Third Parties in the Internet Age

[Yelnoc]

The internet has been heralded as the "great equalizer", allowing "the little guy" to get his message out.  Third party political candidates have a much easier time campaigning and interfacing with voters now than they did twenty years ago.  My question is this; will the third parties continue to perform perceptibly better as the internet evolves and matures?

[BritishDixie]

No, because of the perception that only the Democrats or the Republicans can win the Presidency, and that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. I can see third parties getting say 2-3% of the vote more regularly, but it takes some major crisis or event to boost a third party above 5%.

[Mr. Morden]

The USA's system of using open primaries to determine party nominees for virtually every office means that it's usually more effective to try to wage an insurgent campaign within one of the two major parties than it is to actually go third party.  (As the Paulite insurgency is showing.)

Yes, the two major parties have gotten weaker (and yes, the internet has contributed to that), but what that means is that they've weakened in their ability to control their own membership, not that they're at risk of being supplanted by a third party.  (Though I do wonder if, many years down the line, the Paulite insurgency might threaten to blow the GOP apart.)

[Donerail]

Hopefully yes, probably no. Look at attempts to mobilize a third party via the Internet (Americans Elect). Didn't work.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

The rise of the Falconist Party is inevitable.

[TJ in Oregon]

Hopefully yes, probably no. Look at attempts to mobilize a third party via the Internet (Americans Elect). Didn't work.

One of the other big problems with Americans Elect is that it didn't have an ideology or stand on any issue really, thus people had no reason to join it. You would need to have a single ideology left unrepresented by either party with enough followers to supplant one of the two and it would need to be an ideology that doesn't necessarily fit better into one party than it does the other (otherwise it would just be absorbed).