Sixty-three percent of Americans say a third U.S. political party is needed, up from 56% a year ago and by one percentage point the highest in Gallup's 20-year trend.
Story Highlights
Third time support has exceeded 60%, along with 2017 and 2021
Republicans primarily behind the increase, with 58% now in favor
Political independents remain group most likely to favor third party
I want third parties, but before that happens we need Ranked Choice Voting or Approval Voting. Otherwise, voting third party is essentially just taking votes from the major party most closely aligned with that third party.
If only the politicians in the dominant parties had any incentive to make elections fair for all parties. As it stands, the dominant parties have too many systems in place to give themselves advantages.
Rank choice voting seems like an obvious upgrade to our current voting system but is nowhere to be found other than a couple states.
Does the GOP still count as a political party? What is their platform, anyways? I don't think "install a dictator and oppress minorities" counts as a platform. Point is, maybe we should look at getting a second political party first. One that can actually represent conservatives.
A third party in the US would just replace one of the 2 existing parties so within one or two election cycles we'd be back to two anyway. And with the way the parties are acting currently it would probably be the Republican party to collapse and be replaced.
I went third party in 2016 because I was disgusted and at the time I didn't think my state would ever be anything but red. Since then I've learned that I am very much in a swing state and Republicans have made it very clear they are going full fascist. There is at least one conservative think tank spreading the idea that we need a "Red Caesar" which sounds a lot like Mussolini to me. I don't know if it's possible to shift the Democratic party further left or not at this point, but I won't be voting third party again unless there is some massive change in the way we handle elections.
Regardless of what side your on as a Canadian I'd warn you that you need ranked voting for this kind of thing to work. We don't have that here.
We have one prominently right party and 2 left parties. This heavily skews the votes towards the right as left votes are being split between 2 parties. Often as a left voter you have to vote for the more popular party even if you don't like them in order to keep the right leaning party from winning.
Ranked voting would fix this issue but neither of the 2 popular parties on eatch side, who can fix this want to fix it. Both the popular left and right parties work to supress all other parties.
If your not getting ranked voting that 3rd party will only exist to split the vote for whatever side its on.
Just remember - with first past the post third party is structurally prevented from rising. Get busy with local election reform in your state: look for ranked choice or approval voting initiatives with some steam
Then vote for one? We do have more than democrat and republican. They're usually not much better. Ain't no difference between 2 piles of shit or 5. It's all shit. Nobody who wants these jobs is ever fit enough that they should have them.
look, we became a global military and economic superpower under the two-party system.
We built the strongest middle class in history under the two-party system.
We ended segregation, and made huge progress in LGBTQ rights under the two-party system.
Solving our country's problems do not require more political parties. And the last time liberals tried this, Ralph Nader's spoiler party gave The election to George W. Bush, instead of Al Gore.
That's the Iraq War. That's the 3 trillion dollar giveaway to the ultra rich. That's blocking stem cell research. That's years of accelerated climate change. Years of no movement on healthcare.
No. Fuck that.
If you want to change things, take a note from the Republicans: change comes from WITHIN your party.
If we'd picked Bernie instead of Hillary, the Democrats would have become the liberal party we need.
Unfortunately we don't have a Presidential primary this year, when we desperately need one. So our choice is Biden or ... Full-on fascism.
If only people voted for what they wanted instead of against what they were scared of because that number is more than enough for a political shift even if there were two alternative parties, one to each main one. The 'wasted vote' propagand is doing more work keeping republicans in charge than the supreme court is. Since more republicans than democrats want a third party, so the only worry should be that too many democrats get elected if we tried.
If any of you actually want to work towards a solution to this look into Forward Party. Forward Party is trying to make third parties actually viable through ranked-choice voting and open, nonpartisan primaries. Once states move past First Past the Post voting, it will actually be possible to vote for third parties without acting as a spoiler.
It's funny how the founders were so concerned about political factions forming and basically put in all the safeguards they could think of to prevent it.
So, if Trump goes to jail before the republican convention, we might see them Nominate the runner up, and a third party run by Trump might split the vote?