The two-party system Fifty party systems – The presidential and the congressional parties – Why two parties? – Grass roots democracy – Local politics – The structure of the parties – Party organisation – Campaign finances – The ideological content of American politics – Liberalism and conservatism – Extremism and violence – The clash on issues

The patterns of sectional, class, pluralistic and individualistic political behaviour in the American electorate suggest, at first sight, that the most likely shape for the party system would be a number of different parties each giving expression to the interest of an important section of the political universe. Surely only a multi-party system could give expression to such diversity. Yet a second look at the evidence of the previous chapter throws some doubt on this suggestion. Are the numerous cross-pressures of American politics, the overlapping patterns of group behaviour, consistent with the existence of a number of relatively stable political parties of the kind to be found in continental European countries? In fact, two political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, dominate the scene without any serious rivals on the horizon. There have been important third-party movements in American history, and even today there are many minor parties. In 1968 George Wallace, the candidate of the American Independent Party, polled 13.5 per cent of the total vote, and in 1924 Robert La Follette, the Progressive candidate for the Presidency, attracted the vote of one-sixth of those who went to the polls. In 1992 Ross Perot, running as an independent, polled 19% of the total vote, and may have been responsible for the defeat of George Bush. Perot ran again in 1996 but attracted a very much smaller proportion of the vote. Another type of third-party movement, the breakaway States Rights Party of 1948, won five of the southern states that normally went to the Democratic Party. In 1964 there were six minor candidates for the presidency, including the first black ever to run for the office, and in 1980 an independent candidate, John Anderson, polled over five and a half million votes, 7 per cent of the total. However, when there is no stimulus for a protest vote to draw electors away from the two major parties, they may between them poll over 99 per cent of the votes cast, as they have done in most of the elections since 1952.