 'the model' you can see that nothing changes and that the people in power, no matter which party, have only their narrow self-interest on their plate and nothing more. Much like power, the system corrupts.

I would presume the same consequences inherent in a three party system missing a competitive fourth party. Repeat ad nauseum. You are unlikely to find a political idealogy that most closely fits your own political views, even with an idealogical resolution of 1,000 different political parties. I, being independent, often slice and dice the platforms of politicians of major parties to further understand how close they are to fitting my ideology. Generally, I become more informed on key issues and more active as a voter. A democracy isn't operating as a democracy if people are willing to slip themselves into one stereotypical ideology without bringing their true opinions to bear. If people fail to vote based upon their trials and tribulations, the issues, and the entire platform of each candidate, the democracy will not reach its full potential. With n or n-1 parties, the discerning vote is what counts.

One consequence is the polarization which we see today. The problem does not lie with the lack of a third, 'centrist' party, but with the lack of viable parties at the extremes. For example, a viable extreme-right wing party in a parliamentarian system would free the Republican party to move to the center. Instead, the Republican leadership has taken the strategy of vilifying the left to the point that centrists must choose sides more or less permanently, resulting in the nearly 50-50 split of the last two presidential elections.

Only two names listed on the ballot.

It's really just a couple of words that sums up the consequence: a rock and a hard place. We as a voting public are left forced to choose for one of just two candidates, neither of which we may particularly like or want to be running the country. Sure, there are alternatives -- you can refuse to vote, but this doesn't help anything; you can vote for a candidate from a lesser-known and relatively powerless group. Neither option really amounts to anything. You can get all your friends to write in Mickey Mouse on the ballot, but that's not going to help.

As for the ultimate result -- just take a look around. There's your consequence.

The consequence of a two party situation is that today, one half of the country thinks that the other half is wrong and using the theory of Internet logic, this would mean that both halves are wrong. Consequently, to right this wrong and to say we have left behind the wrongs, we need a multi-party system, which would require a major overhaul of the Constitution and the collective minds of the common people. (Politicians don't count since they can be convinced of anything with enough money.)