I know we technically have more than two choices, but what would need to change for it to simply be 1) person A, 2) person B, or 3) throwaway vote.
And maybe there are multiple avenues?
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President elections it is possible. But one of the issues for a third party run is the two parties make the laws, control debates, have massive financial backing and get out the vote operations in place. A third party candidate will need to be very rich or very very popular to overcome those obstacles. It is possible in theory. But if you look at the third party candidates in the current election and read the news you will notice they are either ignored or basically trashed by the media. This is another obstacle to overcome. In theory it could happen, it is just very very hard. You would need a candidate that is just not some alternative but captures people’s imaginations.
Congress is a different beast. Given the structure of our government more than two parties do not make sense in a practical way. Say a third party captures some seats. You can pick which side the party more closely aligns, it doesn’t matter. Which ever side that did not split the vote will be in the majority. You might think a third party could sweep in and get their own majority. But if you look at how many incumbents actually lose elections you will find that very very very few do. One in they largely get re-elected most of the time. That really argues against some new party coming in and sweeping elections, that largely does not happen now with the two parties. Yes a few seats change and the majority changes. But again that only takes a few seats relatively speaking. And most changes occur when the incumbent retires, not loses the election. Yes some house member lose elections but look at the numbers where there is an incumbent, not that many lose. People complain they don’t like our leaders and yet they do not vote them out. When looking at the polls on this you find people like THEIR leader, it is the ones they don’t vote for they don’t like. Until this pattern changes, and it has been like this for decades at least, a third party is not going to sweep elections. You can tweak the election rules, ranked choice or whatever but this dynamic does not change.
The only way I see three parties existing in Congress is if there are regional parties. Say the west coast is no longer Democrat but the new party called the Cool Guys or whatever. In this case instead of Dems you would have Cool Guys elected. What would that look like in reality? Well as I said the party, or caucus of parties that has the majority rules. So while you now have Cool Guys and Democrats, you would just end up with Cool Guys and Democrats caucusing together to create a majority (if they one enough seats together) and the “Democratic Party” would effectively be the Cool Guys and the Democrats. In a very real sense it sure looks like a two party system again doesn’t it? Since the majority rules you are going to end up with two blocs, whether they all share the same party name or not doesn’t really matter, you are still going to have two blocs. That is the only way to end up with a majority. Truth is the political parties are not idiots, even though they seem like it, if the Cool Guys appeared to be getting traction, the Democratic Party would absorb their ideas, if they differed, and now you have no more Cool Guys. If you look carefully over the decades you see the parties changing ever so slightly when some issue becomes popular with part of the public. It just gets absorbed into one or the other parties.
When looking at voting numbers, in general, it is pretty amazing the two parties most of the time come out very roughly close to 50 50 in the vote. Each party absorbs “interest groups” as needed to remain competitive in the two party set up. This is not an accident. Both parties maintain a coalition of interest groups as best they can under the tent of the party. Those interest groups tolerate the party not being 100% about their issue because they know the majority party rules.
So to sum, until you actually see incumbents being voted out of office wholesale, which has not happened in a very long time, and there is NO evidence this is changing, a third party will not arise. Could they capture a seat? Well you already have “independents” in the Senate. What do they do? They caucus with the party, in this case the Democrats. They vote like Dems, talk like Dems, support Dems and only their affiliation differs. For all practical purposes they are Dems and not really an independent or third party. If everyone was thrown out each election you might get a third party capturing a significant number of seats. But as I said, each party absorbs these new ideas from these parties making them irrelevant regarding policy. Without some really dramatic change in the public’s voting habits, not only will it remain two parties, but the party incumbents will win the majority of the time with effectively very little change even within the two parties.
Our government structure tends strongly to two parties though for the above reason. If voters actually did “throw the bums out” you would not have them replaced by a third party. Or if they were, it would be third party in name only.
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