Has the Two-Party System Failed?

Because it takes 50%+1 to win an election there is NO MIDDLE. There are only two great modes in a bi-modal saddle that describes our belief and relationship systems.

I guess that's two big bumps on either side of the 50-50 mark. Let's be generous and say each bump has 40% of the population. To win you have to cut into that 20% in the middle. So those 20% or so of votes in the middle become very important.

Could you have a 60% or a 45% bump on one side and a 40% or 30% bump on the other? Not for very long. Things tend to even out. Either you push too far too fast and some of your majority drifts back to the center, or the other side outmaneuvers you for some key voting blocks, or voters drift away on their own. So you're back to needing to take a bite out of that 20% or so in the middle.

Could you bring out more of your 40% than the other side does and win that way? I don't know, the hard ideological core usually does turn out to vote. If you're getting your people out and the other side isn't getting their's out at all, you're probably also pulling in a lot of moderate swing voters and electing a lot of moderate representatives who will want to influence policy.

There's a tendency to assume that a winning candidate "owns" everybody who votes for him. Maybe Reagan did "own" the Reagan Democrats, but subsequent Republicans didn't (or if they did "own" those Reagan Democrats, they lost enough other votes from other groups to still be in trouble at the polls). People who are with us in one election won't always be with us in the next.

Say 40% of the population belongs to one philosophical camp and 40% to the other sharply distinguished philosophical camp. The election still comes down to the 20% or so in the middle.

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