NationStates Jolt Archive

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?

would you prefer a different system?I would, but I've had the pleasure in voting in a different system, so I guess I'm biased.

We've got hundreds of parties.. it's just that no one votes for any of them but two.. it's not like the Constitution mandated two. We've had Presidents run and win on third-party platforms (kinda), with Teddy Roosevelt. Bill Clinton was elected in part thanks to the Reform Party candidate, Ross Perot...

The first past the post system generally encourages a two party system to form as it makes it harder for third parties to win voters over. If the US had proportional representation there would be more parties.

The first past the post system generally encourages a two party system to form as it makes it harder for third parties to win voters over. If the US had proportional representation there would be more parties.

Yeah, but then you've got parties getting 30% of the vote who then must beg and scrape to some fringe party, making all kinds of concessions, to form some kind of coalition to put them past another party who got a 38% share of the vote.. it only gives politicians more power to govern via backroom deals and tricks. When I vote for Bush, and Bush wins.. Bush chooses the government. He doesn't have to beg for Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot's 3% and promise them the world to get into office.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?

But most other countries who have a multiple party system have at least 2 parties which are only dissimilar in name-see 2 main irl parties

Not that i know that much about politics but I've done some history, wasn't proportional representation what helped let the nazi's into power?

Yeah, but then you've got parties getting 30% of the vote who then must beg and scrape to some fringe party, making all kinds of concessions, to form some kind of coalition to put them past another party who got a 38% share of the vote.. it only gives politicians more power to govern via backroom deals and tricks. When I vote for Bush, and Bush wins.. Bush chooses the government. He doesn't have to beg for Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot's 3% and promise them the world to get into office.Why is division of power a bad thing? Besides, that way, even certain minorities would get a voice in the government and it wouldn't be a dictatorship of the majority.

Not that i know that much about politics but I've done some history, wasn't proportional representation what helped let the nazi's into power?It was democracy that put the Nazis in power, if you want to put it that way.

We've got hundreds of parties.. it's just that no one votes for any of them but two.. it's not like the Constitution mandated two. We've had Presidents run and win on third-party platforms (kinda), with Teddy Roosevelt. Bill Clinton was elected in part thanks to the Reform Party candidate, Ross Perot...
ah ok... from the way its usually expressed i actually thought it was a literal 2 party system, with other 'indipendents'
i guess its just more extreme than here in the uk...

The first past the post system generally encourages a two party system to form as it makes it harder for third parties to win voters over. If the US had proportional representation there would be more parties.
here in the UK we have had a mostly 2 party system for a long time, but are now moving to a 3 party system.

that said the smaller parties do get a fair proportion of the vote (more so than the practical 50/50 split between kerry & bush would allow)

Why is division of power a bad thing? Besides, that way, even certain minorities would get a voice in the government and it wouldn't be a dictatorship of the majority.

I enjoy dictatorship of the majority. If 95% of the vote is deadlocked between parties, and the remaining 5% is controlled by a small faction that wants abolition of abortion or the death penalty, say, then they may get their wish despite both major parties wanting neither. Besides, Federalism, separation of powers, term limits, referenda, and the Supreme Court keep the executive from smashing through dictatorial programs.

Not that i know that much about politics but I've done some history, wasn't proportional representation what helped let the nazi's into power?

No, it was 58% of the votes.

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And coalitions and multipartidism are good, not bad. Look what happened in Cataluña:

PSC won
CiU was the second force.
ERC got the third place.
PPC "was here".
And, at last, IC-V reached the fifth place.

PSC formed a coalition with ERC and IC-V, based on the number of votes of each one of them; so PSC took the Presidency, ERC about 1/3 of the councils and IC-V a pair of them.

Why do I say it is good? Because it is distribution of power, and the thousands of people who voted ERC can help PSC to reach the power in exchange of a part

I enjoy dictatorship of the majority. If 95% of the vote is deadlocked between parties, and the remaining 5% is controlled by a small faction that wants abolition of abortion or the death penalty, say, then they may get their wish despite both major parties wanting neither. Besides, Federalism, separation of powers, term limits, referenda, and the Supreme Court keep the executive from smashing through dictatorial programs.Why should two large parties that could get along try to woo an extreme party?

Edit: And besides, in Germany, 5% is needed to get into parliament in the first place, so there has never been a 100% distribution of votes since the Weimar Republic.

I also live in a nation that runs on a two party system (Australia) and I find that it's really a pretty bad system to have when the government is making sweeping claims about the nation being a 'democracy'.

Here at the moment, we essentially have a choice of voting centre-right who is all for going to war whereever America points us, and centre-right who wants to think about it a bit, then go to war whereever America points us. The two party system inevitably ends up with both parties standing for exactly the same things, so you don't even have the illusion of choice anymore, because voting for a third party is essentially 'throwing your vote away'. This is the case whereever I've seen a two party political system functioning.

Of course, I vote for a third party anyway, because I can't bring myself to support a party that simply doesn't stand for any of the things I would want a party to stand for.

The way I see it, that particular brand of politics needs to be dumped; it doesn't work.

Thats it isint it because john howard wants america to helps us if we ever need help we just follow america around kissing there backside whenever possible what diffrence do our troops make in iraq or vietnam or soon to be iran we send maybe 2000 troops at the most when america can send more but cant be bothered i wish that for onice australia can realised that if it makes friends with asia and gets back it's almost lost relatioship with
new zealand that we dont even need america's help.

And note that in a bipartidist system you are forced to vote one of the two options, or to abstain if you don't like any of them.

In Spain the main party now is PSOE, center-left; while the main oppositor is PP, right; but if you don't like any of them you can opt for IU (left), the Green Party, the Extreme right/left parties, regionalists/nationalists/independentists like PNV-EAJ, CiU, BNG, PA, CC.

As you see, you can vote whatever you want, watever fits best to you, don't worry if you're a weapon-loving texan or a budhist monk. This is plurality.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?
Would I prefer a different system? Yes, but not one of the "standard issue" models. As I've indicated before, I would prefer to have totally open elections, with people writing in their choices for President out of all eligible people in the Country; no electioneering, no paid campaign advertising, etc. If no one person got a clear majority in the firsl round of balloting, hold a run-off election between the top two. Will it ever happen? No.

As to why a two-party Nation, it was a natural outgrowth of the existing dichotomy in the original politics after Independence:

Federalists v. Republicans, 1780s - 1801 (http://www.mury.k12.ut.us/mhs/apus/handouts/politicalparties.htm)

Federalists

Favored strong central government.
"Loose" interpretation of the Constitution.
Encouragement of commerce and manufacturing.
Strongest in Northeast.
Favored close ties with Britain.

Republicans

Emphasized order and stability.
Emphasized states' rights.
"Strict" interpretation of the Constitution.
Preference for agriculture and rural life.
Strength in South and West.
Foreign policy sympathized with France.
Stressed civil liberties and trust in the people

considering the financial backing both parties have and the sway the hold over the media is it possible for another party to gain power? i'm not really sure how they are funded or how your government works... are they any independants or anything in the senate?

There is, if I'm not mistaken, one Independent Senator at the moment. But to answer your other question, no. I don't see another actual party having any say in Congress during my lifetime. There's just so much electioneering, so much partisanship, and you need to gain a ridiculous amount of the vote to qualify for the federal funding that the Democrats and Republicans get. It's not my favorite system.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?
There are serious problems with the two party system as practiced in the USA:
a) the 'winner take all' system permits one party to dominate all political discourse and stay in power four years, even though the majority no longer agrees with how it governs;
b) it permits minority fractions to take over established parties and alter what those parties are suppose to stand for (e.g. since Reagan, the Republican party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism);
c) it does not permit a 'vote of no confidence' in the government and its policies which would compel a new election.

The 'presidential republic' does not work. I would favor a parliamentary democracy with a 5% quota (like Germany) to keep out the idiot fringe. I would favor parties (more than two) whose political positions were clearly expressed. I would favor a supreme court whose justices were recommended by the bar association and chosen by the Parliament, not the executive.

i wish that for onice australia can realised that if it makes friends with asia and gets back it's almost lost relatioship with new zealand that we dont even need america's help. Wahaha! Tell that to China.

Us: "Help we're being invaded! Because we spent crap-all on our military any tin-pot dictatorship can topple us! You'll help us right?!"

China: "Sucks to be you!"

John Howard may be an asshole, but he's not an idiot. We need American military power on our side.

Do I agree with most of his policies? No.

Do I think the alliance with the U.S. is vital for our safety? Damn right I do.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?

Pardon but 'Duh' Of course.

Well, I think the best would be a few strong parties (more than two) and a few "protest-parties", to keep the big ones from getting too arrogant.
In Norway, where I'm from, I believe we have too many parties.
Thankfully a party has to have a certain percentage of the votes to get on the Storting (our parliament).
One strength and weakness with the Norwegian system (apart from the multitude of parties) is that each county gets a certain number of seats in the Storting. On the positive side this means that certain low-population areas can get their voice heard.
On the negative side: The winner of an election isn't neccessarily the one with the most votes. It depends on which county/counties the votes came from.
My favourite system would be one where every vote counted equally, but where the counties/regions had more power, and the party-"structure" I suggested in the beginning of this post.

Conquest Inc

Indepedents are a slightly different thing to having more parties to choose between. They spring up often as protest votes about a particular cause.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?

It doesn't say "two party state" in our Constitution. It's just the way the system has settled out.

Technically, there's no reason that we couldn't have more parties - it's just not worked out that way.

We've got hundreds of parties.. it's just that no one votes for any of them but two.. it's not like the Constitution mandated two. We've had Presidents run and win on third-party platforms (kinda), with Teddy Roosevelt. Bill Clinton was elected in part thanks to the Reform Party candidate, Ross Perot...

And in all reality, Bush was nominated his first time in part because of Third Party Candidate Ralph Nader, who, after winning 4 states, gave those electoral votes to Bush causing him to be close enough to challenge Gore and win the election. Were it not for Ralph Nader, essentially Bush would never have been elected.

The only thing good about our present two party system is that it isn't a one party system. But the parties are really getting good at working together to screw us over, so it is just a matter of time.

The only thing good about our present two party system is that it isn't a one party system. But the parties are really getting good at working together to screw us over, so it is just a matter of time.

I've pointed out before that they might as well be one party. From a philosophical viewpoint, the Democrats and Republicans are far closer than the pundits would ever admit.

That, and the last time around, we had two frat brothers from Skull and Bones who are both in bed with corporate interests, running for President.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?
Like the British system in which the majority never voted/voted against the Labour Party and yet they are stuck with Prime Minister Blair?

The country is currently polarized to Democrats and Republicans anyway, it's not like it's not representative of our current state, at this point in time anyway.

In any case, I'd prefer not having parties and instead people focusing on bettering their own state, rather than the entire nation at once. Give people 50 choices for all 50 states, like it was meant to be when the nation was founded.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?
Yes but in the end people line up behind one or the other just to win … it sucks cause that helps propagate the system but we are just stuck in a rut.

I view the present state of affairs in the U.S. as a one party system that emphasizes two ever-so-slightly different choices for each election.

Bear in mind that, while I truly think this is how things are, I do not see it as a bad thing overall.

Interestingly, there is no dearth of choices in the "other" category. Plenty of third party candidates.

why a two party state? i've just realised i don't get it.
benefits, disbenefits, reasons for it?

would you prefer a different system?

The two party system is the consequence of single-round elections. People have a "choice" between voting for one of the two big parties, or essentially throwing away their vote, because there's only one round. In a two-round election (as we have in France) you can vote for any party you want without your vote being "wasted", and our Parliament is multi-party.

The two party system is the consequence of single-round elections. People have a "choice" between voting for one of the two big parties, or essentially throwing away their vote, because there's only one round. In a two-round election (as we have in France) you can vote for any party you want without your vote being "wasted", and our Parliament is multi-party.A two party system is not the consequence of a single-round election. Germany only has one round and multiple parties in parliament. The main difference is that Germans only elect parliament and parliament proceeds to elect the head of the government, whereas in France and the United States, the citizens elect the President.

The first past the post system generally encourages a two party system to form as it makes it harder for third parties to win voters over. If the US had proportional representation there would be more parties.
would proportional representation make voting fairer?

would proportional representation make voting fairer?Of course. It would give leftists a voice.

yey for the parliament system