At 16:50 30-10-00 -0800, John Giorgis wrote:
>There is no constituency for
>a large left wing party in America. Sure, a Green/Social Democrat
>party could drag itself up to 10% or so. But what will that get them?
That would get them more influence than you'd probably like: 10% still
means 27.6 million potential voters (source: US Census Bureau,
www.census.gov). (Think long-term here; not all of those 27.6 million are
old enough to vote *yet*.)
In your current system, it won't get them a single seat in Congress and/or
the Senate, but both the Democrats and the Republicans will try very hard
to get those votes.
In a system of proportional representation they would get them ~10% of the
seats in both Congress and the Senate. Assuming that neither the Democrats
nor the Republicans will get an absolute majority, the Green/Social
Democrat party would be quite powerful, since both other parties would have
to form a coalition with them in order to get a majority.
Jeroen
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