156
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

There are plenty of such parties. They are just not electorally successful on a national scale. They may be moderately influential on a state level through the use of fusion voting. Fusion voting is where multiple parties can stand the same candidate in an election.

Most places in the United States use a "first-past-the-post" system. In this system, voters select one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. This system sounds fair on the surface but in reality, game theory dictates that the only stable configuration of political parties in such a system is a two-party system. In any other configuration, the individual actors will always find it more advantageous to join one of the two parties. The reason for this also explains why it's hard for smaller parties to win under a first-past-the-post system.

Suppose there are two existing political parties: Party A and Party B. Voters prefer Party A by a margin of 55-45, so Party A wins reliably in elections. Suppose we replay the same elections but with three parties. Party C holds similar views to Party A but is more extreme while Party A is more centrist. If everyone votes for their favourite candidate, then we will probably end up with a vote distribution where Party A wins 40% of the vote, Party B wins 45% of the vote, and Party C wins 15% of the vote. What has essentially happened here is that Party C siphoned votes away from Party A, causing Party B to win despite the fact that voters' preferences haven't changed. Voters know this and so even those who like the Party C candidate the most will vote for the Party A candidate (who shares at least some of their views) in order to stop Party B from winning.

This is why progressives forming their own political party is a losing idea in the United States. It will split the left-wing vote and hand elections to the Republican Party. Instead, what they do is compete in the Democratic Party's primary elections. In the US, who a party chooses to stand in a particular election is determined by means of a primary election. However, progressives often struggle to win intra-party primary elections because most members of the Democratic Party are moderate. The distribution of political leanings is shaped like a bell curve, and thus progressives like Bernie Sanders are simply outnumbered by moderates like Joe Biden. Moderates often have the numbers to sideline progressives in primary elections, and thus it is much more difficult for progressives to get elected since they need to run under the Democratic Party banner to stand any chance of winning.

[-] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago

Triangulation doesn't actually work though, we've seen this since Clinton.

If ideology existed on a spectrum and people voted for the closest ideological candidate, running one iota to the left of the opposition would win every election.

What happens instead is your "moderate republicans" vote for fascism instead of diet-fascism, and the majority don't vote because Diet-Fascism doesn't offer them enough to make up missing a day of work.

[-] DancingBear@midwest.social 0 points 3 months ago

Most members of the democrat party are moderate.

You had me up until this statement.

It’s simply not true. In fact, most Americans are progressive and support progressive policies.

The issue is money in politics.

Our political system is a system of legalized bribery in corruption.

Most of the money in politics would be considered corruption and fraud in just about every first world country.

But on the policy itself,

Most Americans, including most democrat voters, are very progressive.

Even Fox News viewers are progressive on most of the issues that Bernie Sanders campaigned on. Which is why he is so dangerous.

We need to overturn citizens united and congress needs to legislate campaign finance reform.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Most Americans, including most [Democratic] voters, are very progressive.

I couldn't find anything that isn't 7 years old to substantiate this claim, but if you can, I'll be happy to change my mind and edit my comment. There are certainly many popular progressive policies, but I don't think that necessarily means they are progressive in general and will vote for progressive candidates.

[-] DancingBear@midwest.social 0 points 3 months ago

Policy wise, Americans are extremely progressive.

Which football team political party they align themselves with is something completely different.

This was true 7 years ago, and even more so today.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

With due respect, this is not evidence.

[-] DancingBear@midwest.social -1 points 3 months ago

Sorry I don’t feel like spending an hour researching something I already have read about numerous times over the past few decades. It’s a general trend and it is actually increasing, although slowly.

Feel free to look it up if you like though.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I have, but I wasn't able to find anything, which is why I asked. I totally understand if you don't want to, and that's totally fine. Maybe someone else will.

[-] DancingBear@midwest.social 1 points 3 months ago

I’m on a cell phone it’s very difficult to find old articles in this thing

this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
156 points (88.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

34331 readers
1273 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS