> so each was on its way already to becoming a majority party and entrenching itself. Gotcha. And WHEN was the last one?
No actually not at all. In every case where a new party came in and took over a majority party it had <1% support int he previous election. These new parties that come in and replace existing majority parties in 7 out of 8 of the cases all happened over the course of a single election. In the one outlier it was over the court of 2 elections.
> And WHEN was the last one?
Quite some while back, Its about a generation back, something like 80 years ago. Which again is to my point, the fact that it has happened 8 times already and has not happened **recently** means the underlying cause is something recent and not FPTP which we had through that entire time.
> My only point was that THIS election, a 3rd party vote is nothing but a not-D and not-R vote, because there is no 3rd party groundswell.
As stated in virtually all cases of a switch of parties there was no building "ground swell" in all cases the switch of party was abrupt and over the course of just a single election.
Moreover as stated earlier, its a pointless argument because there is no rational argument that a vote for a candidate that wins, particularly when your vote does not swing the outcome, has any more value than a vote for a canddidate that looses, again, when your vote wouldnt have caused the swing. Since votes never really come down to a single vote, your vote will never swing the outcome, so there is little incentive for you to pick a canddidate you dont like as much simply because you think they would win.
@godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews > First off, 80 years is more like FOUR generations.
True usually when people talk about generations they talk about the time to average child bearing age, not the length of time of a lifetime. What I meant here was a single persons lifespan.
To be clear here I didnt actually answer your question, because I misread it as being applicable to my claim.
I claimed the majority party changed 8 times and the last time was 80 years. That is not the same as saying a non-majority party won all those 8 times. Some of those 8 cases represent presidential wins, some of them simply represented a new majority party pushing out an old, but not corresponding with a presidential win during that year (and by some future point when the new party does win has now been established as a majority party so wouldnt count by your criteria).
Specifically in the case of 80 years ago, we are talking about a third-party becoming one of the two majority parties, but not becoming the winning party,. 80 years ago was also the one time out of 8 that I had mentioned that the thuird party did not retain majority status after wards. In all other cases, 7 of them, the new majority party remained a majority party and I beleive in all cases eventually had a presidential candidate in office.
@CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews