[onetoo]

> Thankfully US has all sorts of checks and balances and it might take a while for a single party to get control of the House, Senate, White House and the Supreme court

The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me, but for the sake of the argument and out of assumed mutual respect, I'll do my best to stay objective for following:

> IMHO electoral systems matter but extreme polarization is the real problem

I absolutely agree that extreme polarization is a major issue.

I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization, when given enough time: FPTP inevitably converges to a two-party system (due to strategic voting), and a two-party system inevitably leads to extreme polarization (due to strategic politicians playing into strategic voting).

The argument for the latter goes something like this: Disenfranchised voters can be coaxed to vote for a least-worst option when the most-worst option looks worse enough. So it becomes more politically effective to demonize your opponent rather than argue your own politics.

Additionally, it is politically beneficial for you when things stay bad while your opponent is in charge, and especially so if things get worse. You can use their perceived incompetence as ammunition to further demonize them. So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's attempts at improving things, even if what they're trying to do is something you agree with and would yourself do if you were the one in power.

Depending on your preferred political party, I'm sure you can think of examples of the above.

[mike_hearn]

> a two-party system inevitably leads to extreme polarization

There isn't much difference in practice. German politics is extremely polarized, far moreso than in the UK where there's FPTP. Look at how the older political parties have reacted to the rise of the AfD and you won't see any of the famed coalition building that's supposed to make PR fair and reasonable. Instead you see bizarre dysfunctional coalitions, lots of illegal suppression tactics and a level of hysterical rhetoric that makes the USA look relaxed by comparison. Nor is it different elsewhere in Europe.

The left reacts badly to conservative pushback in any system, any country, any culture. These things transcend national boundaries. It doesn't matter what voting system you use. The results are always the same.

[Wytwwww]

> The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me

I mean.. I don't think its good per se. Just better than the alternative in a society that's already extremely polarized and more or less evenly split. Unless that changes IMHO ideally we'd at least want as much decision making to move to the state level.

> I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization,

There aren't that many datapoints e.g. it hasn't yet happened in Britain (it sort of did in France, although it's more complicated) and I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either. So I think its hard to prove empirically.

> So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's

Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.

I wonder how effective would the Northern Ireland consensus/power-sharing based system if it became more widespread. On one hand it did seemingly led to a huge reduction in political polarization. On the other hand it's not particularly efficient and it's unlikely that any country would implement outside of extreme circumstances/being force to by a third party (unlike in Lebanon where it has failed entirely the conflict in NI was entirely political rather than religious)

[onetoo]

> e.g. it hasn't yet happened in Britain

Granted, I don't follow it closely, but from what discourse I've observed things on the other side of the pond don't seem quite harmonious to me.

> I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either.

Which does not necessarily disprove the argument. Things were arguably less polarized and better working in the past, but my argument is exactly that the political incentives of a two-party system will eventually cause things to degenerate. The fact that things were once "reasonable politics" but have, over the course of decades, degenerated to "our policy is whatever is the opposite of their policy" is exactly the issue.

> Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.

Similar, yes, but not necessarily the most effective political move.

If a disenfranchised voter can vote for a third (or fourth) party without their vote "being wasted", a strategizing disenfranchised voter no longer "has" to vote for a "least-worst" option in order to avoid the "most-worst" option.

In that case, painting your opponent as "even worse" does not necessarily win you votes. If it does, it likely also gives votes to the other parties in your political sphere, and if they get enough votes to make a coalition government without you, why should they bother to include someone whose primary policy is being a troublemaker?

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To be clear, no system is perfect. I don't know what the best is, I just know it's not FPTP. The primary argument I am trying to make is that the polarization we see now is the inevitable (long-term) outcome of a two-party system, and that a two-party system is the inevitable outcome of winner-takes-all FPTP.