What is the threshold for a political party to be taken seriously?

[Milchshake]

Its an exciting election year. Some of my friends, and people not my friends, are really into 3rd Party candidates. But these people are really bad at salesmanship, and I'm not convinced. Trying to be rational, I'm wondering what metric would allow me to take them more seriously?

Is it just a numbers game? What matters more, number of party members, or the number of party members that actually run for office?

The US has been estimated to have a mind-boggling 500,000+ elected offices.


Now the Greens for example, are running about 130 candidates this year, according to their own database.

Is running for 0.00026 of available offices a viable party? Is it really a revolution?

I couldn't find a database for Libertarian candidates this year. I'm guessing they're hiding it from all the black helicopters.

[kail]

It's all about the rule of two in the U.S.

[Nihilist74]

Its always going to be two parties because of political ideology. People are either left or right with varying degrees of how far left or right they are. The majority of people are always going to be moderately left or right. Sometimes the moderates can be influenced to go a little farther left or right than what they are but that just changes the center of the political compass a little bit.

[vareck]

The threshold is to not be in a first past the post system.

[Deleted]

Its always going to be two parties because of political ideology. People are either left or right with varying degrees of how far left or right they are.

This is simply not true. The left-right axis is far from the only one, and it is becoming less and less relevant each day, if it even has any meaning at all anymore. Is Trump far far to the "right"? Or is he in fact to the "left" of Hillary? Or something that doesn't fit either way? You could argue either, and it would all be true, because left-right is just empty words, not ideology.

It's effectively not even really two parties anymore, as the huge split within both parties this year shows. The Republicans is like two parties within one. The Bernie faction is smaller within the Dems and more willing to unite against Trump, except for a small vocal minority. It is only two parties because the system is designed for that.

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Best chance for 3rd party is to gain foothold locally and/or regionally. Not initially trying to compete nationally. The presidency is the last bastion a 3rd party could gain. Start winning mayoral elections, state legislatures, then build to get congressional seats, and eventually the public is to get used to it. With the US focus on mainly electing individuals, find locally well known people and have them run. It really shouldn't be that hard in the US as it is in many other countries. No real reason why the US in particular would have to be dominated by just two parties. The UK too have a first past the post system, yet regional parties play a bit role, as well as the Libdems and (recently) the UKIP. But you have to focus on strong regions, and focus on winning small elections one by one and build from there.

[Adam Jensen]

Its always going to be two parties because of political ideology. People are either left or right with varying degrees of how far left or right they are. The majority of people are always going to be moderately left or right. Sometimes the moderates can be influenced to go a little farther left or right than what they are but that just changes the center of the political compass a little bit.

It's always going to be two parties because First Past the Post voting always turns into two parties. If we start with 5, 25, 25,000 parties, eventually it'll whittle down to two. Supporters of the losing parties always flock to the more likely to win parties closest to their desires until there are two remaining.

FPTP needs to go.

Here's a list of interesting videos discussing the matter and giving some alternatives to think about: http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/

[Forogil]

This is simply not true. The left-right axis is far from the only one, and it is becoming less and less relevant each day, if it even has any meaning at all anymore. Is Trump far far to the "right"? Or is he in fact to the "left" of Hillary? Or something that doesn't fit either way? You could argue either, and it would all be true, because left-right is just empty words, not ideology.

This was also the cover-story of this week's 'The Economist' - they see a new divide between "open" and "closed" (including both Trump and Sanders in the closed camp).