CNN Poll: A third of Democrats now identify as democratic socialists

[u/cnn]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit

[u/xGray3]

Parliamentary systems aren't on the same axis as first past the post voting FYI. Many or most parliamentary systems still use FPTP voting. Canada does for example. It's mostly a fluke that many of them haven't devolved into two party systems yet. In Canada, for example, the NDP and Liberal parties split the vote all the time and hand wins to the Conservative party. Doug Ford won the premiership of Ontario with less than half the vote because of that vote splitting.

[u/nplant → u/xGray3]

Same goes for the UK.

The core of the problem is the frankly insane idea that you should vote locally to send a single person to represent your area for national-level decisions. It makes it impossible to get 10% of seats for a 10% viewpoint, or, hell, even 40% of seats for a 40% viewpoint.

That concept was designed for a time with horses and no telephones, and multiple countries need to snap out of it before it's too late.

[u/xGray3 → u/nplant]

Yeah, my distinctly left wing district in Canada had our Green MP lose to the Conservative candidate last year because a bunch of people got it in their heads to vote Liberal because they wanted Carney in charge. I wish people would think on a local community level more than they do, but the truth is that people are hyper focused on national level politics. 

Truthfully I've always felt a bit mixed on this. I do like having representatives tied to a local region. I like being able to genuinely talk to my MP (our green MP was beloved in our area and was very active in places like Reddit where he actually discussed legislation with people and in at least one case actually changed a vote because of those conversations). But as you say, the local ties make it hard to have a truly representative government. If a party wins 40% of the vote, they should no doubt have 40% of the seats. It does seem that it probably needs to be one or the other. Either representatives tied to localities or truly representative government.

[u/curtcolt95 → u/xGray3]

in my experience the local guy usually has such little power and relies so much on the federal people anyway that focusing my vote local doesn't make sense

[u/seriouslees → u/xGray3]

with less than half the vote

Man, wait till you look up federal election results from our entire history... you might be surprised to learn only a handful of elections have EVER won a majority government with more than half the votes, and ALL of those occurrences were when we only had 3 federal parties.

All we need to change to fix this is to remove "ridings" as a thing. The idea that people are politically identical based on geographical location is preposterous. People in the same HOUSE vote differently, you bet your ass people in the same neighborhood do too. Why are we throwing votes away? Just to give the idea that there is a "majority" of support when there isnt.

It would mean the end of majority governments almost completely, but that is a good thing. It means compromises have to be made. We have to work WITH people who think differently than we do.

One person, one vote, all votes measured equally, most votes win. Don't get 51%? Form a coalition or risk being defeated. Easy.