Two Party System Research Paper

167 Words1 Pages
The United States has a two-party system. The existence of only two dominant parties stems largely from election rules that provide for single-member districts and winner-take-all elections. Each "district" can have only one winner in any election, the person who receives the most votes. So no matter how popular a third party, it will not win a single seat in any legislature until it becomes powerful enough in a single district to take an election. By contrast, many democracies have proportional representation, in which officials are elected based on the percentage of votes their parties receive, and more than two dominant parties. If a party wins 10 percent of the vote in an election where 100 seats are at stake, it gets to have 10 of the