How would more than two work in your system? In the UK it has led (and looks like it will continue to lead) to some very unrepresentative results. FPTP means that the vote gets split so e.g if there’s 3 left wing parties and they each get 24% of the vote but there’s only 1 right wing party and they get 28% the right wing candidate will win (even though 72% of people voted against them)
Ideally, the existence of more than 2 serious parties would lead to the widespread adoption of ranked choice voting. Right now, neither democrats or republicans really want it, because it threatens their power consolidation, but if they both felt threatened by the existence of serious alternatives, they might be more inclined to embrace it.
With FPTP voting, the third party will (as you note) just act as a spoiler for whichever of the two pain parties it’s closest to ideologically. I think we all assume that Musk’s party will be closest to republicans, so those are the votes it’ll primarily be siphoning.
The problem we’ve had over here is the big parties haven’t wanted to relinquish power or don’t seem to recognise how much the political climate has changed.
UKIP got big because people wanted an alternative not really because people wanted to leave the EU. You can tell that because Cameron gave people the EU referendum to try and neuter them. They just reformed into Reform UK and are now polling scary well.
The most sensible thing Labour could do this parliament is introduce proportional representation in some kind. That way at rhe next election they’d likley be the biggest party in a centre left colalition. There’s no signs of them even considering it. They seem to still think that power should be all or nothing.
What we get now, because they’ve hung on so tight to FPTP is a really big chunk of people voting tactically against the party they don’t want.
What we get now, because they’ve hung on so tight to FPTP is a really big chunk of people voting tactically against the party they don’t want.
I honestly would love an option to vote against a party (as in, give them -1 vote) rather than voting for a party. Kind of a “I don’t care who wins, as long as it isn’t this person”, or “I don’t want this person in office, but I don’t like their opponent enough to vote for them.” I think it’d be very telling if you had an election and all candidates had a negative vote total at the end.
How would more than two work in your system? In the UK it has led (and looks like it will continue to lead) to some very unrepresentative results. FPTP means that the vote gets split so e.g if there’s 3 left wing parties and they each get 24% of the vote but there’s only 1 right wing party and they get 28% the right wing candidate will win (even though 72% of people voted against them)
Ideally, the existence of more than 2 serious parties would lead to the widespread adoption of ranked choice voting. Right now, neither democrats or republicans really want it, because it threatens their power consolidation, but if they both felt threatened by the existence of serious alternatives, they might be more inclined to embrace it.
With FPTP voting, the third party will (as you note) just act as a spoiler for whichever of the two pain parties it’s closest to ideologically. I think we all assume that Musk’s party will be closest to republicans, so those are the votes it’ll primarily be siphoning.
The problem we’ve had over here is the big parties haven’t wanted to relinquish power or don’t seem to recognise how much the political climate has changed.
UKIP got big because people wanted an alternative not really because people wanted to leave the EU. You can tell that because Cameron gave people the EU referendum to try and neuter them. They just reformed into Reform UK and are now polling scary well.
The most sensible thing Labour could do this parliament is introduce proportional representation in some kind. That way at rhe next election they’d likley be the biggest party in a centre left colalition. There’s no signs of them even considering it. They seem to still think that power should be all or nothing.
What we get now, because they’ve hung on so tight to FPTP is a really big chunk of people voting tactically against the party they don’t want.
I honestly would love an option to vote against a party (as in, give them -1 vote) rather than voting for a party. Kind of a “I don’t care who wins, as long as it isn’t this person”, or “I don’t want this person in office, but I don’t like their opponent enough to vote for them.” I think it’d be very telling if you had an election and all candidates had a negative vote total at the end.
Haha yeah that would actually be really good.