Abstract: America’s two-party, plurality system encourages strategic voting by forcing voters to weigh electability against political preference. Germany’s multiparty, proportional system shifts more of that compromise to post-election coalition building, allowing votes to more directly reflect what voters actually want.
In 1992, nearly twenty million Americans voted for independent candidate Ross Perot; he won zero electoral votes.1 Eight years later, roughly 97,000 Floridians backed the Green Party’s Ralph Nader, while George W. Bush carried the state, and the presidency, over Al Gore by just 537 votes.2
These elections and many others taught voters that a ballot cast outside of the two major parties can fail to translate into representation or, worse, help elect the candidate they least like. Therefore, many Americans vote strategically, backing parties based on the probability of victory rather than policy alignment. Political scientists since Maurice Duverger have recognized this behavior as largely systematic under plurality electoral rules, which are electoral systems in which the candidate who receives the highest number of votes in a given district wins the seat.3 But why might behaviors be different in a proportional system, where seat distribution reflects vote proportion?
The reason is not that voters in proportional democracies do not prioritize representation with their vote. Instead, the difference is that they can vote for a party without concern over falling within a majority. Under America’s two-party system, voters often compromise before casting their ballots. A voter who prefers a third-party candidate must consider whether that candidate can actually win and, if not, whether supporting them risks helping elect a less-preferred alternative. Additionally, because each of the two dominant parties group together a comprehensive set of policy positions before the election, voters can easily align within one of the two stronger options.
Proportional electoral systems, such as those used in multiparty democracies, shift much of that grouping to after the election. Germany provides a useful example. Its Bundestag is elected primarily through proportional representation, where ballots require two votes: first, specifically for member selection, and second, for party distribution.4 Each party’s share of the decisive “second vote” determines its relative strength within parliament.5 Instead of requiring every political interest to fit within one of two parties before an election, this system allows several parties to gain meaningful representation.
Importantly, this system does not eliminate strategic voting entirely. Germany generally requires a party to receive at least 5% of second votes to participate in proportional seat allocation, giving voters who prefer parties near that threshold reason to think strategically.6 However, that pressure is different from a system in which only one candidate can win a state or a district.
Consider Germany’s Greens. In the 2021 federal election, the party received 14.7% of second votes.7 Those votes did not have to produce an outright Green victory to matter. The Greens gained representation in the Bundestag and ultimately joined SPD and FDP in forming the governing coalition.8 In other words, voters could support a smaller party, and the process of combining competing parties into a governing program happened afterward.
Every democracy eventually has to turn millions of different preferences into one government. By waiting to group policy positions until after the election process, proportional systems give voters a better chance to express what they actually want.
- “1992 Electoral College Results,” U.S. Electoral College, National Archives and Records Administration, accessed October 1, 2026, https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/1992.
↩︎ - Federal Election Commission, “2000 Presidential General Election Results,” in Federal Elections 2000, accessed October 1, 2026, https://www.fec.gov/documents/1732/FederalElections2000_PresidentialGeneralElectionResultsbyState.pdf.
↩︎ - André Blais and R. K. Carty, “The Psychological Impact of Electoral Laws: Measuring Duverger’s Elusive Factor,” British Journal of Political Science 21, no. 1 (1991): 92.
↩︎ - “Each Voter Has Two Votes in the 2021 Bundestag Election,” The Federal Returning Officer, September 14, 2021, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/info/presse/mitteilungen/bundestagswahl-2021/37_21_zwei-stimmen.html.
↩︎ - “Each Voter Has Two Votes in the 2021 Bundestag Election,” The Federal Returning Officer, September 14, 2021, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/info/presse/mitteilungen/bundestagswahl-2021/37_21_zwei-stimmen.html.
↩︎ - “Restrictive Clause,” The Federal Returning Officer, accessed October 1, 2026, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/service/glossar/s/sperrklausel.html.
↩︎ - “Results Germany: Bundestag Election 2021,” The Federal Returning Officer, accessed October 1, 2026, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/ergebnisse/bund-99.html.
↩︎ - Nigel Walker and Eleanor Gadd, “Germany: 2021 Election and a New Coalition Government,” House of Commons Library, January 5, 2022, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9324/.
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