politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Heads up friend, the UK also has FPTP. We've effectively got a two party system because we have the same way of voting as you do. Even where a third party actually has a seat (like the SNP in Scotland), it just becomes a two party race between them and whichever of the two big ones the third party didn't locally displace
Northern Ireland is basically the exception, as it has separate parties and its very specific history
Maybe I'm not understanding it, I thought the UK had an election for parliament, and parliament was divided by the percentage of votes each one got. You don't for a specific representative, but rather a party. So if 49 percent of people voted for party A, 39 percent voted for party B, and 10 percent voted for party C, even if they aren't all in the same area, 10 percent of parliament would be party C (and thus party A and Party B has to cater to party C's desires).
Maybe it was the EU, but I thought the UK also worked like that, and at the very least in that situation party C has more power, but also both Party A and Party B could enact things for the public good as long as party C could be persuaded.
It's possible you heard about the Scottish or Welsh parliaments within the UK (like a state government in the US, although with somewhat more power I believe), which partially work like that. Or you've just gotten us mixed up with one of our European neighbours that does do it. Sweden and the Netherlands use a system like you described.
The UK's House of Commons, which I'll refer to as Westminster going forward, is our equivalent to the American House of Representatives. We've also got the House of Lords, which is our equivalent to the Senate, but it's unelected (largely chosen by each outgoing prime minister) and far, far less powerful than the US Senate. It can't make Westminster pass or not pass something. Anyway, Westminster is elected by first-past-the-post. 650 constituencies, each one is considered totally separately from the other, highest number of votes for a candidate in that constituency gets the seat. Whichever party has the most seats gets to try to form a government first, either with its own majority, in coalition with a minor party if it doesn't have one (happened recently with the Conservatives and the Northern Irish party the DUP), or just as a minority government if the opposition is unable to form a larger coalition.
Situations like you describe where A and B try to win the allegiance of C do happen, particularly when the Liberal Democrats were still a significant force as they typically sit somewhere between our A and B on a lot of matters. For whatever reason, smaller parties have persisted in some specific areas despite having no chance whatsoever of winning nationwide. The Northern Isles of Scotland are committed Liberal Democrat voters, for example, even though they've not been anywhere near winning nationally for a century. The C is now a pro-Scottish-independence party that is absolutely never going to agree on much with A, and which B is going to be hesitant to work with despite a number of similar policies because B doesn't want Scotland to leave either, so A and B are looking at the really small parties to work with when they need to.
The Scottish and Welsh parliaments use a mixed system. Two thirds of the seats are appointed with FPTP, but everyone makes two votes. Your first vote is for your constituency just like in Westminster or the US HoR, but you also have a second vote for your region, a collection of about eight constituencies which also gets multiple seats. The regional seats are weighted so that parties that parties that are proportionately overrepresented get less of them, so the regions loosely counteract the imbalances of the first round. In Scotland, for example, the SNP typically wins a lot of seats in both Scottish and British elections. In the British ones this results in the SNP having a huge majority of Scotland's seats (upwards of 90% some years) while only getting a little around 50% of Scotland's votes. In Scottish parliament elections, they other parties that lost to the SNP in the first round get boosted in the regional round and it comes a lot closer to being proportional, resulting in an SNP-Greens coalition government.
Again, Northern Ireland is entirely its own thing, and this comment is already getting very long