I realize the USA has never had a third party. You have had the odd independent run for president with very little success. Many other countries have had 3rd or 4th parties and had them win.

You have your extreme right and extreme left that seem to be now running the parties. With it being relatively new for the left.

Why not a 3rd party that actually is in the middle. Got to be some rich dude that can finance it. If there is any time both sides are frustrated with what they got it has to be now. You would have to field a full slate of candidates

Nobody wants to be the third party that breaks off from one of the other two. They'd prefer the other faction in their party gtfo and start from scratch instead. When Tea Party took over Rep, the moderate Rs didn't want to have to start their own party that aligned with their values, they just wanted to try to keep their jobs, so they went with the flow, rather than split off and lose. You have a better chance of taking over your party and moving them to where you want and then getting in power than going off on your own and forming a party that represents your views.

In the UK the Lib Dems broke away in the center in the 1980s. They may have been the lesser partner in a coalition government at some point, but AFIAK they have never seriously challenged to form the government in their 30-ish years, though I could be wrong about all of this since I don't really follow UK politics.

In Canada we've had three parties forever (since early 1960s, and now we have an extra few as well), and the left wing party has never had a serious shot at forming the government at the federal level. It's always a contest between the Conservatives and Liberals. We also has a far right Tea Partyish party that broke from the Conservatives. For years the two right wing parties split the conservative vote and Liberals won easily. They ended up re-uniting taking on the values of the further right party that had broken off since they'd become the more popular of the two, and once they got back together they formed the government for a decade. Breaking up your party is for losers. Politicians would rather sacrifice their beliefs than lose.

BTW, the extreme center is running the Democrats, not the left. Look at who is in power in the House and Senate and at the DNC, and who is running in the primary aside from Bernie.

Cliffs: Elected who want to have power don't start their own parties

Unlikely due to the first past the post system of elections.

Exactly, any time a third party has gained traction it ends up devouring one of the existing "main two" parties and we're back to where we started with different party names. If ranked choice or some other system can be implemented like Maine recently started doing, we can have all kinds of parties.

If there was a 3rd Party in the 2016 GE, Trump probably would have had 50 million votes, and Hillary/GOP would have 35 million each.

The biggest problem is the bat**** insane people are the ones most likely to vote.

True but this is not to say that we didn't have elections with viable third parties. The Free Soil Party, Know-Nothing Party, and Progressive Party were able to get more than 10% of the popular vote in at least one POTUS election. In the case of the Progressive Party, they actually finished in 2nd ahead of Republican candidate William Howard Taft. They also put up a candidate in the 1924 election who received 16% of the vote.

Ross Perot tried to self-finance a third-party in 1995 called the Reform Party. It was shut down in 2000. Granted it wasn't a centrist party but it was an instance of a super-rich guy trying to independently finance his own party.

Ultimately, it's easier to change a party from within than create a competitive third party. There are so many barriers to overcome that the main two parties don't that it becomes nearly impossible to pull off.

As for a moderate party, I have no interest in it. A moderate party these days would be a mix of establishment Democrats and old-timey conservatives clinging to the 'Good Ol' Days' of the GOP.

Please define extreme left, extreme right and middle.

define true 3rd party? does that mean viable candidacy?

i'd bet we'll have at least one viable 3rd party campaign within the next 3 elections

Viable is 270. The EC is the major roadblock to a third-party because if they don’t get a majority there, the House decides.

Extreme right - Think Everything Hannaty says is as good as the bible
Extreme Left-AOC or Bernie
Middle be tough to define but I think Fiscally responsible and if you don't want gay marriage don't get one and if you don't want abortion don't get one and legalized pot

I am certainly biased here but calling AOC/Bernie extreme is a bit over the top. "Radical" might be fair. Do you think Hannity and AOC are roughly the same distance from the middle as you defined it?

Know Nothing party actually won the last presidential election.

Louis, I'd say they are extreme for members of a centrist party, and would be centrist were they members of a left-wing party

Sure. I understood "extreme left/right" to refer to the left/right spectrum overall instead of within their respective parties.

No but many of their plans are next to impossible budget wise unless you dramatically cut defense and by dramatic I say 50%

I get a kick out of Republicans fearing Socialism but they support some of the biggest socialist policies out there just to stupid to realize it

I live in Ireland. We use a voting system called "Single Transferable Vote" to elect our parliament. It's a lot of fun. It works like this:

1. The country is split into 40 or so constituencies
2. Each constituency elects 3-5 parliamentary members (population dependent)
3. My constituency has 4 seats. Usually about 14 people will run for those
4. Instead of voting with an "X" we rank the candidates from 1 to however far down the list you want to go
5. First off all the #1 votes are counted. If any candidates get over a certain number (the quota which is = total votes / (num seats +1)). Then they are elected. Any excess votes they have over the quota are redistributed to the other candidates (via the #2 votes on those ballots)
6. If nobody gets elected they eliminate people from the bottom and redistribute their #2 votes to the remaining candidates
7. This process continues until 4 candidates have reached the quota or everyone else has been eliminated
8. Counting is done by hand and takes days (we tried to introduce electronic voting but it was a disaster so we went back to pencil & paper)

What i really like about this is that I can vote strategically but also vote for the candidates that I believe in. For example let's say that I know that the final seat in my constituency is going to be between a douchebag and someone that I am indifferent to but that there is a candidate that I really like who is a complete long shot. Well I can give the long shot my #1 and have my vote transfer to the guy who I am indifferent to by giving them my #2 thereby blocking the douchebag. With the multi-seat nature this scenario can get a lot more complicated but the above is a simple example.

This system means that we have a LOT of parties in parliament (but no far right party thankfully) and our governments are almost always coalitions. We haven't had a single party majority government in 40+ years.

I lived in the UK 10 years ago and voted in a parliamentary election there. It was the most boring voting experience. There was about 10 candidates and I could only put an X next to one of them.

It boggles my mind that a country as large and diverse as the USA has only two parties. The sooner you guys move away from first past the post the better imo.

Political parties are a ridiculous idea. Why should I allow my understanding of truth to be swayed by the position of a party? Each individual issue should be analyzed independently from one another. Why are we trying to fit our belief systems into a neat box based on a party platform?

Howard Schultz on 60 minutes saying if he runs its as an independent