If our current election season has told us anything, it’s that most voters are disenchanted by the current party system our nation operates on. According to British conservative journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, the current parties of the United States are not fit for purpose any longer. There are just too many special interests and far-ranging views developing that our two parties cannot functionally cover without immense political infighting every election season.
Under our current climate, the Republican and Democratic Parties are not only at odds with each other, they’re also at odds with themselves.
This can be seen in the current civil war within the Republican Party between the conservative Tea Party faction that believes they should be in power and the center-right majority of the party that maintains control of the House of Representatives.
For the Democrats, it appears that every presidential election their party launches a political purge in order to determine how they want to identify. For 2016, it’s whether the Democratic Party wants to remain the centrist party of Hillary Clinton or the party of the left of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
With the divide inside both parties, primary battles for their party’s respective presidential nominations turn into bloodbaths. For the Republicans it became a battle between Texas Senator Ted Cruz leading the Tea Party and the religious right of the party and the establishment mainstream faction exemplified by former Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich of Ohio. This infighting only angered Republican voters to the point that they put their faith in a fringe candidate no one took seriously: Donald Trump. Trump capitalized on voters’ frustration with the party and won out simply by presenting himself as a fresh start. But many establishment and conservative Republicans refuse to their dying breath to vote for Donald Trump.
For the Democrats, the blood bath came between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders bludgeoning each other state by state. In their case, the establishment beat out the radical left factions of their party. Hillary Clinton represented a form of order and control over a Democratic Party that is far more enthralled in civil unrest than the Republicans. But with Sanders out of the race, many of his supporters are reticent about supporting Hillary Clinton.
Both parties are beginning to show they can no longer cater to the needs of their constituents.
There is a solution however: split both parties in two.
This prospect has been analyzed before by Philip Bump of the Washington Post in his 2014 article “What would happen if Congress split into four parties?”
According to Bump, both houses of Congress would be split between the Republicans, the Democrats, and two new political organizations: a Liberal and Conservative Party.
In his article, Bump painstakingly reorganized the four parties based on a 2014 spending package that had both parties divided over. His results were thus:
From left to right:
The Liberals
House minority leader: Nancy Pelosi
Senate minority leader: Elizabeth Warren
House caucus: 129 members
Senate caucus: 21 members
Likely electoral votes: 175
The Democrats
House minority leader: Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)
Senate minority leader: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
House caucus: 42 members
Senate caucus: 23 members
Likely electoral votes: 7
The Republicans
House Speaker: John Boehner
Senate majority leader: Mitch McConnell
House caucus: 143 members
Senate caucus: 27 members
Likely electoral votes: 240
The Conservatives
House minority leader: Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.)
Senate minority leader: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
House caucus: 60 members
Senate caucus: 21 members
Likely electoral votes: 83
And, of course, the two independents, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Angus King (I-Maine).
Pretend it’s 2016 and the Democratic and Republican Parties have just broken apart. Congress has realigned and we now have more choices to choose from. Who would you vote for?
Using this model, I reorganized the 2016 US Presidential Election under Bump’s four-party political theory. In the Electoral College, Republicans held the majority with 240 electoral votes, followed by the Liberals with 175, the Conservatives followed with 83, and lastly the Democrats trailed last with just 7 electoral votes. With this model, I can give my idea of what we would expect from a 2016 presidential race with four parties.
It would be a vastly different atmosphere.
For instance, Donald Trump would likely have not become the presumptive nominee of neither the Republican nor Conservative parties. Therefore, I believe it would be a matchup between former Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as the Republican nominee against Senator Ted Cruz of Texas nominated by the Conservative Party leading the center-right and right-wing packs.
On the left, we’d see Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont likely lose the Liberal Party nomination to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren against the likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
That being said, the party tickets would balance geography with battleground states. For the Republicans their key states would be in the South and Midwest. The Conservatives would likely contest states like Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arizona, but the Republican political machine could easily sway voters to turn to their favor in those states. States like Florida, Ohio, Georgia, and South Carolina would be Republican strongholds.
The Liberals would control the Pacific seaboard from Washington State to southern California with enclaves in the east like Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The Democrats however would maintain control over strongholds like New York, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and New Mexico in Congress. In the presidential election, the Democrats are at a serious disadvantage with just seven electoral votes.
With this established, one can easily predict the most likely party tickets based off the current climate:
- Republicans: Marco Rubio (FL)/John Kasich (OH)
- Conservatives: Ted Cruz (TX)/Justin Amash (MI)
- Liberals: Elizabeth Warren (MA)/Brian Schatz (HI)
- Democrats: Hillary Clinton (NY)/Steny Hoyer (MD)
In the general election, Republicans In the general election, the Republicans would have the advantage with sheer electoral votes. The Liberals as well would be well poised to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win. However the presence of a Conservative challenger and a Democratic challenger would detract votes from both sides, making it a slugfest to secure the magic number.
In addition, Libertarian candidate and former Governor Gary Johnson could hamper the Republican or Conservative candidates, though even many Libertarian-leaning voters would still vote for either Cruz or Rubio for the sole benefit that they had a better chance of winning.
In this election with the present crises, the parties would be waging a battle over solving the issues of income inequality, unemployment, government spending, gun control, and the War on Terror. Here’s the platforms the parties would give us:
- Republicans - center-right. Republicans would push for limited welfare spending, increased military spending, compromise health care reform, amnesty for illegal immigrants, sensible gun reform including background checks, and a moderate pro-life stance.
- Conservatives - right-wing. Conservatives would push for a cutting of government spending, increased military involvement against ISIS, no gun reform, and a fundamental pro-life stance with little exception and a complete defunding of Planned Parenthood.
- Liberals - left-wing. Liberals would seek to increase government spending and regulation in the private sector, decrease military spending, a less-involved policy against ISIS, legalize recreational drugs nationally, universal healthcare like the Affordable Care Act, and push for pro-choice amendments.
- Democrats - center-left. Democrats would maintain a platform of continued welfare spending, decreased spending on the military, affordable privatized healthcare, limited gun reform including a ban on assault weapons, and a moderate stance on pro-choice policies.
In the end, I see the Republicans reaching the 270 electoral votes. The establishment of the Republican Party would remain relatively well-intact since 2012 after their reorganization in response to losing the White House to President Obama a second time. The Democratic establishment however would be fragmented, and the Liberal Party, though much larger, would still have to make up for having to create their own brand new establishment and would likely not be as prepared for a presidential election. The Conservatives would as well fall short as infighting between the factions of the Religious Right and the Tea Party over what to base their party in terms of moral values. This would distract from a coherent general election strategy.
Because of this, Marco Rubio would be elected the 45th President of the United States. His appeal to Hispanic voters, who he would take from the Liberals and Democrats, his youth, and his charisma would be enough to secure the Republicans a narrow victory in the election.
This, coupled with his addition of John Kasich, would carry both Florida and Ohio and appeal to the moderate establishment base which would carry the South and Texas as well. The Republicans would also win from plurality victories in swing states like Virginia and Michigan where Liberals and Democrats would detract from each other. But this is just my take on the matter as a political scientist, my more libertarian biases aside.
In the end, I feel America should split into four parties. It’s been reported in articles such as The Washington Post that opening the American political system to more party diversity would bring more voters into the franchise feeling their votes finally matter. Many voters, myself included, would be inclined to participate without having to settle on candidates we have severe reservations about. It would mean giving the American people more options, and more freedom to choose who they want for president.
And what’s wrong with having more freedom?
