They see politics as being a scale from left to right, 1 to 100. Individuals may have any value in that scale and they’ll vote for whoever has a closer value. So if Republicans are 80, Dems move up to 79 so that they’ll be the closest to anything left of 80. If Republicans go up to 100, Dems go up to 99 and then 99% of people will vote Dem as even someone with a value of 1 will see them as the closest party. It’s an incredible and flawless plan. Who cares about the actual politics so long as you win, right?
Now if there were a third party, then suddenly going as close to Republicans as possible is no longer a good strategy because the third party can just do the same with them - so they have to find a new balance in that scale. Add even more parties and then each one would have to find its own thing to fight for or they would get absolutely no votes.
They see politics as being a scale from left to right, 1 to 100. Individuals may have any value in that scale and they’ll vote for whoever has a closer value. So if Republicans are 80, Dems move up to 79 so that they’ll be the closest to anything left of 80. If Republicans go up to 100, Dems go up to 99 and then 99% of people will vote Dem as even someone with a value of 1 will see them as the closest party. It’s an incredible and flawless plan. Who cares about the actual politics so long as you win, right?
Now if there were a third party, then suddenly going as close to Republicans as possible is no longer a good strategy because the third party can just do the same with them - so they have to find a new balance in that scale. Add even more parties and then each one would have to find its own thing to fight for or they would get absolutely no votes.
We have third and fourth and more parties. Its not the number of parties that matter. Its the system by which they are given power.