I appreciate the intentions of the authors in offering solutions, but RCV is a flawed tactic for advancing third parties. It has advantages in letting people feel "heard" in casting their vote, but it will not make third parties viable.
Look at Maine, who has used RCV in their last four federal elections. With Maine residents free to cast their first round votes for third parties knowing that they won't "spoil" the election, what sort of results have been produced? In every single election, more than 93% of voters have cast their first round vote for the Republican or Democrat. (The sole exception is Independent Senator Rufus King.) Even with RCV, no serious third party challengers have emerged in the decade since it's adoption. And in Alaska, independent candidates who make it through the jungle primary into the Final Four general election frequently drop out - with good reason.
At the core of Duverger's law is that our elections are winner-take-all. The most efficient way for markets to allocate resources in a winner-take-all scenario is to have one winner, one loser. Campaigns are expensive, so sometimes you even see half of the duopoly concede a seat rather than waste resources on a losing campaign. A multiparty system would be even more wasteful - two losers, three losers, four losers - that's why competitive third parties never last. Once they burn through an initial investment of cash and energy, they get co-opted into one of the big tents... and the duopoly marches on.
A third party likely isn't the answer. Only a "movement" or grand coalition of people of various party affiliations (including independent, unafilliated, and even previously non-voting) would be inclusive enough to constitute a governing majority.
These Americans (in what I call The Big Middle, where you find 65% or more agreeing in polls) will need to come to consensus together, directly. And the means to do that today, in the digital era — to "meet people where they are" — is clearly online: An interactive platform enabling the building of a political platform that candidates and voters of all stripes can get behind and support.
We need to better leverage 21st century tools to solve our common problems. We need to use them as effectively to come together as those who are using them to tear us apart. Our politics and media are still stuck in outdated 20th century mode. The days of town halls, conferences, Oxford-style debates, newspaper editorials, opinion pieces, cable TV roundtables — even endless social feeds and 1:1 conversations that "help us understand where our neighbor is coming from" but do not lead to practical results — are over.
We must convene the community of citizens, at scale online, and lead / moderate a fair and rigorous process of coming to consensus on actionable solutions. If we are not fostering consensus, we are just adding to the noise. Let’s meet in The Big Middle, where most Americans are, and get started now.
New parties have succeeded in the U.S., even with its first-past-the-post electoral system. One example would be the Republicans, at the time an angry regional party focussed entirely on slavery - which they wanted abolished, or at least restricted to die-hard states that already had slaves. The context was the run up to the US Civil War
There are, however, lots of preconditions for such success. One of the two national parties (the Whigs) had basically imploded, due to conflict between pro- and anti-slavery factions, essentially regionally based. The other party (the Democrats) wasn't doing all that well, in part because of the same issues.
The Republicans took a firm position on a single issue - that mattered to a lot of people. Those people could be found in both of the then major parties, and weren't happy with those parties' compromises on their issue. They weren't founded by some oligarch or political leader, unhappy not to have received a presidential nomination from one or other of the then current two major parties. No one would have described them as being launched by a single individual, who became their presidential candidate, before fading away along with their new party.
Because it wasn't the party of Some Particular Leader, it could keep trying and keep growing over a longer period than most presidential candidates remain viable - well known enough for a try, but not too old and infirm to handle the job, or the campaigning.
Because of other factors, the more popular parts of its agenda simply could not be preempted by the existing two main parties - the normal fate of minor parties, even in countries where they regularly hold seats in the legislature, and even control some localities (states, cities, etc.).
That's what a US third party would need. We don't have it currently - most people are if anything, loyal followers of their party/tribe, subscribing to all its policies, or at least giving that impression except to people very close to them.
p.s. I wouldn't vote for Musk given any kind of choice; I'd vote for a rhinoceros from the local zoo first.
Nope, the Republicans were a NEW party but not a third party. The Whigs had collapsed a few years earlier, leaving Democrats as the only major party, and Republicans cobbled together a new coalition to restore balance to the duopoly - the system of two major parties that the US has had since the 18th century, even if the names have changed along the way.
Like Yoda said: "Always two there are. No more, no less."
At this point, neither party has imploded - but the Democrats might be working on an implosion. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next decade - though i admit that I'd prefer to be reading about it in a history book rather than living it.
Except, after 160 years, the two parties have so much inertia, and so much political infrastructure, and so many people that tribally identify with the red team or blue team that it's hard to realistically imagine one of them falling apart. Instead, as we've seen with Trump, a new coalition could potentially seize control of the party.
To your theory, I would recommend the book Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP by Patrick Ruffini (2023). His analysis is especially insightful in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
I appreciate the intentions of the authors in offering solutions, but RCV is a flawed tactic for advancing third parties. It has advantages in letting people feel "heard" in casting their vote, but it will not make third parties viable.
Look at Maine, who has used RCV in their last four federal elections. With Maine residents free to cast their first round votes for third parties knowing that they won't "spoil" the election, what sort of results have been produced? In every single election, more than 93% of voters have cast their first round vote for the Republican or Democrat. (The sole exception is Independent Senator Rufus King.) Even with RCV, no serious third party challengers have emerged in the decade since it's adoption. And in Alaska, independent candidates who make it through the jungle primary into the Final Four general election frequently drop out - with good reason.
At the core of Duverger's law is that our elections are winner-take-all. The most efficient way for markets to allocate resources in a winner-take-all scenario is to have one winner, one loser. Campaigns are expensive, so sometimes you even see half of the duopoly concede a seat rather than waste resources on a losing campaign. A multiparty system would be even more wasteful - two losers, three losers, four losers - that's why competitive third parties never last. Once they burn through an initial investment of cash and energy, they get co-opted into one of the big tents... and the duopoly marches on.
A third party likely isn't the answer. Only a "movement" or grand coalition of people of various party affiliations (including independent, unafilliated, and even previously non-voting) would be inclusive enough to constitute a governing majority.
These Americans (in what I call The Big Middle, where you find 65% or more agreeing in polls) will need to come to consensus together, directly. And the means to do that today, in the digital era — to "meet people where they are" — is clearly online: An interactive platform enabling the building of a political platform that candidates and voters of all stripes can get behind and support.
We need to better leverage 21st century tools to solve our common problems. We need to use them as effectively to come together as those who are using them to tear us apart. Our politics and media are still stuck in outdated 20th century mode. The days of town halls, conferences, Oxford-style debates, newspaper editorials, opinion pieces, cable TV roundtables — even endless social feeds and 1:1 conversations that "help us understand where our neighbor is coming from" but do not lead to practical results — are over.
We must convene the community of citizens, at scale online, and lead / moderate a fair and rigorous process of coming to consensus on actionable solutions. If we are not fostering consensus, we are just adding to the noise. Let’s meet in The Big Middle, where most Americans are, and get started now.
https://substack.com/@scnorthstarconservatives/note/p-168046960?r=5r0rr7&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
New parties have succeeded in the U.S., even with its first-past-the-post electoral system. One example would be the Republicans, at the time an angry regional party focussed entirely on slavery - which they wanted abolished, or at least restricted to die-hard states that already had slaves. The context was the run up to the US Civil War
There are, however, lots of preconditions for such success. One of the two national parties (the Whigs) had basically imploded, due to conflict between pro- and anti-slavery factions, essentially regionally based. The other party (the Democrats) wasn't doing all that well, in part because of the same issues.
The Republicans took a firm position on a single issue - that mattered to a lot of people. Those people could be found in both of the then major parties, and weren't happy with those parties' compromises on their issue. They weren't founded by some oligarch or political leader, unhappy not to have received a presidential nomination from one or other of the then current two major parties. No one would have described them as being launched by a single individual, who became their presidential candidate, before fading away along with their new party.
Because it wasn't the party of Some Particular Leader, it could keep trying and keep growing over a longer period than most presidential candidates remain viable - well known enough for a try, but not too old and infirm to handle the job, or the campaigning.
Because of other factors, the more popular parts of its agenda simply could not be preempted by the existing two main parties - the normal fate of minor parties, even in countries where they regularly hold seats in the legislature, and even control some localities (states, cities, etc.).
That's what a US third party would need. We don't have it currently - most people are if anything, loyal followers of their party/tribe, subscribing to all its policies, or at least giving that impression except to people very close to them.
p.s. I wouldn't vote for Musk given any kind of choice; I'd vote for a rhinoceros from the local zoo first.
Nope, the Republicans were a NEW party but not a third party. The Whigs had collapsed a few years earlier, leaving Democrats as the only major party, and Republicans cobbled together a new coalition to restore balance to the duopoly - the system of two major parties that the US has had since the 18th century, even if the names have changed along the way.
Like Yoda said: "Always two there are. No more, no less."
At this point, neither party has imploded - but the Democrats might be working on an implosion. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next decade - though i admit that I'd prefer to be reading about it in a history book rather than living it.
Except, after 160 years, the two parties have so much inertia, and so much political infrastructure, and so many people that tribally identify with the red team or blue team that it's hard to realistically imagine one of them falling apart. Instead, as we've seen with Trump, a new coalition could potentially seize control of the party.
To your theory, I would recommend the book Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP by Patrick Ruffini (2023). His analysis is especially insightful in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.