Actually we have something like 35 parties, with six actually running presidential candidates this year, but the Democrats and Republicans are the two biggest ones - the rest are so small they generally never win, and in some cases don't even have enough support to even get on the ballot in most states. It's like the Libertarian Party could claim to be the third biggest political party in the US, but after the first two there's a huge drop-off in the numbers.
Also, unlike in the UK, America does not do coalition govts.
I think they should have to, if they didn't have coalition but had to actually work together to produce simething the people wanted they'd do a lot better. They make me cross, we have to decide which is the lesser of the evils and hope they don't nake too much of a mess while they are in. a bit of team work and negtiation and not bully bot tactics would be nice for a while
We have the same problem with "lesser of two evils", for the most part. The thing with America is that there's no need for coalitions because of the way Congress is structured and the fact that the two major parties pretty much run the show. The closest thing to it is the way the Tea Party (which isn't an actual political party per se) has mobilized unltraconservatives in ways the GOP couldn't so on its own, and the GOP is co-opting that as much as possible, even at the expense of associating themselves with nutters. It will be interesting to see if the Greens or Libertarians can build up a big enough base that a coalition is both feasible and necessary.
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Also, unlike in the UK, America does not do coalition govts.
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