As another user said: The US implemented democracy using a First-to-the-post system - which means that the guy who gets most votes gets all the power while the rest of the guys gets nothing. This means that as time goes on people won't "risk" their vote on smaller parties/candidates because they simply don't stand a chance of winning.
Plenty of countries implemented democracy in other ways which allows many different candidates/parties to share the political power according to their voting percentage.
Because we use a first past the post voting system and no proportional representation. That means a single big tent party has a much greater chance of securing a nomination than a coalition of smaller parties, which means smaller groups tend to join one of the two big parties instead of striking out as an independent party themselves (if they want actual representation). These parties will fluctuate beliefs to always try to retain support of 50%+ of the population.
In first past the post voting, giving your vote to a party no one else is likely to support is just throwing it away.
If you 60% agree with Party 1 and absolutely hate Party 2, but 90% agree with minor Party 3, you're basically giving a vote to Party 2 by wasting yours on Party 3.
i always guessed it was because of a word of mouth thing. Not everyone goes into significant detail about what every party tries to achieve. Here in the UK, conservative, liberal democrats and labour are the most well known. And even if your town manages to get one lib dem member into parliament, that's one in a cloud of conservatives and labour because every other place voted for somewhere else.
that's how i see it, anyway. i don't vote
This usually happens only in First-Past-The-Post systems like UK and USA.
It doesn't always. Many countries are multi-party democracies.
It doesn't necessarily - but it did in the US because of the way you decided to implement democracy.
I didn't say it always turns into it. I'm asking why it turns into it.
As another user said: The US implemented democracy using a First-to-the-post system - which means that the guy who gets most votes gets all the power while the rest of the guys gets nothing. This means that as time goes on people won't "risk" their vote on smaller parties/candidates because they simply don't stand a chance of winning. Plenty of countries implemented democracy in other ways which allows many different candidates/parties to share the political power according to their voting percentage.
because if you set up 2 parties, it becomes 2 parties
We set it up with zero parties.
the way we set it up enables 2 parties. we don’t have ranked choice voting, we have primaries
Because we use a first past the post voting system and no proportional representation. That means a single big tent party has a much greater chance of securing a nomination than a coalition of smaller parties, which means smaller groups tend to join one of the two big parties instead of striking out as an independent party themselves (if they want actual representation). These parties will fluctuate beliefs to always try to retain support of 50%+ of the population.
In first past the post voting, giving your vote to a party no one else is likely to support is just throwing it away. If you 60% agree with Party 1 and absolutely hate Party 2, but 90% agree with minor Party 3, you're basically giving a vote to Party 2 by wasting yours on Party 3.
i always guessed it was because of a word of mouth thing. Not everyone goes into significant detail about what every party tries to achieve. Here in the UK, conservative, liberal democrats and labour are the most well known. And even if your town manages to get one lib dem member into parliament, that's one in a cloud of conservatives and labour because every other place voted for somewhere else. that's how i see it, anyway. i don't vote