• JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    There’s tons to say.

    Well, not tons, but a solid-ass rebuttal.

    Those states do matter. They only “don’t matter” because everybody in them has historically done and is predicted to do a certain thing. If enough people learn of that prediction, become unmotivated, and don’t do that thing anymore, then those states become swing states which could swing the other way. It’s not guaranteed to always be the way it’s been.

    “Blue state” and “red state” aren’t unchanging aspects of the geography, they’re the actions of individuals as seen from an aerial view.

    Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.

      And yet, this logic doesn’t apply to unseating the existing parties, for some reason. If Illinois could eventually turn red, then it follows that it could eventually turn green. In either case, it’s just a matter of “enough people” changing their behavior.

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        The difference between red and blue is often about 5-10 percentage points. But if you’re up 5, that means your opponent is down 5. Because it still has to add up to 100.

        To turn a state green, that party would have to be up at least 50%.

        You see how that’s a problem, right?

        But while Green is pushing ahead, where do you think those votes are coming from?

        If the Greens pick up 5% of the vote, they need to take those votes from someone, and that’s most likely the Dems. Now they have 45% of the vote, because percentages still have to add up to 100, the Republicans have 50%, and handily win the election.

        For greens to replace, most likely the democrats, would involve the left loosing every election for about a decade or two. Just completely having no voice in government.

        You see what parties don’t switch like that right? No, the party has to collapse, and then a replacement has to step in.

        And in order for a party to collapse, it needs to be a coalition party. Like the Whigs. https://www.history.com/news/whig-party-collapse

        Something that is unlikely to happen to a modern party.

        Thus the only way for the greens to gain power is to change the voting system. Real voting reform needs either Approval or STAR as the voting system. (there are a few more, like Ranked Robin, but the main point is that it needs to be a cardinal voting system.)

        The Green party under Jill Stein mildly supports RCV, a system that deeply flawed and will not actually fix things.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          20 hours ago

          If the democrats started losing every election because of the greens, then I expect what would happen is that they’d start supporting voting reform, and if that happened, I’d be willing to vote for them so that they can implement it. But currently, while there are a handful who do, they are incentivized not to support it, since FPTP benefits them.