In scandinavian countries each party typically belongs to either the red block or blue block.
Some of them do flirt with the idea of switching sides. But it's typically always the red or the blue block that forms a coalition (or minority government with supporting parties from same block).
So you effectively have two sides. And parties are pressured by the media to declare which block they support before each election. And they rarely switch sides.
Which party within a block you vote on, does matter.. because it gives those parties more influence on the government.
But you could also say that what you vote for during the primaries on US elections does matter.. however, at each stage on use election a group that only makes up 30% of the population gets no representation.
Still not a valid argument for why the US couldn't have a valid 3rd party. The same would be true here. No one who votes Green is going to vote for Libertarians or Constitutionalists.
It doesn't work here because we don't have a parliamentary system of government. That is, our executive is chosen separately from the legislature, so in that contest, the presidential contest, third parties act as spoilers. There's no sense in which Nader could have said he was in the "Democratic block" and thereby given the power of his voters to Gore.
I'm voting mostly Green with a tiny bit of Democrat this time, but I've voted Libertarian before. Libertarians seem to agree with Greens on the single most important issue to me: that we should not fight stupid wars for no good reason, and that the last war not so fought was WWII. Lots of American voters agree with me. So, your understanding of American politics could be improved.
Some of them do flirt with the idea of switching sides. But it's typically always the red or the blue block that forms a coalition (or minority government with supporting parties from same block).
So you effectively have two sides. And parties are pressured by the media to declare which block they support before each election. And they rarely switch sides.
Which party within a block you vote on, does matter.. because it gives those parties more influence on the government.
But you could also say that what you vote for during the primaries on US elections does matter.. however, at each stage on use election a group that only makes up 30% of the population gets no representation.