Of course they're disillusioned; every party except the MRLP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_raving_loony_party) sucks!
Britain actually is quite an interesting case study for this, because there are more than two parties that get seats in parliament and have some sort of influence, in spite of the extreme difficulty with which a third party ever becomes a second party, by which I mean a party that's regarded as having a chance of forming the next government. I'm only aware of that kind of shift having occured once, when the Labour Party was new, and managed to push the Liberal Party / Whigs out of contention, changing the game from Tories v Whigs to Tories v Labour. Since then, the Liberal Democrats (descendants of the Whigs) have stuck around, and have at times been a very useful moderating influence on politics, without ever having real political power directly.
no subject
Britain actually is quite an interesting case study for this, because there are more than two parties that get seats in parliament and have some sort of influence, in spite of the extreme difficulty with which a third party ever becomes a second party, by which I mean a party that's regarded as having a chance of forming the next government. I'm only aware of that kind of shift having occured once, when the Labour Party was new, and managed to push the Liberal Party / Whigs out of contention, changing the game from Tories v Whigs to Tories v Labour. Since then, the Liberal Democrats (descendants of the Whigs) have stuck around, and have at times been a very useful moderating influence on politics, without ever having real political power directly.