What Are The Roles Of Minor Parties

Amanda Hua
Professor Ari Young
POLS 1101
3 May 2017
Roles of Minor Parties in Politics
In politics, there are groups of people called parties, which are organizations whose members share common political views. Generally, there are two groups of parties: major parties and minor parties. Major parties are the political parties with enough electoral strength to periodically win an election or gain control of the government. Minor parties are the political parties with little electoral strength to win an election or gain control of the government. The major parties control elections because they have more electoral votes, or because of how the Electoral College system works. On the other hand, minor parties are not as influential in elections as the major parties because of their inability to gain enough electoral votes. That does not mean minor parties do not exist. A couple of minor parties such as the Libertarian party, which has been around for quite a while, and the Green party, which is relatively new. Minor parties have a smaller role in politics versus the major parties, their lesser …show more content…
Like every decision, there are advantages and disadvantages. An advantage to voting for third parties is addressing ignored yet important issues. A disadvantage to voting for third parties is knowing your vote may not mean anything. An advantage for not voting for minor parties is having an election mostly battle between the two main parties instead of having a third party that might potentially prolong the length of an election. A disadvantage for not voting for third parties is that maybe an important but neglected issue that the third party proposed was ignored by the main parties, so that issue never is considered between the two main parties. So the decision to vote or not vote for third parties really depends on one’s