Editing Two-party system (section)

==Third parties==
{{Main|Third party (politics)|Third party (United States)}}
[[File:Two party system diagram.png|thumb|upright=1.6|According to one view, the winner-takes-all system discourages voters from choosing third party or independent candidates, and over time the process becomes entrenched so that only two major parties become viable.]]
Third parties, meaning a party other than one of the two dominant parties, are possible in two-party systems, but they are often unlikely to exert much influence by gaining control of legislatures or by winning elections.<ref name=SchmidtTextbook/> While there are occasional opinions in the media expressed about the possibility of third parties emerging in the United States, for example, political insiders such as the 1980 presidential candidate John Anderson think the chances of one appearing in the early twenty-first century is remote.<ref name="twsDecG44fwee">{{cite magazine
|author= Ryan Lizza
|title= But Is a Third Party Possible?
|magazine= New York Magazine
|date= Apr 16, 2006
|url= https://nymag.com/news/politics/16743/
|access-date= 2010-12-07
|archive-date= 2011-09-26
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110926085019/http://nymag.com/news/politics/16743/
|url-status= live
}}</ref> A report in ''[[The Guardian]]'' suggested that American politics has been "stuck in a two-way fight between [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] and [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]]" since the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], and that third-party runs had little meaningful success.<ref name=twsJanQ>{{cite news
|author= Paul Harris
|title= 'America is better than this': paralysis at the top leaves voters desperate for change
|newspaper= The Guardian
|date= 19 November 2011
|url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/20/paralysis-in-us-politics-extremism
|access-date= 2012-01-17
|archive-date= 2013-10-01
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131001065314/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/20/paralysis-in-us-politics-extremism
|url-status= live
}}</ref>

Third parties in a two-party system can be:
* Built around a particular ideology or interest group
* Split off from one of the major parties or
* Focused on a [[charisma|charismatic individual]].<ref name="twsDecG44fwee"/>
[[File:U.S. party affiliation.svg|thumb|Party affiliation in the United States according to a 2004 study: Democratic with 72 million, Republican with 55 million and third parties collectively with 42 million registered citizens<ref>{{cite web |last=Neuharth |first=Al |author-link=Al Neuharth |url=https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/neuharth/2004-01-22-neuharth_x.htm |title=Why politics is fun from catbirds' seats |date=22 January 2004 |access-date=3 February 2023 |publisher=[[USA Today]]}}</ref>]]

When third parties are built around an ideology which is at odds with the majority mindset, many members belong to such a party not for the purpose of expecting electoral success but rather for personal or psychological reasons.<ref name=SchmidtTextbook/> In the U.S., third parties include older ones such as the [[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] and the [[Green Party (United States)|Green Party]] and newer ones such as the [[United States Pirate Party|Pirate Party]].<ref name=SchmidtTextbook/><ref name=twsMarZ2la>{{cite news
|author= Jack Schofield
|title= Sweden's Pirate Party wins EU seat (updated)
|newspaper= The Guardian
|quote= The Pirate Party ... wants to legalise internet file-sharing and protect people's privacy on the net ... There *IS* a UK Pirate Party ... and there's a US ... one, and one in a few dozen others."
|date= 8 June 2009
|url= https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/jun/08/elections-pirate-party-sweden
|access-date= 2011-03-28
|archive-date= 2014-02-13
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140213215401/http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/jun/08/elections-pirate-party-sweden
|url-status= live
}}</ref> Many believe that third parties do not affect American politics by winning elections, but they can act as "spoilers" by taking votes from one of the two major parties.<ref name=SchmidtTextbook/> They act like barometers of change in the political mood since they push the major parties to consider their demands.<ref name=SchmidtTextbook/> An analysis in ''[[New York Magazine]]'' by Ryan Lizza in 2006 suggested that third parties arose from time to time in the nineteenth century around single-issue movements such as abolition, women's suffrage, and the direct election of senators, but were less prominent in the twentieth century.<ref name=twsDecG44aa>{{cite magazine
|author= Ryan Lizza
|title= But Is a Third Party Possible?
|magazine= New York Magazine
|quote= In the nineteenth century, third parties were single-issue creatures that grew up around great causes that the major parties were ignoring. Abolition, women's suffrage, and the direct election of senators all started as third-party movements.
|date= Apr 16, 2006
|url= https://nymag.com/news/politics/16743/
|access-date= 2010-12-07
|archive-date= 2011-09-26
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110926085019/http://nymag.com/news/politics/16743/
|url-status= live
}}</ref> With a [[Electoral fusion in the United States|fusion]] nomination, a candidate can appear under two separate labels, allowing voters to show support for a candidate and a party.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Monitor |first=Special to the New Jersey |date=2024-12-09 |title=Fusion voting would encourage coalitions, decrease polarization • New Jersey Monitor |url=https://newjerseymonitor.com/2024/12/09/fusion-voting-would-encourage-coalitions-decrease-polarization/ |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=New Jersey Monitor |language=en-US}}</ref>

A so-called ''third party'' in the [[United Kingdom]] were historically the [[Liberal Democrats (UK)|Liberal Democrats]], prior to the [[Scottish National Party]] taking its place from the [[2015 United Kingdom general election|2015 election]] until the [[2024 United Kingdom general election|2024 election]] by number of the House of Common seats. In the [[2010 United Kingdom general election|2010 election]], the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes but only 9% of the seats in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]]. While electoral results do not necessarily translate into legislative seats, the Liberal Democrats can exert influence if there is a situation such as a [[hung parliament]]. In this instance, neither of the two main parties (at present, the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]] and the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]]) have sufficient authority to run the government. Accordingly, the Liberal Democrats can in theory exert tremendous influence in such a situation since they can ally with one of the two main parties to form a coalition. This happened in the [[Cameron–Clegg coalition|coalition government of 2010]]. The two party system in the United Kingdom allows for other parties to exist, although the main two parties tend to dominate politics (for example, the aforementioned coalition government was the first multi-party government since the government of Winston Churchill in the early- to mid-1940s); in this arrangement, other parties are not excluded and can win seats in Parliament. In contrast, the two party system in the United States has been described as a duopoly or an enforced two-party system, such that politics is almost entirely dominated by either the Republicans or Democrats, and third parties rarely win seats in [[United States Congress|Congress]],<ref>Gillespie, J. D. (2012). Challengers to Duopoly: Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-party Politics. University of South Carolina Press.</ref> state legislatures, or even at the local level.