Story: US Voters Increasingly Alienated by Two Major Parties: Atlanta Progressive News
All is not well in America, it seems. More U.S. voters who identify as independent than as Democrats or Republicans, despite the fact that the two major parties maintain their virtual stranglehold on U.S. politics and, so far, on the 2012 presidential election process.
America has been through five different Party Systems, each time consisting of two major parties:
1. Federalist Party vs. Democratic-Republican Party
2. Democrats vs. Whigs
The third fourth and fifth systems had parties called the Democrats vs. Republicans but they were different in each time, and different from the modern era. The Democrats I think were originally further to the right of the Republicans, and the Republicans were originally abolitionist and more to the left.
Maybe a 6th Party System is in the works?