The two-party system isn’t the problem
The two-party system isn’t the problem
See: Netanyahu, Benjamin.
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The US two-party system is a perennial punching bag.
“Can the US ever break the two-party binary?” Al Jazeera asked earlier this year. “How to fix democracy: Move beyond the two-party system, experts say,” the Washington Post declared in 2021. “Why America’s 2-party system is on a collision course with our constitutional democracy,” Vox warned in 2018. And even back in 2011, Salon was offering advice on “the best way to fight the two-party monopoly.”
It’s not just journalists who hold the view that the two-party system is bad: a 2019 poll found that almost 40 percent of Americans wanted a third major political party. By last October, Gallup reported that number had risen to 63 percent.
Pundits think our problem is the two-party system. The public thinks our problem is the two-party system. So, our problem must be the two-party system, right?
The short answer is: no.
The longer answer is that our political system has numerous failures: gridlock, right-wing bias, disproportionate influence by the wealthy. But few of these failures are the result of the two-party system. On the contrary, it’s easy to find similar or worse problems in multi-party democracies.