I’ve heard it said 1000 times that the US is 2 party political system, but I just don’t understand what mechanisms push it to be that way? Why are 3rd parties so weak or unlikely?
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“First past the post” systems where only the candidate/party with the majority of votes gets anything from a particular election outcome rewards parties for conglomerating and pooling their resources. If you’ve got two progressive parties and one right-wing party, it doesn’t matter if 60% of the country votes progressive as they’ll split those votes between the two and the 40% voting right wing will be greater than the 30% either progressive party gets, while a 60% vote wins hands-down. And once you HAVE two very large coalition parties, it becomes very hard to operate outside of those parties, as almost all of the money in the political system goes through those parties.
America, as a Representative Republic, exacerbates this effect even further. Take a look at the presidential election, which uses an electoral college system. This means that each state sends electors only for the candidate with the most votes in their state, and then the electors do another round of voting, and only a candidate who receives a plurality (greater than half) of all electoral votes can become president. If no candidate gets that plurality, then it is decided in the House of Representatives through a similar system; each state votes among its congressmen, and then casts one vote per state for the chosen candidate, with the majority winning.
So think of it like this: There are five classrooms, and you’re tasked to vote on a school sport that everyone will have to participate in for the next year. You know Mr. A’s class and Ms. B’s class are going to vote for Dodgeball, because they always do. The rest of you hate Dodgeball and would rather play anything else. Mr. C’s class wants to play Basketball, Ms. D’s class wants to play Hockey, and Ms. E’s class wants to play Lacrosse, but they all would prefer playing Soccer. So all of the non-Dodgeball-preferring students in all three classes come together and form the Soccer coalition, where they all agree to vote for Soccer, so that Soccer wins each of those three classrooms, and then those three classrooms carry the classroom-level vote for the sport 3:2. If the Lacrosse students strike out on their own, they may win E’s class, but are unlikely to win C’s or D’s, and Lacrosse-preferring students in those classes may split the vote away from Soccer and result in Dodgeball winning one of those classrooms and thus the entire thing.
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