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those poor little fellas...
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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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No. Use surveys and you know when a third party is ready.
Furthermore if both parties are neoliberal then wasting a vote is not such a big problem.
It will never happen as long as FPTP is in place. You might get realignments, but it will always snap back to two major parties and a smattering of parties that can at most be spoilers. Fortunately the way the US's voting works allows some gradual introduction of other systems like ranked choice that will not result in wasting votes.
It is if you care about the actual tangible effects of your vote. Take LGBTQ rights. Democrats are, as a general rule, far better than Republicans. Wasting your vote because neither of the two significant parties does exactly what you want on some issues means hanging vulnerable groups out to dry. And for what, to feel emotional satisfaction?
And FPTP will never go away while it benefits the only folks who go to the street to fight for things.
If you want change you'll need to organize a movement to fight for it. Plenty of people out there wanting this system to change who would happily join movements to fight for this change but nobody is organizing such movements.
There's already a movement fighting to change how we vote. Governmental bodies on the local and state level are experimenting with various options. It's slow, quiet, and not very glamorous, but real progress is being made.
So make at least one of them a party with reasonable policies
Of course people care. That's the lock-in.
Give them a voting base that they can do that with. You can disagree with policy all you want, but if the votes aren't there then it's hard for politicians to justify voting against their constituents. You'll just get the present situation where a smattering of politicians support more left policies, but most Democrats are center-left.
Okay, but the problem is that those third parties have no chance of winning. If you deny the closest viable party your vote, they will just move rightward to try to capture votes they think they can feasibly win without alienating the middle. Stubbornly sitting in the extremes gets you little in situations where you have to compromise.
Yes, create the voting base.
If democrats move right, they take votes from Republicans and make it easier for third party to win.
The problem is that leaves you with an unstable situation under FPTP. Let's say that our fictional third party, the Yellow Party, is to the point where 40% goes to Republicans (right), 30% goes to Democrats (center-left), and 30% goes to Yellows (left). Now Republicans are winning despite Democrats and Yellows forming a majority. So Democrats are going to split at some point, arriving back at an equilibrium of approximately a 50-50 split between Republican-Democrats and Democrat-Yellows. So in essence, you're right back where you started.
But you have a new party with better politics. Otherwise you argue that Democrats and Republicans already represent exactly the will of the population.
To be clear: I'm not against voting, I just don't think it's enough.
I literally had an election yesterday and the party I voted for did not reenter the parliament.
To me this means that something has to change so that it is enough.