The Democratic Party after Obama

[broncofan]

I know many people make this argument, but I'm not sure it's right. The point is that minor parties can only have influence when their vote is combined with one of the major parties. Under PR, this would signify that parties representing more than 50% of the electorate support that position.

They can influence policy when their vote is combined with a major party to get a majority of the vote but they can also withhold their vote on core policies to prevent legislation unless they get what they want on fringe ones. So let's say in the U.S. the green party prefers single payer healthcare and the democrats prefer something a bit more modest like ACA, the green party can hold the democrats hostage on healthcare for some other concession (if we had a pr system).

If you don't have pr, they are probably absorbed into a major party and they can still tug and pull but they are either constrained by their party's platform and/or put in check by the voters in their district since they must win a plurality or majority to be able to govern at all.

[broncofan]

The above process might take place if there is no in-between option and they are arguing over two discrete options. If there's a chance for compromise on a single issue, in a pr system the small party has out-sized leverage. If the large and small party are compromising the large party cannot really say the final bill should be closer to what we want because we have greater representation. If they did the small party could say, well you can do nothing without us and then make their demands on almost equal footing.

Now some of this same bartering can take place within parties in a non-pr system but it's more likely to be held in check either by conditional support from party leadership or the requirement that they get a plurality or majority (depending on the system) support from voters to become representatives.

[filghy2]

Much will depend on whether the minor party holding the balance of power has a position in between those of the major parties, or whether it is further out on the extremes. In the former case the negotiated outcome should be closer to that favoured by the median voter, which I take to be the desirable outcome in a democracy. In the latter case the outcome will move further away from the median voter's position.

Which of these outcomes is more likely will probably be influenced by the stance of the two major parties. If they are both competing for the middle ground then it is more likely that minor parties attracting votes will be on the extremes. However, these are also the circumstances in which the major parties are more likely to be able to reach a compromise, in which case the minor parties can have no influence. If the major parties are more polarised, as seems to have happened in the US, the minor parties that attract votes should be more likely to be positioned in the middle (though I'm not sure that has happened).

I'm probably assuming here that voters' preferences are normally distributed, with most clustered around the middle and less on the extremes. This obviously begs the question of why the major parties become polarised, given they should be able to gain more votes by moving back to the centre. One answer might be internal party dynamics; eg to get selected candidates need to appeal to the party base, which has more extreme views. Another possibility is that the electorate itself is becoming more polarised; ie rather than a normal distribution around the middle there is a bipolar distribution with the middle being hollowed out. Optional voting may also be relevant if people with strong views are more likely to vote than those with moderate views.

[Stavros]

Much will depend on whether the minor party holding the balance of power has a position in between those of the major parties, or whether it is further out on the extremes. In the former case the negotiated outcome should be closer to that favoured by the median voter, which I take to be the desirable outcome in a democracy. In the latter case the outcome will move further away from the median voter's position.
Which of these outcomes is more likely will probably be influenced by the stance of the two major parties. If they are both competing for the middle ground then it is more likely that minor parties attracting votes will be on the extremes. However, these are also the circumstances in which the major parties are more likely to be able to reach a compromise, in which case the minor parties can have no influence. If the major parties are more polarised, as seems to have happened in the US, the minor parties that attract votes should be more likely to be positioned in the middle (though I'm not sure that has happened).

Although not a consequence of PR, the UK Election this year resulted in the two major parties receiving 80% of the vote, but unwilling to compromise even on Brexit on which they share a broad agreement. Because the Conservatives are the largest party but do not have a working majority, they have reached a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland to support the government on key votes, in return for which they appear to have promised Northern Ireland an extra £1.5 billion of 'investment', the precise numbers and projects not yet stated.

The DUP is in your definition both an extremist party, yet one that has now become a key player in government even though it has no representation of any kind in England, Scotland and Wales. Moreover, in spite of being marginal to most of the UK, it does have influence over politics in Northern Ireland and is an example of how even a non-PR system can produce an outcome that gives extraordinary power to a minor party. On the one hand this means power for a party opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion (although many of its votes don't care about same-sex marriage), but crucially a party that resists every form of Irish nationalism on the grounds it and its supporters are British and may therefore also resist elements of the Brexit negotiations that relate to Anglo-Irish relations after the UK's exit from the EU.

On the other hand, because the DUP cannot reach an agreement with Sinn Fein over power-sharing, and the Sinn Fein claim that the DUP's arrangement with the Government is a clear violation of the Good Friday Agreement, the DUP may have to stand by as Westminster takes control of government in Northern Ireland, so that the DUP would be in the bizarre position of having no power in Northern Ireland outside local councils, while being the only guarantee of power for the same governing party in the UK that has replaced it in Belfast...

PR would merely have made this nonsense official, whereas at least we can under our present system wait for the Government to lose votes in the House of Commons, resign and have a new election -though there is no guarantee it will produce a clearer outcome. So you see, even First Past the Post does not guarantee the dominance of one of two major parties.

[filghy2]

The DUP received only 0.9% of the vote, so it's unlikely they would have that much influence under PR. http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results Looking at the numbers it seems likely that the Liberal Democrats (7.4%) would have been the critical influence under PR. Incredibly, the LibDems won only two more seats than the DUP despite receiving 8 times as many votes. That sounds like a good argument for PR to me.

[Stavros]

The simple truth is that, as it stands, we do not have PR but have had coalition governments in the past because one party could not command a majority in the Commons, and Coalitions are built around compromise. I understand the PR argument that claims it reflects voters intentions more precisely, but PR leading to coalition governments may not be fair or balanced. People vote for a variety of reasons and I doubt they support every policy of the party they vote for, and there are voters who make their selection based on the personality and credibility of a party leader or local candidate. I don't think there is any one satisfactory system for all, and the weakness in PR is that it actually encourages extremist parties to enter the election gamble. In the case of UKIP, this did result in it becoming the largest UK party in the European Parliament in 2014, yet the party has been a shambles in terms of its organization, and although committed to removing the UK from the EU under Farage became an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim party which for those reasons absorbed all but the most diehard neo-Nazis, indeed a few years ago Farage all but begged former members of the British National Party to vote for them. Under PR these parties would be making mischief in Parliament and diverting too much attention away from important issues to their pet hates. The further danger is that I don't know the Greens would benefit from PR. There was talk of the Labour Party splitting over the leftward trend of Jeremy Corbyn, but that seems to have passed, but who knows how Brexit will affect party politics?

[Stavros]

In spite of some headline victories for the Democrats in the US this month,

A new poll suggests that the Democratic Party has hit its lowest approval rating in 25 years.

Conducted by the Social Science Research Solutions (SSRS) for CNN, the poll showed that only 37 per cent of Americans saw the party as favourable while more than half of those surveyed - 54 per cent - did not.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8042956.html

With speculation mounting the question is, will America's cuddly grandad, Joe Biden seek the nomination in 2020?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...y-clinton-2016

[buttslinger]

For me, this is the heartbreak- Clinton could have given us back to back democratic presidencies for the first time since Kennedy/Johnson. Sixteen years of the best people in key positions.
Now that's shot to hell.