Duopoly in the United States, and Why

Both political parties have low approval ratings, yet both parties are stronger than ever

Perhaps one of the most common questions asked by Americans is “why do we only have two (major) parties?”, especially when both have relatively low approval ratings. Well, the answer is both very complicated, yet not really complicated. The founding fathers’ had disdain for a duopoly (“a situation in which two suppliers [political parties] dominate the market for a commodity or service”), and rightfully so. With only two major parties, it is far easier to create partisanship, something talked about at great length during the American Revolution and noted often in The Federalist Papers. Our first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, acknowledged this problem during their administrations, effectively stating that a nation dominated by two and only two national political parties would create polarization, and they were right. According to several research firms, including Pew Research Center, which has done extensive studies on polarization, all reached the same conclusion: partisanship is at its greatest height in recent memory. However, the story about partisanship will be covered later, as covering two topics with extensive history and a plethora of information to cover, it’s better to digest one than another, instead of cramming them both. So, two parties…

Why do we only have two parties? The easy, noncomplicated answer is that’s how our system was set up. First, we have the Electoral College, which requires a candidate to get 50%+1 of the vote (a simple majority). There are 538 electoral votes, so the first to 270 wins (which is why you see a large emphasis on the number “270”. This is also why the website FiveThirtyEight uses that number: 538 electoral votes. With the possibility of D.C. and Puerto Rico becoming states, FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver must be looking at additional domains to purchase up) the presidency. One of the biggest criticisms of the EC is the fact that a candidate can win the election without winning a majority of the popular vote (the grand total of each individual vote). This is most notable on the left; there has been a recent push (dating back to 2000, with Bush v. Gore, where the election came down to Florida, and specifically one county in Florida) to abolish the EC and create a system that awards the presidency to the candidate who gets the highest number of the national popular vote. This whole topic also warrants an entire article, as there are quite a few moving parts. Because a candidate only needs a simple majority to win, it stifles third-party influence.

However, the Electoral College is only but one cog in our electoral political machine. The other cog is our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) election system. This is where things tend to get a bit more complicated. In FPTP systems, candidates who receive the most votes, wins. In our congressional races (Senate and House), this requires only a plurality of votes. A plurality is when a candidate gets the most votes, but does not have a majority (for example, lets imagine we have three candidates running, John, Joe, and Jackie; if John gets 40% of the votes, Joe gets 35% of the votes, and Jackie gets the remaining 25%, John would win. Note how during presidential elections, the winning candidate MUST receive a simple majority). The other part to our FPTP system is that we have what’s called “single-member districts”, that is, districts represented by only one person. Because of this winner-take-all system, it doesn’t matter if you lose by one vote or one million votes, the losing candidate (and their respective voters/political party) get zero representation within that district. When these two work in tandem, it creates a duopoly- a country with two major political parties. To go even more in the weeds…

Let me introduce Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who in the 1950s and 60s, published a series of papers on the effect now known as “Duverger’s Law”. This law states that “single-ballot, plurality-rule elections within single-member districts favor a two-party system”. FPTP? Check. Single-member districts? Check. Two major parties? Check. And what do we see here, in the US? A duopoly. This law holds true. The real question is why does this law hold true? One big suggestion is the “wasted vote” complex; many people worry about their vote being wasted on a lesser candidate/party, one that likely wasn’t going to win, and would rather their vote go towards a candidate/party that has a higher chance of winning. As aforementioned, candidates/parties that come in second or third in our system have zero representation. In parliamentary systems, however, this wouldn’t be the case; in these systems, more often than not, they have proportional representation. Let’s harken back to our three candidates; assuming only 100 votes were cast (for simplicity sake), if that current vote total held true (John with 40%, Joe with 35%, and Jackie with 25%), they would receive 40 seats, 35 seats, and 25 seats, respectively. In such a system, it’s easy to see why countries such as the UK, Israel, Canada, etc., have multiple “major” parties. Systems such as these give third and fourth parties more credibility and allow them to make much more of a political impact. Alas, in the US,t here is next to no incentive for third and fourth parties to run.

One of the biggest examples of why we are a two-party system and why Duverger’s Law holds true (at least in the US), is third-parties running for POTUS (President of the United States). Let’s take the 1992 presidential election into consideration; George H. W. Bush (R), the incumbent, was running for reelection against Bill Clinton (D) and Ross Perot (Independent). The vote totals were as follows: Bush- 39.1 million votes, Clinton- 44.9 million votes, and Perot, 19.7 million votes. Now, lets look at the electoral outcome; Bush got 168 electoral votes, Clinton had 370, and Perot had…0. Perot received nearly 20% of the vote and got zero electoral votes.

Although it is theoretically easier for third-parties to run and win elections at the congressional level, in practice that is not the case. Take the 117th (and current) congress- in the Senate we have 50 members of the Democratic party (including two independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, that caucus with the democrats), and 50 members of the GOP. In the House, we have 221 democrats, 211 GOP members, along with 3 vacancies. There are zero independents/third party members. It’s much the same here in Minnesota; our congress has only 2 independents out of a possible 201 seats.

To review: the US is dominated by two political parties due in part to how the rules have been established. With single-member districts and an executive branch that is winner-take-all, there is next to no way for a third-party to come to prominence. If, say, the libertarian party somehow gained enough traction to become a viable contender at the federal level, it would have to replace either the GOP or the democratic party, and we would still be locked into a duopoly, but with a different party.

I understand that this article is pretty long and at times convoluted/cumbersome, and I apologize for that. If there are any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to reach out! Email: mnpolitics.space@gmail.com, Twitter @mnpoliticalarena, or via Facebook!