from: http://www.investors.com/politics/c...-ideological-gap-makes-for-volatile-politics/ J.T. YOUNG 4/07/2017 As America's ideological divide is widening, its political divide is narrowing. While it is counterintuitive that a qualitative change in the American electorate could have an inverse quantitative impact on American elections, data bear that out. Increasing polarization and political balance means even small shifts in voting can produce disproportionately large electoral swings and ideological shifts in governing — meaning much greater volatility in both. To no one's surprise the nation's electorate is more deeply divided than formerly... ...polling in 2000 showed America's electorate to be 20% liberal, 29% conservative, and 50% moderate. Four elections later, exit polling found the electorate 26% liberal, 35% conservative, and 39% moderate. Over sixteen years, liberals and conservatives increased at moderates' expense. Yet America maintained its balance: Both ends of the spectrum grew, thereby also increasing its ideological divide. While voters' ideological separation was widening, the elections expressing their preferences moved in the opposite direction. Both the swing in election outcomes and the gap between the two major parties have fallen dramatically... ...small shifts in the popular vote that determine elections and trap the parties also have increasingly large impacts on governing after the election... ...Trump's share of the popular vote was 0.8% below Mitt Romney's and Hillary Clinton's 2.6% below Barack Obama's in 2012. Yet that roughly 3% swing prompted a movement of 100 electoral votes to the Republican. And few would argue against the idea that Trump's first 100 days will be significantly different from what Clinton's would have been. If these three current trends continue — growing ideological separation, declining movement in the popular vote, and a shrinking margin between the parties — continuation of America's current politics seems inescapable. Elections will be more volatile and more hostile, and the consequences greater.
Fix is no more elections. Congressman and Senators are pulled from registered voter rolls like being called to jury duty. One term and your out.
A better idea, would be to remove the unfair advantage(s) that establishment parties hold over third parties, independents, and moderates. We can start by dumping plurality first past the post in favor of a ranked voting system. Just do that, and we solve most of the problem right there. -Meta
There are computer programs that can draw congressional districts so they would not favor a party and the populations would be more equal across districts. That would help. Paul Ryan, while in the party that says government is bad, has never really had a job outside of government, and there are others like him. If only Trump really would have "drained the swamp" - he put in Goldman Sachs, the corrupt, and the incompetent. Only Mattis and Nikki Haley seem to be competent and not in conflict with their roles.
After Perot, that was one thing that the 2 parties could agree on - making a third party harder to establish.
Agreed, the two parties have a vested interest in not really fixing things...but, at least at the current time, we the people still have the power to force change, provided we can come together and collectively insist upon it. Though to be fair, the Perot election (as well as the Nader, Bush, Gore election) had its own issues and is actually part of the reason for the increasing polarization...But...had we had a ranked voting system back then, such as Ranked Pairs or Instant Runoff, those issues would not have existed. -Meta
