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[disclaimed: not a political scientist, just riffing here]

Plurality voting forces a two-party system. There will always be two parties (or if a third forms, the system will rapidly collapse back to two; this happened twice in US history).

The role of the two parties can change, however. Parties are coalitions, and coalitions are heterogeneous. There are lots of ways to draw lines through the myriad political interests to form two coalitions of roughly equal size. And those lines can shift.

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