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American Political System: Difference between revisions
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No third party candidate has ever been elected president, though [[George Washington]] was a party-less candidate. Even when the Republican Party won its first presidential election with Abraham Lincoln in 1860, it was already one of the top two parties going into the election year. However, there have been several third party candidacies with a sizable impact on the two-party race—which is to say, backlash on the third-party voters' second choice. This is known as the "spoiler" effect, most recently observed when Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate in 1992, received 19% of the popular vote and split conservatives, and in 2000, where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's showing of 2% was sufficient to tip the scales in [[George W. Bush]]'s favor in [[Florida]].
America uses a first-past-the-post voting system—in any election, one vote is cast and the candidate/option with the most votes is the winner, even if a majority did not vote for it. Quick example: In an election between A, B, and C, A gets 35%, B gets 45%, and C gets 20%. B wins, even though 55% of the electorate voted against it. If it seems to you that the A and C supporters should have teamed up and pooled their votes rather than splitting them, congratulations—you've just discovered why America has only two major political parties. Using political science, [[wikipedia:
In the 2011-2012 session, the Republicans hold the majority in the House of Representatives, while the Democrats hold the Senate majority. As the executive and legislative branches are distinct in the US government, it is possible for one or both houses of Congress to be controlled by the opposite party than the president, and indeed this is more often than not the case—Democrat [[Bill Clinton]] had a Republican congress for six years of his presidency, and [[George W. Bush]] worked with a Democratic Congress for the final two years of his term. While such differences can often lead to a political stalemate—a budgetary standoff between Clinton and Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich lead to a federal government shutdown in 1995—more often than not, compromise rules the day. Republican use of the filibuster rule during Barack Obama's term has served to give the minority party an effective veto, earned them the nickname "Party Of No" (due to an utter unwillingness to compromise) and revived serious discussion about doing away with the filibuster entirely, or at least seriously weakening it. The exact same debate, of course, happened with the parties reversed during the [[George W. Bush]] administration, when (until 2006) the Democrats were in the minority. And now you have an idea of why serious moves to eliminate the filibuster never go through—the party in power may be annoyed by it, but they know that, when they become the minority on Capitol Hill, not having the filibuster means that they won't be able to make their dissent mean anything.
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