The US House of Representatives was actually created around the perceived likelihood of a multitude of parties in the US. Given the variety of the states and the relatively small number of votes required to elect a representative, very small, local parties would be able to win local elections. Or so it was thought.

When this dynamic plays out as Dom suggests, with no Presidential candidate carrying the Electoral College, the House chooses the President. This, many framers believed, was how Presidents would be selected.

Fat chance. US politics has suffered from bi-polar disorder for more than 2 centuries. Even the most successful 3rd parties fade quickly.

But they’re always associated with a Presidential candidate, the office that has the highest barrier to entry.

I’ve never understood why a 3rd party didn’t start as a grass-roots movement that elects a couple of representatives on a basically local platform and grow from there.

Finally, I’m looking in my crystal ball, and I think it’s least unlikely that a large, concentrated ethnic group will execute this strategy in one way or another.

While our party system in the UK has survived the evolution into Conservative and Liberal, the rise of the Labour party and the hiccup of the Social Democrats, I wonder what would happen to the system you describe if the two-party hegemony was upset?

It’s unlikely ever to happen I guess, because the USA is insular and conservative and has almost infinite inertia. But achieving the 270 electoral college votes would be a lot harder with a sizeable third party in the mix.

What prompted the mutation of the UK parties was significant political innovation like the Corn Laws, the rise of organised labour and the European issue. The USA system has survived the expansion of the union and the Cold War without change. What could change it? Climate change and the end of oil? The internet?

I’ve been following the so-called ‘prediction markets.’ Here’s a game version from the FT. Look at the wild, wild action between Obama and Hillary surrounding the New Hampshire primary, 8 Jan.

Martin commented already on the superdelegates in the Democratic party. Although the numbers are different in the article I read (796 vs 840), it is a sizeable faction either way made up of “Democratic members of Congress, governors, national committee members or party leaders (such as former presidents and vice presidents).”

I guess Bill gets to vote for Hillary as a superdelegate as well as at the ballot box :)

And these superdelegate votes, from the looks of it, can be indicated in advance of primaries/caucuses. That is the reason Hillary’s delegate count has always tracked higher than Obama on places like:

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/

which shows Hillary with 232 delegates and Obama with 158.

(Detail of these superdelegates already accounted for at http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D )

I thought the cnn site explanations were good: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/02/delegate.explainer/index.html

Probably not even worth talking about the Republican pledged vs unpledged delegates :)

BTW, the process of franchise is so arcane in the context of technology available that a dramatically more liquid Franchise Market is imminent.

And I see VRM as a building block that will accelerate realization of such a market. Just like VRM turns CRM on its head, the concept of going somewhere and voting on specific agenda at a specific time and place is to be phased out.

“Voters don’t choose the 842 unpledged “super-delegates” who comprise nearly 40 percent of the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.”

(thanks to Jason at 37Signals)