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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

This is such a discouraging and sad view point. I'm not saying it's wrong, just pessimistic, and not blaming you for saying it just venting. Who cares if it's more x than y. Most voters are moderates. Myself, and many moderates, feel completely unrepresented by either side. Not liberal enough to vote D, and not conservative enough to vote R. You'd think they'd be drifting together, but increasingly are drifting further apart. Why not encourage more parties, or at least some middle ground party, if what we have today sucks. Surely there's a better reason than "so the other guys don't win"

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"not liberal enough to vote D, not conservative enough to vote R"? That is a very reductive view. What do you actually support? Is climate change real? Do workers deserve more rights like minimum wage, fedrally mandated paid holidy, fixed working hours? Then there are "social" issues the government shoulden't even have a hand in unless you want a theoracy. The modern right only fights on the basis of said "social" issues. If that is the only thing important to you, vote R otherwise vote D but keep pressuring them. Also, even with countries with multiple parties it just turns into a race between two. In India its BJP or Congress, in Pakistan until very recently it was PPP or PML, now there is also PTI. In UK its conservative or labor. So you kust pick one of the two and push that one for what you want, there is no perfect representation no matter how many parties you have.

The vast majority of US voters are either essentially conservative/Republican or liberal/Democrat, however they identify themselves to pollsters. The very small number of people who are actually swing voters generally aren't that way because they have midpoint positions on the issues, and they are on average also much less well-informed in general.

See https://www.vox.com/2018/7/23/17575768/swing-voters-exist and links from it for evidence of these claims.

A lot of my views trend liberal, but I don't really feel very well represented by the Democratic Party... really I think we would do better to have multiple smaller parties and a better voting system, and to somehow remove the giant monetary influences that seem to corrupt all decision making.

The past five years have really done a number on us all. You're right about the huge divide that's developed, it's scary.