No, it means the natural distribution of views gets turned into a bi-modal system of allegiances. Each party defines itself by its opposite. It then becomes much harder to cross the gap because doing so involves changing most of your political views to their polar opposites and losing most of your friends.
Quantifying "social division" is tricky, but I feel that multi-party systems offer much more scope for saying "we agree on A and B but disagree on C". While small differences can also be very divisive because humans are like that (big problem for the Left) it means you get less negative voting.
"Against X" and "For X" are not symmetrical positions, because there are usually lots of different alternatives to X. Only in a 2-party system do they produce the same answer.
The UK is mostly, but not totally, a 2-party system, and it's really noticeable how the regional parliaments do politics in a completely different way, with different party groupings. This is at least partly to do with the voting systems (AMS for Wales and Scotland, STV for the defunct NI assembly).
Quantifying "social division" is tricky, but I feel that multi-party systems offer much more scope for saying "we agree on A and B but disagree on C". While small differences can also be very divisive because humans are like that (big problem for the Left) it means you get less negative voting.
"Against X" and "For X" are not symmetrical positions, because there are usually lots of different alternatives to X. Only in a 2-party system do they produce the same answer.
The UK is mostly, but not totally, a 2-party system, and it's really noticeable how the regional parliaments do politics in a completely different way, with different party groupings. This is at least partly to do with the voting systems (AMS for Wales and Scotland, STV for the defunct NI assembly).