With the recent election of Joe Biden as President, this has many Americans angry and upset that our country will become a socialist nation, or that we are moving too far left. Looking simply at domestic politics, you might see some of that, but looking internationally, we see that this is simply not the case. American politics, when compared to similar democratic political systems in Europe, are shifted as a whole, giving it a right wing bias. An idea that may seem very liberal in the U.S. could be actually common and widely accepted in Europe. This has many implications for U.S. politics and values held by American citizens.
A useful tool when evaluating the systemic shift in party ideology is the Manifesto Project. A database that has huge stores of data on political parties all over the world, it is unique in how it analyzes and judges party manifestos. It scrutinizes every line of the manifestos, giving each line a score that will either shift it to th
But why is this data from the Manifesto Project important? Well, by looking at it, it becomes expressly clear that the American political parties are very right leaning. The Democratic Party, which is the main left political party in the U.S., is center-left at best on an international scale. The Republican Party, however, is very right leaning and far from the median party platform. This would come as a surprise to many Americans, especially those in the Republican party themselves. Often, the Democratic party is portrayed as a party of socialists, however that could not be further from the truth. The Democratic Party is mostly composed of liberals, but this ideology is not even close to far enough left to identify even as a democratic socialist, a moderate form of socialism. In fact, 33% of the Democratic party said they have either a somewhat or very negative view of socialism. So, while it may seem easy to believe that in our nation, the Democratic party is impossibly far left, the reality is that is far from the truth.
This systemic bias also influences the values that Americans hold on ideas compared to Europeans. As shown in the infographics below, Americans hold traditionally more conservative values compared to other countries. They believe most strongly in the superiority of American culture, the freedom to pursue their life goals, and that it is more important that you have individual liberty rather than the government provide for those in need. Additionally, a significantly larger percentage of Americans are also unsupportive of homosexuality, and think that success in life is not affected by things outside of our control. These are all more conservative values, showing how bias in our political system directly affects the beliefs and values that our citizens hold.
After reading this, it is obvious how right leaning the American political system is. The question that remains is, how do you fix this? How do you recentralize our system? The answer is a lot more simple than it seems.
Throughout this article, the political systems that have been compared to the U.S., are all multiple party systems, as is common throughout the world. This multi-party system allows for larger ranges of views to be accepted and given political power, so a non-majority party vote is not wasted, as it is in the U.S. While changing our whole system seems like a lot, there are simple ways to achieve this in smaller, more local settings. One way this is done is through ranked choice voting, or runoff elections such as the ones for the 2020 Georgia senate race. This allows you to vote for third party candidates, but also support a major party as to not split the vote for the party of your choice. Simple changes such as this, would greatly improve the status of third parties in the U.S. and allow for more views to be represented. This would eventually lead to the growth of the true left wing party that the U.S. so desperately lacks.
In conclusion, the political system bias in the U.S., shifting it towards the right, has far reaching consequences. It can be modified however, leading the U.S. to eventually develop its own left wing party. With time and some changes, this can be changed and eventually the U.S. system can develop to the level that many European countries have. Eventually, the rise of these third parties will give all Americans better representation in politics.
Disclaimer: The views presented in this article do not reflect the views of the Paw Print or Greenwood High School.
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