Will we ever reach a greater than 2 party system?

[Badger]

No. Nor does it need to. American parties---despite some increasing polarization in recent years, especially on the right---are very much big tent organizations catering to almost any point across the political spectrum. Most European parties cannot accommodate in a single organization having Al Franken and Dan Boren in a leftist party or Olympia Snowe and Jim Demint on the right.

Almost any combination of political views represented by their local constituency can be run under a major party banner. Libertarian-minded? Run as a socially liberal Republican. Hard core leftist? Why run as a Green when you can enter the Democratic primary without changing a single position on the issues? If you can't win a major party primary that's at least somewhat compatible with your ideological base, you're sure as hell not going to win a general election in your community.

People can whine all they want about the power, money, machinery and tradition of the two major parties "shutting out" 3rd party candidates, but when one looks at the utter inability of 3rd parties to win partisan races at even the most local grass roots level that argument falls apart. Insurgent candidates beat the odds against money and machinery every year folks, so if there was a need for 3rd parties there'd certainly be a number of electoral successes out there, right?

Forget congressional or statewide races. Third party candidates have massively failed to win even local state legislature races that can be run and won with relatively little money and party organization. Out of the nearly 7400 state legislative seats nationwide (including state senators), how many are held by 3rd party candidates? The Libertarians and Greens currently have none, IIRC. The Constitution Party had one in Montana who was term-limited out last year. Someone mentioned the Working Families Party having a seat in NY. And, well, that's darn near it.

If third parties are going 0 for 7400 nationwide in these local races, some of which only have a couple thousand total votes cast, that indicates the lack of success for third parties isn't due to structural or financial barriers, but that voters near universally aren't buying what the 3rd parties are selling, or the major parties are selling basically the same product anywhere there's demand for it.

[Badger]

What if the far-left and far-right combined to form a populist party that has different ideologies based on the region that they ran in? Palin/Huckabee/Franken/Sanders all together, but they would be for low middle-class taxes, bringing jobs back to America, and supporting cheaper health care.

The teabaggers and the far left could come together against the big corporations and the bailouts, plus the Ron Paul libertarians could join too. I think that the middle of both parties allow too much influence from corporations.

I'm a progressive Democrat, but I'm from Illinois, meaning I would effectively represent my region. Would any Republicans think that this could be a good idea?

Because big corporations the teabagger agenda.