Opinion | How to Fix America’s Two-Party Problem

In early 2020, Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democrat from New York, was asked to speculate about her position beneath a Joe Biden presidency. She groaned. “In some other nation, Joe Biden and I might not be in the identical celebration,” she stated, “however in America, we’re.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s frustration with the two-party system displays the frustration American voters really feel each time they step into the voting sales space, once they discover themselves caught with the identical two selections — and, in most locations, just one with any shot at profitable.

As a brand new Congress sputters into gear, this rusty binary cut up — a product of our antiquated winner-take-all electoral mechanisms — is essential to understanding why our nationwide legislature has turn out to be the divisive, dysfunctional place it’s right now. It’s why greater than 200 main political scientists and historians (together with one of many authors of this essay) signed an open letter in 2022 calling on the Home of Representatives to undertake proportional illustration — an intuitive and broadly used electoral system that ensures events earn seats in proportion to how many individuals vote for them. The result’s elevated electoral competitors and, in the end, a broader vary of political events for voters to select from.

In 2024 fewer than 10 percent of U.S. Home races had been aggressive. In a overwhelming majority of districts, one celebration or the opposite wins by landslides. Pushed by a decades-long geographic sorting that has concentrated Democrats in cities and Republicans in rural areas and bolstered by partisan gerrymandering, this cut up electoral panorama has fostered a polarized local weather that turns into extra entrenched with every election.

The center of the issue is the system of single-winner districts, which give one hundred pc of illustration to the candidate who earns probably the most votes and nil % to everybody else.

Winner-take-all is the electoral software program that generates two dominant events and relegates third events to taking part in the position of spoiler and losing their supporters’ votes. This results in the identical high-stakes contest each two years between the identical two events, ensuing both in domination by one or in divided and paralyzed authorities by each.

The winners push by means of as a lot of their agenda as they’ll whereas they maintain energy. Shedding events usually refuse to work with the opposite facet.

In much less polarized political instances, winner-take-all programs can do a good job of reflecting public opinion and sustaining democratic stability, however when a nation is deeply divided and huge numbers of individuals concern that they won’t be represented in any respect, the result’s an erosion of belief in authorities and rising extremism and political violence. Because the political scientist Barbara F. Walter has observed, a majority of civil wars during the last century seem to have damaged out in nations with winner-take-all programs.

No democracy can survive lengthy within the face of this a lot division and mistrust. It’s hardly shocking, then, that greater than two-thirds of People want to see major changes in our political system. Roughly the identical proportion wish they had greater than two events to select from.

They’re proper: Two events competing in winner-take-all elections can not replicate the variety of 335 million People.

The Repair

We ended up right here not by any aware alternative. The framers of the Structure by no means addressed congressional electoral programs. Fairly, an election that just one celebration wins, with a easy plurality, operates as a form of manufacturing unit setting for American democracy, one which we’ve uncared for to replace, regardless of radically modified circumstances. Because of this, we really feel trapped by a system we backed into with out considering a lot about it.

However what if we aren’t trapped? Most established democracies already use proportional illustration. The swap from winner-take-all to proportional elections has been the most typical main electoral system change amongst democracies in current many years. Right here’s how it could work in america:

That’s proportional illustration. Voters vote as they do right now, however as a result of districts have a number of members slightly than single members, it permits a number of candidates to win seats with no majority of the votes. When the profitable threshold goes down, the variety of viable events goes up. So a number of candidates from a number of events can characterize a district, giving hundreds of thousands extra People the chance to vote for a profitable candidate, whether or not that candidate is a Republican or a Democrat or a member of one other celebration.

This brings us nearer to the imaginative and prescient of founders like John Adams and James Madison, who each warned towards the risks of two dominant events (or factions). As Adams wrote in 1776, Congress “ought to be in miniature, an actual portrait of the folks at massive. It ought to suppose, really feel, cause and act like them.”

What would that appear to be in 2025? What number of events would there be? To search out out, we analyzed knowledge from Nationscape, a big survey that polled lots of of hundreds of People on their political preferences. We used these solutions to distribute voters amongst six hypothetical events.

Providing People a alternative amongst a number of events doesn’t simply give them a clearer voice in how and by whom they’re ruled; it additionally opens up prospects for brand spanking new political coalitions, which may in flip result in the passage of broadly popular legislation. Our politics could seem intractable right now, however on points from gun management to immigration to schooling reform to A.I. regulation, profitable coalitions are hiding in plain sight.

It additionally works higher with greater legislatures, however the U.S. Home has been locked at its present dimension for greater than a century. From the start of the Home in 1789 till the early Twentieth century, its membership grew roughly according to the U.S. inhabitants. At first, there have been about 34,000 constituents per consultant; by 1911, that quantity had grown to greater than 200,000 — a lot bigger than the founders meant however nonetheless manageable. At the moment the common district holds greater than 760,000 folks, which is much too massive for anybody consultant. Because of this, tens of hundreds of thousands of People are represented by Home members they didn’t help and in a extremely polarized setting that leaves folks feeling that they are not represented at all.

The repair for this downside is to expand the membership of the House of Representatives to replicate the scale and variety of the U.S. inhabitants within the 2020s slightly than the Nineteen Twenties. In line with many political scientists, the optimum complete variety of members of the Home and the Senate mixed is the same as the dice root of the nation’s inhabitants. Legislatures in democracies world wide roughly align with this ratio; the U.S. Home did, too, till its dimension was frozen by legislation at 435. At the moment the cube-root rule would give us a Home with 593 members.

To see how these reforms would work in observe, contemplate Massachusetts:

Not solely would right-leaning voters in Massachusetts get federal illustration, however the candidates they’d assist elect would probably differ from right-leaning candidates elected in Florida or Wyoming. The identical is true of the state’s liberals and progressives, who would probably elect completely different candidates from these in Texas or Nevada.

If proportional illustration was used nationally, it could recreate the ideological range that’s at the moment suppressed by the two-party system. To see an image of how that would play out with multimember Home districts, we used Redistricter, a mapping utility for analyzing political and demographic knowledge. Right here’s what it would appear to be.

The large good thing about proportional illustration is that tens of hundreds of thousands extra People would really feel represented in Congress. It might additionally successfully remove partisan gerrymandering and probably improve illustration of racial, ethnic and non secular minorities. In all, it could be a greater approach to run one of many largest and most various nations on the planet.

Eight Phrases

Many People consider the two-party system is inherent to the American constitutional design. However the nation’s framers didn’t intend it, neither is it discovered anyplace within the Structure. Fairly, the form of the Home of Representatives is remitted by a mere eight phrases of federal law, which requires “no district to elect multiple consultant” — 435 districts, 435 members.

The legislation because it exists right now was handed in 1967, to deal with issues that white-dominated Southern states would exploit multimember districts to marginalize their Black voters, however variations of it have been in impact since 1842. Earlier than then, states usually used multimember districts to elect their congressional representatives. None of these multimember districts, nonetheless, have ever been proportional. All used a type of bloc voting — a majoritarian system through which voters can help as many candidates as there are seats, making it unattainable for minority-supported candidates to win. However beneath proportional illustration, bloc voting is unattainable as a result of every voter will get a single vote.

That’s one other factor about proportional illustration: As a voter, you wouldn’t do something considerably completely different from what you do now. You’d obtain your poll and choose the candidate you needed to characterize you in Washington. What can be completely different is that you’d have extra candidates and events to select from, and seats can be awarded in proportion to every celebration’s complete vote share in a multiwinner district. The winners might be reported straight away. No new voting machines or procedures can be required.

And the legislation might be modified to permit for proportional illustration tomorrow.

Can This Truly Occur?

Any massive electoral reform raises massive questions.

First, if Congress is already dysfunctional with two events, why wouldn’t it work higher with 5 – 6? The short reply is that Congress would do what each different multiparty legislature on the earth does — build a majority governing coalition out of multiple parties. Social gathering leaders would negotiate to assemble their coalitions and allocate management roles and committee posts to replicate the bargains they’ve made.

If, for instance, the 2026 election had been held beneath proportional illustration, the Democratic Social gathering coalition may reorganize into three events competing individually for seats in Congress — the Progressives, the New Liberals and the New Populist Social gathering. Every celebration might enchantment to completely different constituencies, together with many who at the moment really feel ignored or alienated by the two-party system. By spreading out obligations, Congress might function in a extra decentralized, committee-oriented method, with the Home speaker taking part in a much less highly effective position. That is how Congress operated within the mid-Twentieth century, a extra fluid period.

Elections for the Senate and the presidency would stay as they’re. However with a multiparty legislature, we might anticipate coalitions of a number of events across the strongest presidential candidates, with cupboard appointments that replicate the profitable coalition. This combination has proved durable in lots of nations.

And opposite to in style perception, we wouldn’t have to maneuver to a parliamentary system of presidency. Most nations with presidential programs use proportional illustration to elect their legislatures. The USA is considered one of solely 4 steady(ish) presidential democracies on the earth that use a winner-take-all system to elect their legislature. The opposite three are Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Would sitting members of Congress ever approve these reforms? Lots of them agree that their establishment is just not working. Interviews with retiring members present simply how dysfunctional, chaotic and troublesome Congress has turn out to be — and why so many representatives now call it quits after a short time in office.

It’s not shocking, then, that requires reform are beginning to come from contained in the Home. In November, Consultant Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Democrat of Washington, and Consultant Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, proposed establishing a select committee to look at electoral reforms, together with proportional illustration and Home growth; final week they reintroduced it as a prime precedence within the new Congress. In the meantime, incumbents who concern shedding their jobs ought to anticipate to be re-elected beneath proportional illustration, since they’d profit from the benefit of being well-known.

A extra critical impediment is the leaders of the 2 dominant political events, who’re unlikely to help reforms that weaken their energy. Then once more, celebration management has been described as the worst job in America. And elected leaders do typically help vital reforms when voters turn out to be so disillusioned that they demand them.

Most of us, politicians and voters alike, have spent our complete lives on this damaged system. However imaginations can broaden, and circumstances that appear unchangeable can change. They usually do in a disaster just like the one we live in now. This can be a uncommon second of openness to reform, mixed with and triggered by the dysfunction in American politics. We must always seize it.