I think there's a lot of party-line-voting democrats that are only party-line voting because the republicans are just that awful.
as it stands democrats are poised for a split and the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of just how far right the republicans have gone. It should be telling that Corporate Dems like Biden are taking positions that republicans used to defend. weird times, huh?
The nature of FPTP elections makes every election, functionally, the lesser of two evils. Anyone voter who isn't civically illiterate understands this, and votes for whichever of the two main parties presents a less fundamental affront to said voter's sensibilities. For actually-not-that-complicated game theory reasons, the only rational justification for voting third party is if both main parties are exactly equivalently evil, from the voter's perspective. This is only really possible if the voter doesn't really think about the parties, their platforms, or their histories much at all.
yes. and that's kind of why I'd love to move away from FPTP systems.
ranked choice and a few other odds and ends should tidily break the current strangle hold both parties have on politics. but they're both apposed to it because sharing power is better than having even less.
In addition to what the other comment said, FPTP causes the Overton Window to continually shift right. As the political right party takes even more radical positions and rallies/propagandises people to support that radical position, in order to gather enough voters to stand a chance the political left party moves rightward to pull the more moderate right-wing voter's.
Weakness of the First Past The Post system is that it inheritly forces you to binarily vote for the 'lesser' evil. When the vote is determining "a shit sandwich for lunch, or a bubonic plage sandwich", it doesn't allow for a chicken suggestion, as that would split the Shit votes and let Plague win. So, the chicken sandwich voters must vote shit, because Shit at the end of the day is better than Plague.
Less and less people are going for the shitty option, which is both.
No matter what, they vote for eho they want.
Long term wins over short term.
