Why We Have Two Parties

Lots of three-way races this year and, with those, lots of reminders as to why elections are usually a red vs. blue affair and not a ménage à trois. The one closest to me is happening in Maine where a Tea Party Republican is sailing to victory. Technically this is a five-way race but two of the gubernatorial candidates are non-factors. The leaves Paul LePage, the Republican; Libby Mitchell, current President of the Maine Senate and a longtime politician in the state; and the Independent, Eliot Cutler. Cutler, however, served in the Carter administration (wiki describes him as the "principal White House official for energy" during those years) and worked for Edmund Muskie. So you've effectively got two Democrats running in this race.

And when two like-minded people both decide to run instead of consolidating under one banner and party apparatus, they tend to split the vote of like-minded voters. And in those circumstances, a candidate the majority of the electorate doesn't want in office can sneak through. As you can see from FiveThirtyEight's forecast for the Maine gubernatorial race, the Independent Cutler has surged in recent weeks while the Democrat Mitchell has slipped into a bit of a freefall. The result is that they've converged in the mid-to-high 20s and the Republican LePage is sitting pretty and heading for a win with only 41.7% of the vote.



Shitty situation. But, for the record, were I voting, I'd be voting for the independent, Eliot Cutler.