The main issue is that third parties often have the opposite effect that their supporters want.

They draw voters from the more aligned main party, causing that aligned main party to lose elections.

Third parties hurt the interests of their own supporters.

There are good reasons why the Democratic Party tends to support the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party tends to support the Green Party [1].

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/us/politics/green-party-r...

One advantage of Yang's platform (at least during his Presidential run) is that he was able to draw people from both sides of the aisle to his side.

He's not quite a centrist as much as he's trying to break completely out of the left/right dichotomy and compile the best policy ideas that often neither party is supporting, which appeals to a lot of people.

I know Yang claims this, but is there any data actually confirming that this is the case?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/oct/24/andrew-yan... appears to be a fact check of this claim, and it was rated false.

> They draw voters from the more aligned main party, causing that aligned main party to lose elections.

That is the entire point! The mainstream political party won't address particular issues unless it feel that it position in power is threatened.

Does that actually work? How did Trump winning in 2016 help your average Green Party supporter?

If anything, didn't Biden win by a larger margin against Bernie in 2020 than Hillary won against Bernie in 2016?

Yes, it can do. Without the real threat of UKIP taking votes from the Conservative Party in the UK, David Cameron would not have promised the in/out referendum on EU membership.

This is a fair counter example, but one also has to consider that (i) much of the referendum demand came from within his own party for ideological rather than practical reasons and (ii) he was able to implement it because the UK's electoral system and multiparty politics gave his party a clear majority with a minority of the vote .

Or put more simply: his personal standing within the party was threatened more than his party's electoral chances (UKIP votes were irrelevant in most Tory seats and took votes off Labour too in marginals), and he wouldn't have been in power anyway under a proportional system.

Ironically, EU Parliament votes being proportional probably played a major role in Farage deciding back in the nineties that he could try to win the Brexit debate from outside the Tory party too...

The votes were not irrelevant. Most people think that offering the referendum to UKIP voters is the only reason the Conservatives weren't forced into another coalition government.

It was more to do with appeasing the backbenchers in the 1822 Committee than voters.

UKIP went from having a 3% share of the vote in 2010 to 12-13% in 2015. People constantly downplay this to make it out as if it was only an internal Conservative party dispute. However there was growing pressure to have the referendum.

They provide a very important mechanism that allows for the main party to fail in a way that it otherwise couldn’t. The only way for a “good” (according to the constituency) idea to succeed is if the “bad” ones fail. If bad ideas are prevented from failing, then the efficiency of the entire system declines.

In the two party system, the only ways for a party to fail are via apathy (not bothering to vote at all), and total defection to the other side. The small party allows voters to signal to the main party that they are failing to adequately represent certain elements of their constituency. It forces the main parties to consider all the components of their base, otherwise they’re can safely abandon them to some extent while they fight over the middle.

It’s arguably less efficient in the US due to an electoral structure that’s quite unfavorable for small parties, but it still serves an important purpose. It doesn’t make sense if you only look at one single election, but the election is the most important feedback mechanism in a democracy, and they typically happen rather infrequently. So you can look at one election, and conclude that a minor party cost one side a particular victory. But if the loser decides to examine why they lost, there’s a clear incentive to improve how they represent their constituents next time.

It’s not highly efficient, but no democracy is. Perhaps the US more than some others, but even if you look at the worlds ‘direct democracies’, you couldn’t conclude that asking the public a handful of extra yes/no questions every year is perfectly efficient either.

The main issue is that in the US, it seems like voting in the primaries is much more effective than third parties.

Look at groups like the Squad, the Tea Party and Trump. These groups are/were able to achieve substantial changes in party platform by working through the primary system and have shifted politics much more than the third parties in the US ever did.

Yeah, that’s true. But you just run into a different set of inefficiencies there. The higher the level of participation you demand for the electorate, you risk an outcome where you represent popular sentiment less and the intensity in motive and means of individual factions more.

The entire idea of electing an executive separately from the legislature is not necessarily efficient in the first place, and the higher level of important placed on for former is quite strange from some perspectives.

This isn't necessarily true. The nuance in the third party vs. aligned party is by definition the distinction between them. Depending on what you prioritize an effective third party can force the aligned party to change.

From the point of view of the third party supporter, this would be exactly what you would want.

In other words, an effective third party can be a great catalyst toward making some minor (or major) change in the most closely aligned parties.

Not in a First-Past-The-Post voting system, which is used in most of the US (&afaik, in all presidential elections).

The 1PPP systems systemically trend to metastable 2-party states. Of course 3rd parties will have distinctions from their closer main parties, but it is almost impossible that a 3rd party will triangulate exactly between the two major parties.

This means that in practice, a vote for a 3rd party is effectively a vote for your worst major party option. The 3rd party acts as a spoiler - always.

This is NOT true in Ranked Choice Voting systems. There, the 3rd party spoiler issue goes away, and the 3rd parties have a real chance of being able to get elected & have a real influence.

To have the effect you want (vs some perverse effect), you must vote strategically in the system you have.

That said, it is long past the time that we implemented a few upgrades from the systems of 200 years ago, such as upgrading to Ranked Choice.

I'm not talking strictly about election results. I'm talking about ideologically. I do agree with you if your only concern is election results.

Yes, from the ideological push perspective, losing a crowd to a 3rd party might cause a major party to move in that direction.

I certainly prefer a number of 3rd parties for a number of reasons, but not until we get off the 1PPP voting system. Ranked Choice, or any of a number of other options, but the role of 3rd parties as spoilers is just too great.

The problem is that doesn't appear to happen in practice.

For example, how did Trump winning in 2016 help your average Green Party supporter achieve more of the change they wanted in the aligned Democratic Party?

Perhaps a better example is the UKIP party swaying the Tories to become more isolationist, and eventually triggering the Brexit referendum? A little bit different, knowing the political system of the UK enables smaller parties to be successful in a way the American system doesn't. But the principle is still the same. UKIP acting as a spoiler is factored into the strategy of the Tories policy makers, and thus they pivot their policies more in line with UKIP ideals to prevent bleeding voters to UKIP. A similar dynamic is at play on Canada's left-wing between the Liberals and the NDP

Brexit was about Tory backbenchers, not UKIP.

I'm not saying it happens in practice, I'm saying that's often the goal.

So you agree that it's a silly idea that doesn't actually work?

Doesn't work for what?

That has happen. UKIP forced the Conservative Party in the UK to offer a referendum because their members were voting for UKIP (UKIPs voter share in 2015 hit about approximately 13% of the total vote). Whatever you may think of UKIP

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

However there is several negatives to this:

1) That political party won't get any credit for it. 2) The policy will be implemented hardheartedly. 3) It may destroy your party if one or more of the major issues that the alternative party is implemented. As voters won't see any more need to vote as they have got what they wanted. 4) Thee political momentum will be lost for other reform / change. 5) The existing party duopoly will still exist.

To expand on the final point. I dislike all political parties (I am somewhat of a anarchist) and I don't believe in political solutions. However the Labour party in the UK immolating itself will hopefully end up with its destruction. Which will make space in the UK political landscape for new ideas, new people. Some speculate that it may also lead to the destruction of the Conservative party. Peter Hitchens described both Labour and Conservative parties as two corpses that are propping the other up and if one collapses the other may as well. However I personally think that is a fantasy.

> "1) That political party won't get any credit for it. 2) The policy will be implemented hardheartedly. 3) It may destroy your party if one or more of the major issues that the alternative party is implemented."

None of this is a problem if you are a one-issue party. UKIP doesn't need to exist anymore because the cause it was founded on has now been taken up and implemented by "mainstream" politics. UKIP has all but vanished today, but that's precisely because it was successful.

I'm not sure this argument really holds. In the United States, third parties can have a significant influence on elections by siphoning off votes (see, Nader or maybe Perot), but they tend to have much more muted effects on policy. I would argue that Andrew Yang did more for the cause of the UBI as a loser in a widely-watched Democratic presidential primary than he would have been able to as a third-party candidate struggling to qualify for the ballot in most states. If his new goal is to focus on ranked-choice voting, I struggle to understand why the calculus would be any different.

I agree with you in wishing we had more than two parties to choose from; for one, studies have shown that negative partisanship is much lower in democracies with more than two major parties.

This.

I think the best way to think about this party is that the goal isn't to win elections (get the majority of votes, beat out the republican/democratic party) - it is to wield influence via a platform.

If you think Andrew Yang is establishing a political party to win a government race, I think its a bit too naive.

I think he is trying to use a third party lever to influence a bunch of small things to snowball into larger things, and he doesn't have the space to do that in the existing parties.

Ranked choice vote seems like the best low hanging fruit. If Yang can bring 5-10 more of these issues into the public eye, he will be the most influential person in politics, whether he is in office or not.

> If you think Andrew Yang is establishing a political party to win a government race, I think its a bit too naive.

> I think he is trying to use a third party lever to influence a bunch of small things to snowball into larger things...

If we're talking about what we're _thinking_, I think Andrew Yang is establishing a political party to make a lot of money, whether it's through direct donations or a higher profile that turns into more financial opportunity elsewhere.

I don't discount the possibility of him doing it just for the political influence, though.

Ranked choice voting in theory patches up the spoiler effect, which will paradoxically make voting third party more appealing.

It still suffers from spoiler effect

Let's review the record:

Yang ran for President. Did very poorly.

Ran for NY Mayor. Did very poorly.

Why does making him the face of a new party make any sense at all?

Is your logic that if someone runs and loses a few times for an election then they should stop trying?

Actually, unless they learn something from the failures, yes. Did NYC put him on an upward trajectory, do you think?

Because the reason he's doing poorly is inability to draw votes away from establishment candidates of the two entrenched parties.

Highlighting that is key to his platform succeeding.

Elections are likability contests in the US. If you try twice and people don't like you... well, I'm sure you're a nice person and a good father.

You can bemoan this and yearn for European elections where the party platform makes a difference. But that's how it is.

It’s pretty common for presidents to have lost on their first try.

No, it's common for someone who's won an election somewhere, once or twice, to fail for President.

Nixon won several (Congress, VP). Biden won several (Delaware, VP). Bush 41 won Congressional elections. Reagan won as Governor. Carter won as Governor. Shall we continue?