Decline of Third Party's
- Thread starter kevinr
- Start date
I gather that the US political system was already set into a deeply ingrained trend to bipartitism. Most of those "third parties" had never amounted to much to begin with, though actually without the USCW you could see three big competing political agendas tied to interests of large constituencies in the North, the South and the West respectively.
The problem is that a system with three territorially-based large parties tends to be inherently unstable, as in two out of three will need to come to an understanding of sorts to rule the whole thing.
It may be said to have happened to a point IOTL: the Southern constituency felt isolated without a way out because Northern and Western interests were seemingly in the process to rally towards a Republican party, and the South would be excluded long-term.
It was to some extent a misperception, and it was much more complicated than this, but my opinion (as an imperfectly informed non-American) is that the American political system has significant built-in rails leading towards a fairly stabler two-party system. The war merely accelerated this (and possibly not very much), but it was active well before it.
By the way, I think that a more pluralistic party system would be good for America overall, but very difficult to achieve and requiring large institutional tinkering to be stable. But this bit actually would belong to Chat.
Wolfpaw
Banned
The Whigs were never really a third party. The Free-Soilers were basically anti-slavery Democrats who never won a state, and the Know Nothings only won Maryland. By comparison, the Populist Party of the late 19th Century and the Progressive Party of the early 20th did better electorally.
And look at the 1872 election; we had more candidates there than ever before, and in subsequent elections we had more third party candidates.
And look at the 1872 election; we had more candidates there than ever before, and in subsequent elections we had more third party candidates.
Thande
Donor
This is slightly misleading because of the electoral college though. The Populists' base of support was in the recently-admitted, low-population Plains states, before the mainstream parties had really put down roots there and they were able to take advantage of that to win electoral votes. By contrast, Fillmore's 1856 Know Nothing campaign only carried Maryland but actually built up big popular votes across a wide swathe of states and came close to carrying several more. It helped that because the Republicans often weren't even on the ballot in the southern states, the Know Nothings were the only competition to the Democrats there.