I get it, Biden is old and that’s a problem, but why doesn’t anyone seem to have a problem with the fact that Trump is almost the same age, has 34 felonies, raped at least 2 women, went to Epstein’s Island 11 times, sexualized his own daughter, stole classified documents, aligned himself with Xi and Putin, and can’t remember common names?
Is all of that really better than being 2½ years older than he is right now?
"First Past The post voting artificially limits the number of political parties to two. "
Kiiiind of, Canada has fptp as well and we have about 4.5ish competitive parties, Liberal Party, Conservative Party, NDP (“socialist” party), Bloc Quebecois (Quebec focussed party [used to be a sepratist party, but has evolved to just focus on getting more favourable policies for Quebec since separating has fallen out of favour in Quebec), and the .5 would be the Green Party. So we can vote against the main 2 without wasting our votes/effectively voting for the party we hate more. BUT the reason I said kinda is notice I said Main 2. NDP has won opposition a few times (2nd most voted for party nationally), but Only 2 parties have ever been the most voted for in an election, the Liberals and the Conservatives. (Bloc Quebecois has won the provincial government multiple times in Quebec, but obviously has never been a contender for national government)
(Green is .5 because most people know about them, but to my knowledge they have never won even a provincial government, which the other 4 all have multiple times)
Edit: Guess theres a bunch of Americans pissed that they cant blame how fucked their political system is just on FPTP
Canada is a two party system, because they fit the definition, the majority of the legislature is controlled by the main two parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_Canada
Of the 338 seats, 81% of them are held by either the conservative or liberal party. The other parties have no shot of winning a majority, or taking away any significant number of seats from the big two parties.
Once again, NDP has won Opposition before (which to those unfamiliar, means that it held more legislative power than all other parties aside from the one that won the election). It is a viable 3rd option and likely would have won the national election roughly a decade ago if Jack Layton hadnt died of cancer during his run.
And because of how our legislature works, if the winning party wins by a minority (Less than 50% of legislative seats), the NDP can team up with the opposition to outpower the party that won and use that to attempt to get legislation that it wants pushed through as a compromise.
TL:DR your last paragraph is false and only serves to entrench the 2 most powerful parties. Canadian 3rd parties are VASTLY more viable than American ones
And the U.S. had the federalist party which once held power. An extra party being previously viable in the past has little to do with whether or not a legislature is controlled by 1 of 2 parties.
“X party can team up with y” also doesn’t negate the definition of a two party system. Cooperation or not, the conservatives and liberals control the overwhelming majority of the seats.
I’ll be honest, I’m not Canadian and rarely speak about Canadian politics. So in no way am I entrenching the two most powerful parties.
And my last paragraph isn’t false. There are 338 seats in your house of Commons, and 81% of them are held by the two dominant parties. That is objectively true. The final sentence is a subjective one.
Sure, 3rd parties in Canada fair considerably better than they do in the U.S., but it seems pretty clear that they have no shot of getting a majority.
So with all of these things together, Canada is a two party system as well, largely due to the use of FPTP voting. We need more representative systems like approval and star voting.
Ah ok, you have zero idea what you are talking about and are projecting American politics onto Canada. Canada has FPTP and Canada is not in anyway a 2 party country. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois have both had a very strong influence on our political landscape and just because our CURRENT government gives souch power to our two most powerful parties doesnt in anyway mean that the NDP gaining significant amount of power is an anomaly, as it has done so many times in the past
Tell me, how many times have the 3rd parties had a majority in the house of commons?
Dude. Politics isnt all or nothing. Quebec gets far better treatment than the rest of the provinces because it has a national party that ONLY looks out for Quebecs interests, and once again, we have minority governments quite a bit of the time here in Canada, where the winning party HAS to play ball with the other parties because it doesnt control over 50% of the votes. The last Conservative government we had had to go to the lengths of shutting down the government ENTIRELY for a few weeks to avoid the NDP and Liberals from teaming up to get legislation passed without the conservatives. FPTP sucks, but our government has at least 3 valid parties to vote for any election season, 4 if you live in Quebec. You arent effectively voting for the party you hate more by voting for the party you actually want here, and again, all the NDP needs is to find a leader that had the charisma Jack Layton had and they’ll be a contender for actually winning a national election again. Even without that though they frequently win Provincial Elections and thus are the ones driving policy in those provinces
I’m aware, but it doesn’t have to for my point to stand. 3rd parties lacking the ability to get majority power means it is a two party system.
The answer to my question was zero.
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