AOC calls the US Green party ‘not serious’ – can it be more than a ‘spoiler’ in the election?

Jill Stein, the party's presidential nominee, is polling at about 1%, and of 500,000 elected positions it holds just 149

American politics often has wild deviations from the norms of other major democracies and one of the most striking differences is set to be on display in this year's election - the performance of its domestic Green party.

There are elected Greens at the national level in the UK, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany and Australia, sometimes helping form governments, and yet the US Green party has only ever had a handful of state-level representatives (it currently has none) and has never had a federal election winner.