Most US elections, in particular the Presidential one, are first past the post and winner take all. There’s no coalitions or anything. Only one party can win. If the Democrats, for example, split into a Moderates and a Progressives party, the election landscape will go from this:
Democrats ~50%
Republicans ~50%
To this:
Moderates ~30%
Progressives ~20%
Republicans ~50%
And Republicans are guaranteed a win. The Republicans don’t win 50% of the government, they get the whole government. Progressives and Moderates get nothing. The only possible way to defeat the Republicans is by combining the Progressives and Moderates into a single party.
The third party. And if the Democrats and Republicans ever want to be viable again, they’ll have to join with each other or with the 3rd party, depending on which is closer ideologically. So we’re back to 2 parties.
And by the way, support for any 3rd parties in the US is currently at less than 5%, nowhere close to the >50‰ required to make this scenario plausible. It has happened before, though not in the last 150 years, usually with the total collapse of one of the two parties. Andrew Jackson personally caused the collapse of the existing parties by basically turning them into pro-Jackson and anti-Jackson parties. And then a few decades later the anti-Jackson party itself completely split over the question of slavery, and then the Civil War created the two parties we have today, Democrats and Republicans. The two parties almost completely swapped supporters and positions in the 1960s due to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, but the two ideological groups of voters have been the same since the mid-1800s even though they’ve changed names.
Most US elections, in particular the Presidential one, are first past the post and winner take all. There’s no coalitions or anything. Only one party can win. If the Democrats, for example, split into a Moderates and a Progressives party, the election landscape will go from this:
Democrats ~50%
Republicans ~50%
To this:
Moderates ~30%
Progressives ~20%
Republicans ~50%
And Republicans are guaranteed a win. The Republicans don’t win 50% of the government, they get the whole government. Progressives and Moderates get nothing. The only possible way to defeat the Republicans is by combining the Progressives and Moderates into a single party.
Who wins in this scenario?
The third party. And if the Democrats and Republicans ever want to be viable again, they’ll have to join with each other or with the 3rd party, depending on which is closer ideologically. So we’re back to 2 parties.
And by the way, support for any 3rd parties in the US is currently at less than 5%, nowhere close to the >50‰ required to make this scenario plausible. It has happened before, though not in the last 150 years, usually with the total collapse of one of the two parties. Andrew Jackson personally caused the collapse of the existing parties by basically turning them into pro-Jackson and anti-Jackson parties. And then a few decades later the anti-Jackson party itself completely split over the question of slavery, and then the Civil War created the two parties we have today, Democrats and Republicans. The two parties almost completely swapped supporters and positions in the 1960s due to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, but the two ideological groups of voters have been the same since the mid-1800s even though they’ve changed names.
Then it’s not mathematically impossible that a third party wins you are making up bullshit. In europe brand new parties win elections all the time
Maybe if you read more than literally the first 3 fucking words of my post, you’d realize how utterly stupid you’re sounding right now.
It’s easier than you think as i said already it happens in europe all the time.
And as I FUCKING EXPLAINED, it does not work like that in the US.