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Comment by kelipso | Hacker News Reader

The House of Representatives in the US gets voted in the exact same way that Parliament in the UK gets voted. Yet there isn't a single third party seat in the House. The problem is something non-electoral, like the third parties are not trying hard enough, or they are being blocked somehow, if they don't have even one seat in the House.

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Not the exact same way — far from it. Look up ranked choice voting. It makes third (and beyond) parties actually viable.

I was talking about the US House and UK Parliament, neither of which use ranked choice voting.

I don't think third parties even really try to organize and do the boring work of proving themselves in local/state office.

They are just spoilers; you don't see the Libertarians or Greens saying "you know what, forget the presidency, obviously we aren't going to win--let's field candidates for like mayor, city council, DA, state legislature, etc. in really swingy/purple districts and show people what we can do"

Yep, the pure delusional thinking required to seriously run for the presidency when they don't have a single elected federal position anywhere. It's beyond absurd.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-us-states-make-it-tough...

Yep, but it actually breaks the UK system to have more than two parties so the existence of two parties there isn't actually a very good alternative. There's a lot of seats in the most recent election where the Conservative party lost only because the even further right wing Reform party took so many votes.

If I were to guess why third parties don't make much of a dint it'll be because successful movements gradually get incorporated into one party or the other via the primary system. Once a party has drained away the core appeal the third party or outside movement will flounder.

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