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The New York Times recently conducted an analysis that found an enormous number of elections in the United States are uncontested. This means that voters are left with no choices: the election is a foregone conclusion. Renowned democracy scholars Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, nearly 35 years ago, wrote, “All democracies involve a degree of uncertainty about who will be elected and what policies they will pursue.” In a system in which elections increasingly consist of a single candidate, there is no uncertainty about who will win. Without a degree of competition, American democracy teeters.
Importantly, a lack of political parties and competition is not news to the American public. Voters agree that the United States is in desperate need of electoral reform. Specifically, Americans want more electoral choices. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center report, 60% of Americans viewed the Republican party unfavorably, and a different 60% of those surveyed viewed the Democratic party unfavorably. Further, nearly one-third of Americans had a favorable view of neither party. At the same time, a second report from the Pew Research Center found that in 2023, nearly 70% of Americans under the age of 50 expressed a desire for more political parties.
Why more parties?
People intrinsically know that more choices are better. Of course, science confirms this knowledge.
In a democracy, the public is supposed to have control over its leaders. This means there should be policy congruence between democratically elected governments and the voters. That is, government should create policies that the public desires.
Decades of political science literature show that systems that produce more political parties also increase the policy congruence between governments and the public. This is because when a system has more parties, more ideologies are available to choose from in elections. Having more ideologies available to choose from results in a larger range of ideologies entering government—and more of the public’s preferences represented in government.
Additionally, research shows that within multi-ethnic and pluralist societies, like the United States, multi-party democracy (i.e., democracy with more than two parties) can actually reduce political violence. When minority groups have access to meaningful representation within a legislature and government, they have access to democratic decision-making opportunities. When people can access the levers of government power, extra-legal actions (such as violence) become less attractive.
Taken together, this means that in a two-party, multi-racial society like the United States, voters are less likely to be properly represented by their government. This lack of representation also increases the likelihood of political violence. Whereas, in a multi-party, multi-racial society, representation is substantially greater, and the threat of political violence dissipates.
Why do we only have two parties?
The rules for elections matter. The way votes are translated into elected seats provides voters incentives to either vote for their true preference or to shift away from their true preference and vote strategically (i.e., for their most preferred party with a chance of winning). At the same time, the rules also incentivize political leaders to either create new political parties or work within existing political parties.
Most of the United States uses an electoral system—that is, a set of electoral rules—called a single-member simple plurality system. This means that each electoral district chooses one representative, and it is the candidate who gets the most (not the majority) of votes. Because there is only one winner, voters may fear voting for a third or fourth party that they prefer out of concern that this will result in their least-liked party or candidate winning an election. Therefore, voters often abandon a party that they agree with in order to vote for their most preferred of the two major parties; blocking their least-preferred candidate from winning.
At the same time, this common behavior among voters means that political leaders know that they stand very little chance of winning an election if they run for office outside of one of the two major parties. Therefore, those who want to seek office through elections try to win nominations within one of the two major parties, rather than create a new party. These incentives further limit voters’ choices.
The political science term for this set of mechanisms is Duverger’s Law, named after the scientist who first noticed it. What it all means is that the United States doesn’t have two major parties because people want only two parties. In fact, people are very clear that they want more choices. We have a two-party system because the rules that translate votes into elected seats provide huge incentives to voters and political leaders alike that result in only two parties being competitive.
How do we get more parties?
As we noted above, not only do Americans want more choices, but having more political parties to choose from also leads to a more representative government, as well as a decreased likelihood of political violence; two normatively good things. In order to provide Americans with the additional choices they want, as well as enjoy the other benefits of multi-party democracy, changes to the way we run elections is imperative. Decades of scientific research show that three changes to the way we elect political leaders will provide Americans with the additional choices they want.
First, the number of seats up for election in each electoral district must be increased. As noted above, the United States generally uses single-member electoral districts, meaning that each district chooses one representative and only one representative in an election. To increase the likelihood of more choices, districts need to have multiple seats up for election. Rather than a single elected representative, a district might have 10, 15, 20, or more elected representatives, all chosen in the same election.
Of course, by themselves, multi-member districts do not produce multiple parties. In fact, multi-member districts coupled with plurality voting can have fairly unrepresentative effects. However, when coupled with a second reform, a proportional electoral system, multi-member districts are the key to creating more electoral choices.
A proportional system may sound complicated, but in truth, it is very simple. Voters cast their ballots, and political parties receive the percentage of seats up for election equal to the percentage of the vote they each received: if a party wins 10% of the vote, it receives 10% of the seats. Since smaller parties can still win some seats, even if they receive a small percentage of the vote, voters have incentives to vote for their true preference rather than vote strategically for their most preferred of the two major parties. At the same time, this encourages political leaders who want to win office to create new parties that allow them to express their true policy positions, rather than seeking the nomination from one of the two major parties.
The rules in single-member simple plurality elections encourage voters to abandon their true preferences, while the rules in multi-member proportional elections encourage voters to cast a ballot for the candidate or party they truly prefer. Under multi-member proportional rules, we end up with a very high likelihood of getting more political parties.
Importantly, using multi-member proportional elections is not some far-fetched idea that exists only in the minds of researchers and scientists. This system is actually used by an enormous number of countries throughout the world, including nearly all democracies in Europe and South America.
While multi-member districts with proportional elections will do the heavy lifting in creating more choices for Americans and increasing representation, the likelihood of getting more choices increases even further if the size of the legislature is increased. Right now, the U.S. House of Representatives is capped at 435 members. If this were increased to 600, the likelihood of more choices would also increase, although this effect on the creation of new parties is smaller than the effect of multi-member districts elected via proportional representation.
Would this solve the problem of uncontested elections?
Simply put, yes. As a party chair in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, said in the article from The New York Times linked above, “No matter what you do to push the needle, it’s going to be a 35 percent vote total for you… People want to invest in winners. And when you know you’re going to get 35 percent, no matter what, it’s hard to invest in that.”
In a single-member simple plurality system, like most of the United States uses, 35 percent is a losing number. When party leadership knows they’re going to lose, it is hard for them to recruit candidates for office, and hard for them to devote resources to that election. However, when using multi-member districts with proportional representation, 35 percent of the vote gets a party roughly 35 percent of the seats. This means that parties have every incentive to contest all elections, and that voters have every incentive to vote for their true preference. And we could say goodbye to single-candidate elections.
Tired of only two choices
Voters in the US are remarkably united in their desire for electoral reform. The United States has a problem with uncontested elections, and a large number of voters in this country want even more than two choices in elections. Science shows that they are right for wanting more choices. Having more choices increases representation and decreases the likelihood of political violence.
Electoral science tells us how we can produce more choices. The Center for Science and Democracy has been at the forefront of using science and evidence to advocate for multi-member, proportional elections in the United States, which we know are likely to bring about multiparty democracy. It is time we give the public the choices it wants by reforming the antiquated single-member simple plurality election rules used in the United States, and adopting multi-member proportional elections.
