AH challenge: plural party USA

Now the USA has only two important political parties, the republicans and the democrats. How do we get a USA which has multiple political parties like many countries in Europe. This means, Christian democrats, liberals, socialists, conservatives, nationalists, communists and fascists. The last two are optional.
 
The challenge is difficult because the US president must be chosen by a majority of electors, not a parliamentary coalition. Ever since electrical communication became common, we have been locked into the two parties, and third parties remain little more than short-lived splinter groups.

The POD would have to be before the civil war.
 
Would anything change if the 12th amendmend was not ratified, or something similar? So that the president/vice could be from different parties.
 

JohnJacques

Banned
Hard to do in any first past the post system. Look at Britain- it has absolutely useless third parties and politics are basically Labour versus Tories. And it has even seen the same occasional shift as American politics, where some third party (in Britain's case, Labour, in America's case, the Republicans) managed to take their predecessor's place as the other party.
 
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