http://www.nationalreview.com/node/432514/print The Parties Are Over
We could see three-quarters of Americans dissatisfied on election night.
By Jim Geraghty — March 8, 2016
For a long time, the question “why doesn’t the United States have a multiparty system?” had an obvious answer: Unlike other Western democracies, America’s political factions coalesced into the two major parties, noisily agreeing to move the country in a generally more conservative or a generally more liberal position. These factions may have chafed at each other, but they generally saw each other as irritable (and irritating) allies, not enemies indistinguishable from the opposition party.
Until now.
There have always been primary fights and rivalries, but the fights within the Democrats and Republicans this cycle are as intense as the partisan divisions were in past ones. More important, they’re not just about personality or style. Within the parties, primary voters are choosing among extremely different visions and policy ideas. Chunks of each party are looking at their traditional allies and asking just what interests and ideas they really have in common any more.
Heading into Tuesday’s primaries, more than 15.8 million people have voted for the five leading candidates. Each candidate has won anywhere from a quarter to a seventh of all the votes cast so far.
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