AH Challenge: Three-party America

Justin

Banned
Here's an AH challenge that I haven't seen done much. The challenge is to somehow get an america that supports a strong third party consistantly (electoral College-wise). There are only two restrictions to this challenge. The first is you can not have a POD earlier than 1860. The second restriction is you can't have the POD later than the election of 1912.
 
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When Lincoln is assasinated in 1865, the Republican Party splits into two different parties, the Republican Party and the Reform Party. The Republicans switch off the presidencey, and only the OTL Democrats are elected. To create a fourth party, have a better Progressive Party turnout in 1912.
 
A group of angry Democrats hijack a secret government time machine project (its being funded by the Republicans and the Democrats are pissed that its diverting funds from various social programs) and placed a kidnapped Ralph Nader in the booth and transport him back to 1860.

While too late to prevent the outbreak of the War Between the States he does serve as a spoiler candidate in 1864 permitting McClelland to win the presidency. The same thing occurs in 1868 allowing Horatio Seymour win over Ulysses S. Grant. However, he accepts the vice presidential bid with Horace Greeley in 1868. Greeley's death in 1872 within weeks of the election see Nader finally becoming President of the United States. The Liberal Republicans become a serious American third party by 1874.
 
Justin said:
Here's an AH challenge that I haven't seen done much. The challenge is to somehow get an america that supports a strong third party consistantly (electoral College-wise). There are only two restrictions to this challenge. The first is you can not have a POD earlier than 1860. The second restriction is you can't have the POD later than the election of 1912.

In between 1860 and 1912, the modern concept of statistics comes into being. If someone smart enough turned the new science to the subject of voting, they would discover that the pluralistic voting system that has been in use since our nation's founding has a lot of voting anomalies. That might rsult in the invention of something like the Borda Count of Instant Run-off Voting. A populist movement pushes for the pasage of new voting set-ups in the majority of hte States. Change the voting system and you make a big step toward multi-party politics.
 
I could actually see 4 parties arising in US politics: the liberal wing of the democrats, the moderate democrats, the moderate Republicans, and the conservative republicans... I wonder sometime if the US isn't moving that way anyway...
 
The moderate Dems and moderate GOP might merge into a new party all their own. There seems to be a convergence of moderate GOP (Bush, McCain) with the moderate Dems in terms of policy goals (Bush supporting prescription drug benefits, while Bush's Patriot Act is a regurgitation of something Clinton came up with after the OKC bombing that the GOP vetoed).

The liberal dems could merge with the Greens, while the conservative GOP could in turn split into a libertarian faction (that merges with the Libertarian Party) and the rest could turn into a Falwell/Buchanan "paleo-con" party.
 
if the moderates of both parties formed a single party, they'd win damn near every election in the country, national, state, and local. Mainly, because most people are moderate, not liberal or conservative....
 
My dear departed friend often suspected the Libertarian Party had the potential to be a third party (although that is too late for this thread).
 
"My dear departed friend often suspected the Libertarian Party had the potential to be a third party (although that is too late for this thread)."

It still does. If we get a good-sized fraction of the people who say, "I'd vote for the Libertarian candidate, but I don't want to waste my vote" to actually vote Libertarian, even if we didn't win, it'd be such a shake-up that one or more parties would assimilate Libertarian ideology. Nader made a big splash in 2000 and now the Dems have nominated a MUCH more leftist nominee (if Clinton is a 6 on the political-liberal scale, then Kerry is an 8) this time around.

"if the moderates of both parties formed a single party, they'd win damn near every election in the country, national, state, and local. Mainly, because most people are moderate, not liberal or conservative...."

The "moderates" of both parties seem bent on satisfying all people all the time and that's not going to work out in the long run.
 
the problem with the moderates in each party is that they have to cater to the far wings of their parties (think of all the things Bush has done to pander to the conservatives, when he probably wouldn't have on his own). In this scenario, where the moderates from both sides have joined into a single party and liberals and conservatives both are split off into their own parties, the moderates don't have to do that anymore, and will appeal strongly to the massive moderate majority in the country....
 
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