Explain Like I'm 5 (ELI5)

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ELI5: Why do only the two biggest parties in the US a chance to win an election? (feddit.org)

submitted 3 months ago by tux0r@feddit.org to c/eli5@lemmy.world

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I mean, there is a variety of intriguing political parties, but it's still always "Republicans or Democrats". Why?

(Disclosure: I'm German, never been to the US.)

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[–] 97xBang@feddit.online 1 points 5 hours ago

It's because whomever gets the most votes, gets the office they ran for.

Say there is an election for a state governor this year. The candidate that gets the most votes is the one that gets the position. Let's say there are four candidates running, each representing one the following four parties: Ones, Twos, Alphas, & Betas. The population is mostly evenly distributed among the parties so that each have 25% of the vote. Of this election, whomever gets the most votes wins, so they focus on getting their people out to vote. Now, Ones and Twos have much more in common with each other than the rest, so they decide that it's better if they team up because while they may not be perfectly happy if they win, they'll be more happy than if either Alphas or Betas win. They create a joint party called Numbers. The voting population is now distributed so that Numbers have 50% of the vote, while Alphas and Betas have 25% each. The Numbers party will now easily win all elections. Alphas and Betas see this, and they decide to join their parties too, coming out with the Alphabets party. What was once four parties became three then two.

This is an effect that results from having a winner-takes-all (i.e. first-past-the-post) type of election. In places where people vote for parties of their legislature, and the legislature then elects their executive leader, you get more parties. People can vote for their favorite party that represents them best. Those get into legislative office. Then, those parties can team up to promote their favorite candidate for leadership. In this manner, everyone has a more detailed representation, so the legislature represents the population more correctly. The downside is that the leader is not directly voted on by the population, but the politicians.

I may be a little incorrect on how the details work in the second paragraph, but that's the general idea. If you want to see a video that explains the first paragraph using animals as parties, check this CGP Grey video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo