Comment by baby
5 years ago
that's something I never understood about US politics, what prevented Sanders from creating its own party for the US election and not run for the democratic primaries?
5 years ago
that's something I never understood about US politics, what prevented Sanders from creating its own party for the US election and not run for the democratic primaries?
The primary attribute of American politics that encourages a two party system is what’s known as “first past the post” elections.
America’s two main parties have changed over the years (remember the Whigs?), so the existence of a two-party system cannot be attributed purely to control exerted by the current two parties.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law.
First past the post doesn't explain Canada's four main parties. There is something preventing additional parties in America
Yes - it’s the fact that the race for the presidency is a winner-takes-all game. When Clinton lost, she didn’t get a diminished, minority, but still proportional say in the running of the government - she was completely out and Trump got everything.
The US system wasn’t engineered with the possibility of coalitions and compromise governments in mind (at least not in the Executive).
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Every Canadian government but for one has been from one of the two main parties.
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Another, often overlooked part, is that competing in an American election requires very expensive media and outreach campaigns.
Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums for non-establishment parties. Bernie spent $230M in a primary.
To give a rough comparison, the UK limits spending per constituency, so the upper limit a party is allowed to spend in the UK is 19.5 GBP.
> Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums for non-establishment parties.
I was going to write a comment about how shocked I was that Trump outspending Clinton by a factor of 500 didn't see any media coverage, but it looks like that's supposed to be 680M.
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> Trump spent $680B
I think this is not true.
> the upper limit a party is allowed to spend in the UK is 19.5 GBP
I'm pretty sure they spend more than that, as well.
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> Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B.
I'm not an expert but those numbers sound like total crap.
> Trump spent $680B.
Surely you mean $680M?
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Other countries with first-past-the-post have many parties. So FPTP does not cause two-parties - that's clearly nonsense.
Mathematically it makes sense for a two-party system to emerge, after the smaller parties are weeded out after some years of running unsuccessfully. Most people will accept compromise of their ideals to "fight some greater evil".
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Hey Chris,
Maybe tone doesn't come across well in written communication, but dismissing this as "clearly nonsense" without bothering to engage with the merit of the claim or, seemingly, even read the link seems disrespectful, to say the least.
Do you want to rephrase? :)
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> Other countries with first-past-the-post have many parties
Which ones do you have in mind? The one's I'm thinking of have two main parties, and then strictly regional parties which displace them entirely in their regions.
> So FPTP does not cause two-parties - that's clearly nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
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The counterexample of other countries is not sufficient to rule it out as a causal factor, that's just faulty logic.
CGP Grey - The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained (section The Spoiler Effect): https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo?t=300
http://enwp.org/Ralph_Nader#Spoiler_controversy
He easily could but would end up taking votes from the Democrats, thus helping his opponent in the process. The American system doesn’t work well with third-party candidates and mostly incentivizes against them; see the 1992 election for a recent example.
Ok, but in Canada a new upstart Conservative party (Reform) took away Votes from the existing Conservative Party (PC) and over several elections eventually got a majority.
So sure, Bernie might take away votes from the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean support will eventually shift to him.
Much more money and resources at play in the U.S., and Bernie is also fairly old and doesn't really have a 'party' or a clear successor. He/his followers wouldn't gain much from starting a new party.
Two things:
1. The media would ignore him if he did. He wouldn't get to take part in any of the debates, and most people would have no idea he was even running.
2. It might not even be possible for him to get on the ballot in most states as a third-party candidate. Election laws make it nearly impossible for third parties to get on the ballot in many states. In the last 20 years, the Green Party has never managed to get on the ballot in more than 45 states. In 2004, they only managed to get on the ballot in half the states. The Democratic party fights tooth and nail to keep them off the ballot (just like the Republican party fights to keep the Libertarians off the ballot). Because almost all the local and state election officials and judges are Democrats and Republicans, the deck is stacked against third parties.
Finally, Sanders would be viewed as a spoiler, robbing votes from the Democratic party. Most people would feel like they would be throwing their votes away.
Third parties tend to emerge when one party has been in too long and has a large percentage of the vote. New party tries to take 30% of the 70% and 10% of the 30%
He's a Democrat senator and got Biden to essentially support most of his platform. Running as an independent or 3rd party would be political suicide and wouldn't help his agenda.
But aside from that most countries have a single process to get on the ballot country-wide. In US you'd have to navigate this process for each state.
I'm sure Bernie could pull that off. But it is definitely the reason you see many fewer randoms making a dent.
Also if you consider the way primaries work in both parties it's way more transparent and approachable than most other places. Many major parties around the world don't have a primary process at all. And even when they do it's usually limited to insiders. So if you want to change things you're almost forced to create a party by default.
If you couldn't make it in a primary of a party that's closer to your beliefs than the general population - how can you expect to make it on a national level?