Comment by chrisseaton
5 years ago
> Aside from the UK (which does have two major parties)
In the UK:
A small but national party was in government a few elections ago. They had multiple ministers and could influence the policy narrative.
In the previous government, the DUP, a tiny regional party had a big influence on major policies that mattered to them.
The SNP, a regional party, has wiped away the national parties and now has many seats in the national parliament, and was recently part of frustrating the main party from doing anything.
This is all possible, even with FPTP.
Imagine if a party like the Greens, or the SNP, or the LD, but in the US, controlled a few seats in the Senate or the House of Representatives - think how much power they'd become king-making between the two parties. They'd be able to insist on a couple of their key policies for the deal and be able to enact real changes.
From the Wikipedia article:
"There are also cases where the principle appears to have an effect, but weakly...In the United Kingdom, the SDP–Liberal Alliance, and later Liberal Democrats, between the February 1974 and 2015 elections obtained 1–10% of seats forming a third party, albeit with significantly fewer seats.[16] This share of seats is despite gathering around a fifth of votes consistently over the same time period.
In the UK there is no president and thus no unifying election to force party mergers and regional two-party systems are formed. This is because Duverger's law says that the number of viable parties is one plus the number of seats in a constituency."