Why 3rd Parties Suck in the United States

    The two party system that plagues US elections is problematic for lots of reasons. There’s not a lot of views represented and there’s little room for competition of political opinions by primarily presenting ideological extremes that leave moderate voters in a partisan purgatory. It might be worth exploring why we have a two party system and what we can change about it to make 3rd parties a potent aspect of political discussion.

    The author of “Party Politics in America” exquisitely summated why this is the case for two primary reasons. Plurality elections and single member districts (Hershey, 34). Plurality elections are where a candidate doesn’t necessarily have to win by a majority (>50%) but just have to have the most votes. Let’s take a look at a sample election where this can be troublesome.


    If this were a plurality election, Candidate 3 would’ve won despite 62% of the voters not voting for them (Figure 1). This problem can be more exacerbated when we increase the number of candidates. An astounding 73% of voters are unrepresented in Figure 2. 



    A lot of people seem to equate politics to sporting events, a game where there are clear distinctions between who wins and loses. However, in elections such as these, The real losers are the people who are massively misrepresented.


    These plurality elections are a product of the other aspect of the two party system. Single member districts, elections where only one candidate is the victor because they only fill one position. If we had more people filling a variety of positions, these problems would be mitigated at least to some degree.

A Gallup poll found that 56% of voters are affiliated with the two primary parties in early November 2016 despite 93.35% of the 2016 presidential election votes were towards the two parties. The primary cause of this (in combination to the aspects above) is citizens engaging in strategic voting, refusing to vote for a candidate because they would have no chance of winning despite their views align more with that party/candidate. We can think of this as a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” philosophy. If you agree 90% with a smaller candidate that has little-to-no chance of winning but agree 60% with a candidate that has a high chance of winning. A voter would be inclined to vote for the candidate with the higher chance as to not “waste their vote”. This is highly problematic as it forces smaller parties out of the picture, especially on the national level (about 6.03% of votes in the 2016 presidential election were for non-primary party candidates).

    The essence of democracy is voting and the way we do it matters. Plurality elections are not the only voting system, many different voting systems exist. Instant run-off voting, which puts candidates on a preferential list. Proportional representation, which delegates/representatives are elected based on percentage (Hershey, 35). I would argue one of the primary reasons we have such a divisive political landscape is because 3rd parties that share unique and interlocking perspectives on policies are left in the dust. If we wish to have more variance in political discourse in the US, we have to seriously considering how these parties and candidates are disadvantaged, whether it be from the way citizens vote or the very core of the democratic system we have set in place.

Bibliography

Hershey, Marjorie Randon. Party Politics in America. 16th ed., Routledge, 2017.