He's right. Send a tea bag!

keith/Baxter..

Sorry hit the report button on your post by accident..

Keith wrote: How many other major democracies only have two parties? I really don't know.

Any one that has a winner-take-all voting system.

Keith wrote: It's amazing that the parties split the voters as evenly as they do

No it's not. It's an inevitability of a two party system. Both parties mutually benefit by ensuring a perpetual stalemate that precludes any OTHER parties from horning in on their power. Get used to a few hundred more years of this, because I don't see anyone growing the stones to revolt against it anytime soon .

Australia for one, Liberal ( Republican ) vs Labor ( Democratic ), just added for the info...

Josh wrote:

Keith wrote: It's amazing that the parties split the voters as evenly as they do

No it's not. It's an inevitability of a two party system. Both parties mutually benefit by ensuring a perpetual stalemate that precludes any OTHER parties from horning in on their power. Get used to a few hundred more years of this, because I don't see anyone growing the stones to revolt against it anytime soon .

I'm not sure it is an inevitability of the system. Check out what happened in 1986 in Canada. The Conservative party went in holding 169 of the 295 seats, the Liberal party (yes, those are the names of the parties, we like it simple up north) had 83. After the election, the Conservatives had 2 seats and 16% of the popular vote. 2 while the Liberals had 177. Yes, there's a third (and these days, fourth) party in there, but the Liberals and Conservatives are the big 'uns.