PATIENT
The two-party system
CASES
Perot 1992, Roosevelt 1912
KEY IDEA
Duverger's law, as a tendency
RULES AT FAULT
Winner-take-all, single-member districts
CHIEF COMPLAINT
Why does a candidate with a fifth of the vote win nothing?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Perot won about 19 percent of the 1992 vote and no electoral votes. Theodore Roosevelt won about 27 percent in 1912 and came second, with 88 electoral votes. The difference is geography: Roosevelt's votes were concentrated in particular states where he finished first, Perot's were spread thin across all of them. Under winner-take-all, concentration wins and thin spread loses. The rules that cause this are not in the Constitution.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
RULES
Winner-take-all and one-winner House districts are laws, not constitutional commands. States and Congress can change them.
DUVERGER
Plurality, one-winner elections tend toward two parties. A tendency, not a law: Canada and India have more.
SPOILERS
Each side has a favorite story (Perot, Nader). Both rest on a counterfactual and both are argued.
OTHER WALLS
Ballot access, a 15 percent debate threshold, and public money that arrives after the election.
WHAT THEY WIN
Ideas, not offices: the income tax, women's suffrage and direct election of senators began on third-party platforms.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by district. The other states do not.
- —Congress made single-member House districts the law in 1967. It could unmake them.
- —Roosevelt and Taft together beat Wilson in 1912 by popular vote, and Wilson still won with 435 electoral votes.
- —Independents do win: Vermont and Maine each sent one to the Senate.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Start with the two-runs section, then the spoiler question. Every claim is tagged Settled, Disputed or Popular myth with a source, and both sides of the live argument (do the debate and ballot rules protect the two parties, and should the rules change) show at equal length in the full Study Guide.