Probably 19th century, but they wouldn't be third parties if they won :lol: America needs electoral reform (eg. preferential voting or proportional representation): But even without it, it's very difficult to imagine a worse message to send to politicians than to tell them that all they need to aim for is being the lesser of two evils. That's exactly what a two-party system does, encourages both parties to gravitate towards an establishment-dominated status quo with each appealing to their bases primarily through hyperbolic rhetoric and - besides a few key wedge issues - core policies which only slightly differ towards what their voters consider marginally 'better' than the other.
Trump is a bit of an exception, perhaps. With Clinton as probably the most uninspiring and scandal-ridden Democratic candidate of the century to date, seriously challenged by Sanders and beaten by Trump - how bad do you have to be to be for Donald Trump to be considered a better President? - one might have hoped that 2016 would be a wake-up call. Granted I don't follow US politics much beyond this forum, so I'll just take Amelia's word for it that for the Dems at least, not a lot has changed.
You're in AU so you probably don't understand that, in the USA all elections are popular vote EXCEPT for POTUS elections.
The Electoral College aggregates the majority votes in each state and then the ELECTORS cast THEIR votes, which in some states are "all or nothing" for the majority...but in other states the electoral votes get split.
But as far as the political parties go, a
POTUS election is a FOOTBALL GAME...two teams, one winner and one loser.
Nothing is gained by a tiny handful of people from "other teams" prancing around on the field except for the fact that the prancing amounts to interference.
And historically, third party interference has benefited ONLY the Republican Party for the last SIXTY YEARS except in one instance...the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, where Ross Perot ran for the Reform Party, then pulled out at the last minute.
Aside from that, third parties, no matter what their stripe, function as help, solicited or unsolicited, for Republicans because they draw off votes from fickle liberals and independents.
NO THIRD PARTY in the United States has ever even bothered to try to build a significant presence in Congress!
At least if they would bother to do that, then there would be better reasons to vote third party, because the POTUS winner, being also third party, could count on a power base in Congress.
Nope, doesn't happen, never has happened.
And in the case of 2016, 2012, 2008, and even 2004, the Green Party candidate is such a joke that people say that they go into hibernation for 3.5 years and then suddenly wake up six months before the election, thinking that they're going to win the POTUS and suddenly magically transform the country with no power base.
In other words: RAINBOW FARTING UNICORNS.
Should the USA change to a parliamentary system with coalition governments, where third parties could actually be more effective? There are many who think so but it would take several Acts of Congress and a Constitutional Amendment to make that happen.
Good luck, lotsa luck, it's GENERATIONAL LEVEL work.
Far better to reboot and retool on of the two major parties, which HAS happened several times even in the last half of the 20th century AND in 2010, when the Tea Party rebooted and retooled the Republican Party.
Not saying today's Republican Party is any good but they DID do the work to change the party.
