In the United States, every presidential election cycle includes a series of independent/third party candidates ready to “shake up the race.”
Some years there's just one upstart trying to disrupt the status quo, like Ross Perot in 1992, and other years there's a slew of people running from outside the two major parties. The 2024 race appears to fall into the latter category. In fact, this year has seen a wide range of candidates, from true independents like Professor Cornel West, to established minor party candidates like Green Party stalwart Jill Stein, to major party fringe candidates like former Democrat Robert Kennedy Jr. There are so many people here.
A third party or independent candidate has never won a presidential election in the United States. Throughout U.S. history, even the most popular third-party presidential races, like Mr. Nader in 2000 and Mr. Stein in 2016, have garnered some headlines and been pushed by one major party to benefit the other. They simply siphoned off votes and achieved little.
Nevertheless, every four years people from across the political spectrum come forward as third-party/independent candidates, and a significant number of Americans vote for them. Many others also said they would vote for third-party/independent candidates if these candidates had a real chance of winning.
It is clear that there is an untapped demand in the United States for leadership options beyond those offered by Democrats and Republicans.
America's two-party system is almost as old as the country itself. For more than 200 years, since the time of Abraham Lincoln, every American president belonged to one of the two major political groups at the time of his election: either the Federalists or the Democratic-Republicans, and the Democrats or the Whigs. , Democrat or Republican.
In this strict two-party system, independent/third party candidates are often seen as a novelty. They add color to election coverage, entertain the nation with their wild plans and proposals, and provide fodder for late-night monologues and Saturday Night Live sketches. , and little else.
The two-party system is such a fundamental part of the American political system that during the 1996 election, The Simpsons suggested that Americans vote for an alien from outer space rather than a third-party candidate. It is famous that “Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Don't blame me.” Voted for the “Kodos” meme.
A major factor ensuring the survival of the two-party system in the United States, even at moments when voters appear disillusioned with both parties, is the country's “first-past-the-post” voting system. .
“First to pass the post” means that the candidate/party that receives the most votes (regardless of whether it is a majority or not) wins the election. This electoral system, established by French social scientist Maurice Duverger, promotes the two-party system we see in America today, primarily for his two reasons.
First, the system, in which only one candidate wins by receiving one more vote than the next highest candidate, discourages small parties from participating in elections. In such a system he says that when three or more parties are competing, they have a clear incentive to team up and combine their voting bases, thereby defeating a common enemy. This logic typically plays out before voters cast their ballots, allowing him to rapidly narrow down the long list of parties likely to compete in election after election into two blocs. Second, in a post-first-choice system, people are often reluctant to vote for small parties that choose to contest elections alone. Even if they like the minor party's policy proposals the most, they are afraid to “waste” their vote on a party that has no chance of winning the election, so they instead choose the major party candidate they find most acceptable. I end up voting for it.
This logic is so consistent that it is often referred to in political science as “Duberger's Law.” But there are few universal “laws” in political science, because humans are messy and their behavior is much less predictable than atoms or genes. In fact, recent research has questioned the validity of Duberger's law in certain contexts such as India and the United Kingdom.
And even in the United States, there are of course exceptions. These include mavericks who personally finance one or two races, disillusioned party members who leave the party and attempt to challenge it alone, and candidates and political parties who place importance on election results. They should pay more attention to their pet issues than winning votes. There are even some examples in history of newly founded groups taking advantage of extraordinary political turmoil to gain widespread support. However, even in these cases, the newcomers never remain as third parties, but always end up replacing one of the two major parties at the time.
In general, Duverger's Law has held up in the United States throughout history, and it shows no signs of breaking anytime soon. Therefore, unless some cataclysmic event occurs that shakes up the current American political alignment, the only hope politicians and voters have for breaking away from the two-party system is to change the way American elections are conducted. . Various options exist. Most notably, dozens of countries, from Brazil to Germany to Turkey, maintain multiparty systems with proportional representation.
The exact details vary, but in essence, proportional representation, or PR, is a system that allocates public offices, such as parliamentary seats, to political parties depending on the percentage of votes they receive in elections.
In the current American system, if a hypothetical constitutional party were to form and win 20 percent of the vote in House elections across the United States, the Constitutionalists would probably lose every election and lose their representation in Congress. , will be forced to ask questions. their viability as a party; But under the PR system, the same percentage of votes would give these defenders 20 percent of the House seats, a strong result for a third party.
There are also other systems that allow two or more political parties to have influence. Even under the majority voting system, in which the winning candidate must receive at least 50% of the votes to avoid a runoff, placing second in the first vote does not automatically mean defeat, making it more Many political parties can participate.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who identifies as a democratic socialist but holds a seat in Congress as a Democrat, once said, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would be in the same party.'' I won’t belong,” he said.
In the United States, where the voting system is different, she could run as a Social Democratic candidate, as equivalent parties are known in many countries. Similarly, fiscally conservative but secular liberals and socially conservative evangelicals could maintain a separate political party rather than sit under the Republican umbrella. Environmentalists, pro-labor voters and other interest groups could form their own political parties.
Of course, such a system is not without its drawbacks. In a multiparty system, when no party can win a majority, a coalition government must be formed, which often leads to deadlock and political confusion. But the threat of government shutdowns already exists, as the United States has experienced 10 government shutdowns since 1981 and narrowly avoided several more, and the threat of government shutdowns is already there, even when the government is functioning. Even so, many people feel that the results are not reflected in their results.
Reforming the voting system is not an easy task. First and foremost, the people currently in power are the beneficiaries of the current system. Reforms are still possible, whether as a result of public demand or if implementation of reforms is delayed. Politicians worry much less about changing the rules for their successors than they do for themselves. Second, few people pay attention to voting systems, and when they do, the focus is usually on when their preferred candidate or party doesn't win, and when they do so under a different set of rules. We do not focus on hypotheses about what kind of candidates or parties would have run in . Voters generally like the process to be simple, and regardless of the outcome, the simple rule is that the candidate who receives the most votes wins.
Nevertheless, many other countries have gotten by with more “complex” systems, and some U.S. districts have managed to adopt significant changes to their election rules. Alaska and Maine currently use ranked choice voting, or RCV, for federal and state elections. In this voting, voters assign an ordered ranking to candidates rather than simply voting for one top choice. New York state is the largest of dozens of metropolitan areas that also use the system for some local elections. Additionally, the Pew Research Center notes that many districts across the country have used alternative voting methods at some point in their history. For example, in the first half of the 20th century, many cities used the single transferable vote (STV). This is a version of ranked-choice voting with medium-sized constituencies, specifically aimed at ensuring proportional representation. The main reason this method was discontinued was hostility towards the racial and ethnic minorities who benefited from the system, but it is hoped that concerns have since waned across the United States. There is. Pugh points out that in recent decades, dozens of state and local districts have adopted some form of alternative voting system, often due to public demand.
So for people who may not be excited about a Biden vs. Trump rematch and who are generally disillusioned with the binary choice between Democrats and Republicans, the possibility of more political parties remaining in the United States is a possibility. There is an expectation that there will be. However, this is achieved not by throwing support behind third-party candidates in the existing system, but by asking politicians already in power (usually representing the two established parties) to This can be done by persuading or forcing people to change the rules of how they are selected.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
