Why is there no Labor Party in the United States?

McGill Newsroom McGill Sociologist uses historical data to provide a new take on an old question McGill Newsroom McGill Sociologist uses historical data to provide a new take on an old question The improbable rise of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign presents an interesting question: why is Sanders, a self-proclaimed "democratic socialist," running as a Democrat?  McGill University sociologist Barry Eidlin examines this question through an historical comparison with Canada, a country similar to the U.S. in many ways, but whose political culture and electoral system have ostensibly been more hospitable to labor parties. "In any other industrialized country, Sanders would likely be the standard-bearer for a labor or social democratic party", says Eidlin in a new analysis published in the  American Sociological Review . "But the U.S. famously lacks such a party. The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. lacks a labor or socialist party because its political culture is hostile to socialism, and its electoral system is uniquely hostile to third parties." - Electoral data challenges conventional wisdom. "The analysis of 142 years of electoral data shows that differences in political culture and electoral systems did not affect labor party support as expected: prior to the 1930s, political differences were muted, with low but significant labor party support in both countries" says Eidlin. It was only in the 1930s that labor party support collapsed in the United States and took off in Canada.