CGP Grey
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 20 months, 2015–2025
6:31 · 7.9M views · Mar 9, 2011
CGP Grey explains first-past-the-post voting and why it pushes elections toward two dominant parties. It is the first in his series on electoral systems.
HN's go-to explainer for why FPTP leads to a two-party system, linked in countless voting-reform and US politics threads.
20 comments from Hacker News
I highly recommend the following CGP Grey video for further detail about the problems of First Past the Post voting ( this video ). > But instead we have FPTP, and why? Its the simplest and most naive electoral system so Joe Bloggs understands it. Its just "the person who gets the most votes wins". The problems this system causes are ephemeral statistical problems that require more than a 10 second soundbite to explain or even to detect happening. So from Joe Bloggs point of view, you want to change his fundamental right to vote based on the fact that your intellectual busywork has concluded that the wrong person can win the election. That's how the UK failed to get Alternative Vote passed in 2011.
It's because of the First Past The Post voting system that is used in the US, which means winner takes all. If you want to understand why the US seems so uniquely politically divided, then you will understand once you understand how FPTP voting works and how it inevitably leads to binary politics. Most countries have a voting system that leads to broader representation. US politics will always be black and white and divided so long as FPTP voting is used. There's a great video by cpg grey explaining FPTP: this video
At that point you're basically discussion voting systems. Using first-past-the-post with three options, two of them being breixt, would heavily rig the vote towards remain. Improving voting systems would be great (especially looking at the US, if you ever want more than two real parties), but doing it on the back of such an important decision would be problematic at best. Here is a cutesy video for those new to FPTP voting issues: this video
Ideologically, from a single voter's perspective, you're right. But practically, and looking at the entire population, it's not. The first past the post voting system we use will always result in two prominent parties, and the spoiler effect certainly exists. I've always found this video a good explanation of the problems of our voting system this video
Check out this video, it helps explain why diversity of thought has little to do with the number of political parties that form in a system. this video Dem/Rep are just two big coalitions in the US, and with first past the post voting, it's nearly impossible to have more than two parties in the long term.