/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

The original Socialist Party (traced back to its founding in the Progressive Era) basically gasped its last breath with the split over Stalinism. Its eventual successor, the Communist Party, saw great success throughout the Depression and into the '50s until it was eventually kneecapped by the 2nd Red Scare. Obviously since all the original organizers are long gone we have to ask what this label (hesitant to even use the word "party") even stands for these day. Trotskyism? Stalinism? Keynesian social democracy? Something else? What has it stood for since the '70s?

>NO ONE is electing socialists under a true socialist party banner
I think you should be careful laying that responsibility entirely at the feet of organizing effort or generalized public opinion. The inability for third parties to succeed in partisan races is a fundamental feature of the US's electoral system of single-winner offices with plurality voting. Whether you're in a leftist party or a lolbert party, the odds are stacked incredibly strongly against you winning elections in partisans races because the logic of tactical voting is so compelling to voters. The greatest success the Communist Party had in New York City was during the 10-year period in the '30s and '40s in which it adopted Single Transferable Vote to apportion representation on its city council. Almost immediately two Communist Party council members (and several other 3rd parties) got elected and remained in office until the electoral rule was repealed as a consequence of the 2nd Red Scare.

>>490999
It can be pretty easy to win council seats, I've literally talked to Uni students before who became councillers, because they just had their friends show up and vote and basically nobody votes in those things.
It's always been a bit weird to me that Socialist parties don't target council seats like the Green party and Libertarian party do.
>It's a political failure, and the whole socialist label is clearly a curse.
ACP won a judicial seat in Vermont. So it's possible.

>>490999
IRV shouldn't be conflated with STV

IRV has been a dismal failure in Maine, despite being used broadly there today.

Additionally Duverger's is not a law of nature, it is a storytelling attempt to describe a trend. It's close to a "just so story".

Indian regional politics use first past the post and single member districts, and they have hundreds of parties competing, often 3, 4, 5 parties near equally in single partisan races.

>>491018
>
It's always been a bit weird to me that Socialist parties don't target council seats like the Green party and Libertarian party do.

>
It's always been a bit weird to me that Socialist parties don't target council seats like the Green party and Libertarian party do.

There's really no point to it, third parties don't win through a heroic series of small wins culminating to some final boss fight.

They win through significant domestic division, and the deeper and more numerous the divisions, the higher chance a third party has of taking advantage of a fatal division in a major party and simply accepting its former members.

>>491031
>IRV shouldn't be conflated with STV
I completely agree, in fact it is my tireless crusade to get people to stop using the braindead term "ranked choice voting" which easily conflates the two. An important poiint can be made which is reflected in the graph: Countries which use a combination of IRV and STV such as Ireland and Australia tend to have only a bit more overall party representation because their IRV bodies function to undermine the party-enriching aspects of their STV bodies.

>regional politics
Your observation is also true of Canada and UK, but the thing to understand is the trend actually still holds at a smaller geographic scope. While these countries have not yet degenerated to absolute two-party domination at a national level, if you look closer what actually occurs is there are typically still only two parties vying for power in a given discrete region.

>>491042
>there are typically still only two parties vying for power in a given discrete region

no, and that's why it's not a law

In India, politics usually doesn’t follow the “only two parties vying for power” models. Elections in discrete regions are frequently multi-party races where three or more parties compete seriously.

For example, in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, and Congress all contest elections, making it a four-cornered fight.

In West Bengal, the main battle is between Trinamool Congress, BJP, Congress, and the Left parties.

In Tamil Nadu, both DMK and AIADMK are strong, but Congress, BJP, and smaller regional parties also play key roles.

Because of these dynamics, India’s democracy is considered a multi-party system, directly contradicting the idea that only two parties dominate a given region and a very powerful argument against what is just some guy's theory.

>>491045
Duverger's has a number of theoretical flaws, one is assuming voters are strategic or that party similarities outweigh class divisions.

Indians aren't exactly known for their straregy either in developing infrastructure, building a proper loo, or getting into white girls panties

India's society is also way more class divided than the US'

>>491045
>>491046
>one is assuming voters are strategic or that party similarities outweigh class divisions
Neither of those are assumptions of Duverger's law, it's just an observational trend. Duverger himself never even called it a law, it just got upgraded to "law" by other political scientists as they continued to survey more political systems and realized what a strong tendency it was.

>>491047
Yes those are typical assumptions of Duverger's applied as a political science law