US Politics |OT|

[SanAndreasX]

S.Peelman said:

SanAndreasX said:

Not Netherlands-related, but American-related: If PVV had gotten the largest share of the vote of all of the competing parties in the Netherlands and didn't get to control the government, a lot of American right wingers would have been upset that Wilders didn't get to be Prime Minister, even if that share was like 25 percent. A lot of them are hung up on the "winner takes all" mentality. When Herbert Kickl didn't win the chancellorship of Austria after his party got 29% of the total vote (the largest single share), American right-wingers were big mad about it. In their mind, he should have had a total mandate off of that 29 percent. It didn't register to them that 71% basically voted against FPO and formed a coalition accordingly. 

To give you an example, Oklahoma is one of the "reddest" states in the USA. Even there, Kamala Harris got a larger share of the vote (31.2%) than any single party is likely to get of the Dutch electorate. All five of Oklahoma's congressional districts likewise had Democrats voting in larger shares than PVV or any other party is going to get in the Dutch election.  Those 35% of Oklahomas will be completely unrepresented in any branch of the federal government, and they don't really have any effective representation in the state government, either. 

This is also why voting third party is useless in the United States, for people outside (and inside) the United States who can't wrap their heads around the fact that the U.S. technically uses a two-party system, and in most jurisdictions, it's really a one-party system.

The American system has its issues yes.

Two years ago though Wilders won with a big lead, but he didn’t became prime minister. He wasn’t even in the cabinet. His party was, but he wasn’t. I don’t remember any comments from American republicans back then, though I might have missed that.

I just remember reading a Washington Post article on the Austrian elections. MAGAs were upset that Kickl didn’t get a full mandate with his 29 percent share of the electorate. They didn’t grasp the concept of needing to form a coalition of at least 50 percent of the legislature and weren’t interested in learning. The U.S. system is a combination of FPTP and winner takes all, plus the head of government role is combined with the head of state role in the presidency.