GOP and tea pary relations Tense over election issues

[Kulindahr]

Is it really impossible for more than two parties to have power in the USA? Look at Great Britain, they have a similar political system in regards to the election of their representatives. So normally there are only the Tories and Labour. But the Liberal Democrats have managed to gain about 50 seats of Westminsters 650 Seats for 2 elections now, even though they have first-past-the-post in the UK as well.

Of course in the UK they have an independent commission to do their gerrymandering for them. And your governors and (kinda) the president are directly elected, and there are state-wide elections for the Senate. Those would primarily fall to the democrats then by default if the conservatives would split their vote? Could they band together for these elections?

The two systems aren't remotely similar. In the UK people vote for the party, and parties are represented according to the votes they get. In the U.S., votes are cast for individuals, and it's possible to win with only a third of the vote -- it's not majority rule, but plurality rule, which means that frequently the majority of the people are just not represented.

Redistricting should be done by mathematicians who don't care about politics but are interested only in elegant solutions to the most efficient geographical arrangement of equal batches of people.