AHC: 4 or more major political parties in the U.S.

I'd like to see at least 4 major political parties in the U.S. (meaning they each get at least 15-30% of the vote) that represent the 4 cross-sections of personal liberty and economic liberty. I'll be using the terms liberal and conservative as they are currently used in the U.S. to describe these parties from here on out. There should be one party that is conservative on social issues and conservative on economic issues, one that is conservative on social issues but liberal on economic issues, one that is liberal on social issues but conservative on economic issues, and one that is liberal on social issues and liberal on economic issues. In order for this to work there will probably have to be some form of proportional representation in Congress, and either a parliamentary system to elect the President or a nationwide run off vote. So the Constitution will need to be amended for that fairly early on to allow for these parties to get a foothold and grow.

My idea so far is to have the Democrats not nominate Bryan in 1896, and keep the Bourbon Democrats in control of the party. This will allow the Populists to stick around as a viable third party for longer, and maybe Bryan joins them at some point and becomes their Presidential nominee in future election(s). Over time the Democrats will become the conservative party on both economic and social issues, with their base located mostly in the south. The Populists will become the party that is liberal on economic issues, but conservative on social issues. Bryan can help move them in that direction if he becomes a party leader early on. The Populists will be strongest in the rural areas of the West and Midwest and in the South.

The Republicans still win the Presidential elections in 1896, 1900, 1904, and 1908 as in the OTL, and I still have Roosevelt becoming President after McKinley dies. But the vote of the opposition in all those elections is split mostly between the Democrats and the Populists. Other parties are present but they get only get a few percent in total. During that time the Populists and some in the Democratic party call for reform of the electoral system. Many Progressives in the Republican party join them in demanding proportional representation as well as the popular election of Senators. The movement begins to create a groundswell so that soon a majority of States begin to call for a Constitutional convention. In the 1910 midterm, an unpopular President Taft suffers the loss of Congress as Democrats, Populists, and even Socialists make gains. One of the first items of business in 1911 is electoral reform. The Seventeenth Amendment is ratified in early 1912, it calls for the popular election of Senators as well as proportional election of Representatives, and run off elections for Senators and the President.

Upset with the way Taft has been handling the Presidency, Roosevelt decides to challenge him for the nomination. After his bid fails, Roosevelt and his supporters leave the Republican party and join the Progressive party. No candidate is able to win a majority of the electoral college in the general election, so the top two move on to the run off. In the run off election Roosevelt defeats Democrat Champ Clark by a comfortable margin, and a coalition of Progressives and Populists control the House of Representatives.

I haven't gone much further than that. I think WWI will still happen, although the dates may be different. But with Roosevelt in power the U.S. gets involved early, the war doesn't drag on as long, and this butterflies the Bolsheviks getting control of Russia and the subsequent Red Scare that follows. There is probably some form of a "return to normalcy" with the 1920 election and a pro-business, non-interventionist wins the Presidency and we get the roaring 20's leading to the Great Depression, but I'm still not sure about that.

Over time the Progressives become the party of liberal economic and social issues, with most of their support in cities and the North, while Republicans become the party that is liberal on social issues but conservative on economic issues, with most of their support in the North and West. Without a Red Scare the Socialist party will still be around, and there could still be minor regional parties like Minnesota's Farm-Labor party. But the four major parties are the Democrats, Populists, Progressives, and Republicans.

But I'd like to hear some ideas from you guys. How would you go about setting up a political system in the U.S. that is dominated by at least 4 political parties?
 
Get ready for posts that say the system couldn't work like that and eventually two of them are gonna team up, and then the other two will unite against them and then you are back to a two-party system.

Edit: Also, you're thinking is anachronistic. Both parties had left and right wings. Parties weren't based off of idealogical lines; that started in the mid-sixites.
 
Get ready for posts that say the system couldn't work like that and eventually two of them are gonna team up, and then the other two will unite against them and then you are back to a two-party system.

For reference: Duverger's Law.
 
Get ready for posts that say the system couldn't work like that and eventually two of them are gonna team up, and then the other two will unite against them and then you are back to a two-party system.

Edit: Also, you're thinking is anachronistic. Both parties had left and right wings. Parties weren't based off of idealogical lines; that started in the mid-sixites.

There will still be a need for coalitions to form in order to control Congress under this new system, but now that coalition is no longer hidden inside the same party. People will have a greater choice of who represents them in Congress, so they won't have to choose the lesser of two evils all the time. Sure they still might have to do that for President or Senate, but their House Representative will more closely match their own beliefs.

But I see the coalition system in this timeline as more fluid. During periods of economic troubles the Populists and Progressives team up to counter the Democrats and Republicans. When the economy is doing well and social issues rule the day then Progressives and Republicans team up against the Populists and Democrats.
 
Get ready for posts that say the system couldn't work like that and eventually two of them are gonna team up, and then the other two will unite against them and then you are back to a two-party system.

Edit: Also, you're thinking is anachronistic. Both parties had left and right wings. Parties weren't based off of idealogical lines; that started in the mid-sixites.

I'd also like to add that the reason both parties had left and right wings was more about the aftermath of the Civil War than anything else. Southerners hated Republicans back then so they voted Democrat even though some people were conservative and some were liberal on various issues. Many Northerners didn't want to be associated with slavery, rebellion, and Jim Crow so they voted Republican even though some were conservative and some were liberal. I bet if there was no Civil War and slavery and civil rights were no longer issues then the parties would have aligned themselves along ideological lines much sooner.
 
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katchen

Banned
During the 19100s and 1910s, the Progressives brought in a number of innovations to make politics more democratic. Things like initiative, referendums, recalls. One of them, was called the Australian ballot, the secret ballot because it was borrowed from Australia.

Would that the United States had borrowed the Automatic runoff system from Australia at the same time!

In Australia, boters mark their ballots in order of preference. Instead of checking which candidate the voter wants and only having one choice, the voter places a 1 by his or her first choice, a 2 by his second choice and so on. If a candidate for state or federal Parliament does not get a majority of first choices, the votes for second choice are tabulated to see if one candidate gets a majority. And if not on second choice, third. And so on. What tht means is that NO CANDIDATE WINS A SEAT WITHOUT A MAJORITY OF VOTES, AT LEAST OF SOME PREFERENCE COMPARED TO AN OPPONENT IN AUSTRALIA. This is in contrast to the United States, the UK or Canada where whoever wins the most votes whether it is a majority or not wins the seat.

\What this also means is that IN AUSTRALIA, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WASTED VOTE. Minor parties are free to field candidates and they tell their voters up front which of the major parties to mark for their second choice. So Members of Parliament know to whom the political debts are due and Aussies are not inhibited about voting for minor parties.

The Australians have another system for filling their Senate seats. For Senate (of which, since there are only 7 states there are 6 Senators per state_ voters vote at large by party not for the man. That gives minor parties the chance to get into Senate and Legislative Council seats in their own right.

And that is why Australia these says has three major parties, the Liberals, Labor and the Nationas with the Liberals and National Party in permanent coalition. and Labor dependent right now on a copule of Greens MPs. And right now many Australians are quite frustrated with their government. But Australis has kept growing throughout this recession and did not engage in any of this subprime nonsense that we did.

So if we want to move away from the two party system, maybe the way to do it is to start introducing automatic runoff at the state level by citizens initiated constitutional amendment. And fight off very wel fihnanced scare campaigns against it.
 
I think the best way would be to adopt a Parliamentary system. From what I can tell they tend to produce a few more parties, especially if they use more expressive voting systems, like Range voting

Woodrow Wilson was supposedly a fan of the UK's Parliament, If he was more popular he might push for the creation of US version. But that would be quite a massive change. Hard to achieve with massive repercussions.
 
And fight off very wel fihnanced scare campaigns against it.

That is the major issue there. The people in the position to change the system gained power in the current system, they have no incentive to change it. I agree that they would fight to preserve the status quo.
 

katchen

Banned
yes indeed. But automatic runoffs could be implemented at the state level by voter initiative first in a few states and then in more--like medical marijuana. And I'm not certain that states COULDN"T implement automatic runoff for US House and Senate races or at least for party primaries. States have a lot of leeway on how they run their elections. as we have seen. Look at how much they have gotten away with with voter ID laws.

Given how entrenched the current system is though, this is about the ONLY way I could see changing it. Eventually, you might get a new genration of Congresspeople some of whom either come from new parties or are beholden to new parties this way.
 

katchen

Banned
Another possibility, pass an initiative (for states with state income taxes) placing people in the next higher tax bracket if they miss an election during an election year. Australia actually FINES people $50 for not voting. So almost everyone votes every election.
 
- Keep the Progressive or Reform Parties moving.
- Get the Libertarians and Greens to qualify in the national debates; support rises; there you go.
 
To get around the forces described by Duverger's law, you need parties to have different geographic strongholds.

This is how, in spite of having a first-past-the-post electoral system, there are four major parties in the Canadian parliament. The NDP, in spite of theoretically being in the same area of the political spectrum as the liberals, had different regional bases from the Liberals thanks to the unique history and values of the prairie provinces, who distrusted the Liberals even when they made major swings to the left.

The NDP's predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, had a strong power base in Saskatchewan, controlling the provincial government for large stretches of time after 1944. This support bled out into other areas.

There is an analog to this in the United States. In fact, it's right south of Saskatchewan, with a similar ethnic and historical background (plenty of Scandanavian immigrants, small farmers and miners in class war with national economic interests). North Dakota and Minnesota were both controlled by similar farmer-labor-socialist movements after WW1. Respectively, the Non-Partisan League of the 1920s and early 30s, and the Farmer-Labor Party of the late 20s and 30s.

The CCF very consciously patterned itself after those movements. The difference was, through a combination of isolation, and a short-sighted move on the part of the state party leaders, both the Non Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party got co-opted by the Democratic Party, since they had all but destroyed the state Democratic parties in those states.

But their legacy still lives on. The state affiliates reflect the merger and different character of their origins, and until recently, the Democratic-Non-Partisan-League of North Dakota and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota contributed some of the most left-wing members of the national Democratic leadership.

Bloc Quebecois, on the other hand, is a regional nationalist party, and thanks to the growth of Quebec nationalism/separatism, was able to control most of Quebec's ridings in the national parliament until recently.
 
Maybe prevent Nixon from implementing the Southern Strategy, so the Dixiecrats break off into their own party, which is mostly aligned with the Republicans but doesn't want to associate with their name? I think regional parties are the way to go here.
 
Well, you could somehow have a strong Congress of Industrial Organization and/or American Federation of Labor, which could provide a base for a third major party.

Four parties would be near impossible in the States.
 
Well, you could somehow have a strong Congress of Industrial Organization and/or American Federation of Labor, which could provide a base for a third major party.

Four parties would be near impossible in the States.
Farmer-Labor Party in the Great Plains and Mountain West, Dixiecrats in the South.

Viola, four party America.
 
Get rid of the electoral college for starters. That makes it possible, although it is still difficult

Or just make an amendment "the candidate with the most electoral votes wins" rather than the 270-to-win we have. Y'know, you don't have to get a majority, just a plurality.
 
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