16 Facts About Two-party system

Two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape.

For example, in the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Malta, and Zimbabwe, the sense of two-party system describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to either of the two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature.

In contrast, in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term two-party system is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties that do win some seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.

Generally, a two-party system becomes a dichotomous division of the political spectrum with an ostensibly left-wing and right-wing party:the Democratic Party versus the Republican Party in the United States, the Labor Party versus the Liberal–National Coalition bloc in Australia, the Labour Party versus the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, and the Labour Party versus the Nationalist Party in Malta.

One reason for Australia's two-party system is because the House of Representatives is elected through the instant-runoff voting electoral system.

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In some countries like Argentina, Chile and Venezuela the political Two-party system is split in two large multi-party alliances or blocs, one on the left and one on the right of the spectrum Frente de Todos versus Juntos por el Cambio in Argentina,.

Malta is somewhat unusual in that while the electoral Two-party system is single transferable vote, traditionally associated with proportional representation, minor parties have not had much success.

South Korea has a multi-party system that has sometimes been described as having characteristics of a two-party system.

Taiwan has a multi-party system that has sometimes been described as having characteristics of a two-party system.

Two-party system explained this as being due to the Spanish economic crisis, a series of political corruption scandals and broken campaign promises.

Two-party system argued that the emergence of the new Citizens and Podemos parties would mean the political system would evolve into a two-bloc system, with an alliance of the PP and Citizens on the right facing a leftist coalition of PSOE, Podemos and the United Left.

For example, some analysts suggest that the Electoral College Two-party system in the United States, by favoring a Two-party system of winner-takes-all in presidential elections, is a structural choice favoring only two major parties.

Gary Cox suggested that America's two-party system was highly related with economic prosperity in the country:.

Analyst Chris Weigant of the Huffington Post wrote that "the parliamentary Two-party system is inherently much more open to minority parties getting much better representation than third parties do in the American Two-party system".

Genuine two-party system began to emerge, with the accession to power of William Pitt the Younger in 1783 leading the new Tories, against a reconstituted "Whig" party led by the radical politician Charles James Fox.

Two-party system matured in the early 19th century era of political reform, when the franchise was widened and politics entered into the basic divide between conservatism and liberalism that has fundamentally endured up to the present.