Democrats and Republicans have a divide about the size of a postage stamp separating their platforms, and the electoral college system makes it far more difficult for 3 party politics (and the US could really, really do with a Lib Dem style left-liberal party taking a swathe of seats). As long as they are stuck with the ECs I think it'll stay as 2-party politics, so you need one of those two (the Dems) to collapse.
Twice in USA'an history they have had a change in which two parties make up their two-party system (as we had between 1910-1945 and as hopefully has started again since 1997). They do it a lot more quickly than we do though, like in the space of 2 elections instead of a dozen. Whether they still could in terms of the money spent on elections nowadays I don't know.
But a new party needs to create a 45%+ of the vote type coalition in order to win. Ulp! When turnout was below 50% you could hope such a party might be carried into power by people who are too disenchanted by the two conservative parties to bother to vote. This time the turnout went up and did for that plan; it turns out the non-voting masses all like Dubya too.
no subject
Twice in USA'an history they have had a change in which two parties make up their two-party system (as we had between 1910-1945 and as hopefully has started again since 1997). They do it a lot more quickly than we do though, like in the space of 2 elections instead of a dozen. Whether they still could in terms of the money spent on elections nowadays I don't know.
But a new party needs to create a 45%+ of the vote type coalition in order to win. Ulp! When turnout was below 50% you could hope such a party might be carried into power by people who are too disenchanted by the two conservative parties to bother to vote. This time the turnout went up and did for that plan; it turns out the non-voting masses all like Dubya too.