Those OTHER Political Parties

To be completely honest, I hadn't given much thought to third parties before this week. My public policy class had a discussion about their relevance a few days ago and it got me thinking. Is their role greater than many give them credit for?

We know that there have been two major national parties (the republicans and the democrats) since the mid 1800's. These are the ONLY parties which have won any presidential race since then. Yet, many other parties have run for the race regardless, taking support away from the two main candidates and giving citizens another option to place their vote. In addition to this, there have been third party officeholders in positions other than the president-senators, governors, local level officials.

The success of third parties is difficult to come by due to multiple factors. For one, a lot of voters don't want to vote for someone they assume won't win an election. They want their vote to count, leaving two inevitable choices. Also, third parties have a hard time getting on state ballots in the first place. The two third parties that show the most relevance in elections are the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. In the 2000 election, the Green Party candidate Nader even kept Al Gore from winning.

I have questioned how my generation feels about this situation. Should we add another party? Should we be discussing the way we vote? Is there a need for some revisions? And, could this potentially lessen our political gap? When looking at a millennial poll conducted by NBC in Nov. 2017, people were asked wether or not they felt that a third party had become necessary. 71% said yes. In addition to this, 65% thought that our country was going downhill overall. 59% thought poorly of the Republicans, and 42% thought poorly of the Democrats. This was out of 1876 adults that were aged 18-34.

Here is the link to the survey I looked at:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/millennial-poll-strong-majority-want-third-political-party-n824526