Why Are US Presidential Elections So Close?

http://nautil.us/issue/42/fakes/why-are-us-presidential-elections-so-close

by dnetesn • 10 years ago

55 176 10 years ago

codingdave• 10 years ago

The chart at the top of this article directly opposes their own premise that presidential elections for the last 100 years have been close to 50/50.

bbctol• 10 years ago

I'd at least want some idea of what to compare it to. That's certainly closer than if we assigned percentages at random. On the other hand, my intuition is they're less close than if every voter was picking at random, though I'm not sure if either of those counterworlds is relevant to the argument.

mikeash2• 10 years ago

Each voter picking at random will get you almost exactly 50/50 every time, because the sample size is so large. The expected variance goes with the square root of the sample size, so with 100 million voters, you'd expect the outcome of each voter choosing randomly to be about 10,000 off from exactly 50/50.

Here's a quick Python snippet to test it empirically:

    print sum(random.randint(0, 1) for x in xrange(0, 100000000))

(I strongly recommend using pypy to run it. CPython takes forever to complete.)

With 8 runs, I got these results:

All of which require at least two decimal places in the percentage to be distinguishable from 50% each way.

cafard• 10 years ago

Indeed. Apart from Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960, the two really close elections of the 20th Century involved third parties: Wallace in 1968, Nader in 2000.

bryanlarsen• 10 years ago

I guess it's a matter of perspective. In my eyes, even the blowout of 1984 was fairly close. Mondale got over 40% of the vote, which is enough to win with a wide margin in most countries where there are more than two viable parties.

usefulcat• 10 years ago

..and the '92 election had a third party (Perot) who got much more of the popular vote than Nader did in 2000 (I think it was 24%)

vonklaus3• 10 years ago

Polling data is lagging, but the state department just released >300 emails.

Not unlikely U.S is source of leak not Russia. Total media blackout. NYT, Bloomberg, CNN, WaPo, ect.

538 has a 3.1 popular vote margin and in the last 24ish hours Trump has gone from 80/20 to 60/40. Many sides manipulating information, so both amplify their candidate. Going to be very close

DominikR2• 10 years ago

And the FBI Twitter account is also leaking information about the Clintons. If you ask me the FBI and other government agencies want to bring HRC down, probably for her reckless handling of classified information.

Either this or these agencies are secretly controlled by Putin.

dragonwriter2• 10 years ago

Or, not-secretly controlled by Republicans, in the case of the FBI.

maxerickson4• 10 years ago

There is no blackout.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/03/politics/clinton-emails-state-...

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-11-03/state-...

vonklaus3• 10 years ago

0 mention of wikileaks. NYT hasn't weighed in, had to fire a staff member for feeding HRC intel. In fact, there is virtually no mention that wikileaks is actively disclosing emails. One article indicating "voters already made up their minds". I think they are both scumbags, it's just that it is absurd that NYT isn't even trying to spin, just pretending it didn't happen.

I have been getting updates via a fucking uncharged fugitive seeking asylum from my country and reading updates via RT (Russian News). I feel sick to my stomach and I am very cynical.

swissoak• 10 years ago

The story you linked is only on the politics sub-page, and it's under 3 anti-Trump spotlight stories and buried in the middle of other anti-Trump stories.

There is a blackout, it's just not a 100% blackout.

msluyter• 10 years ago

A similar take on the issue in this old Slate article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/kausfiles_sp...

Choice quote:

"But why should we expect the deadlock to be broken at all? Think of it in ... well, cheap Darwinian terms. Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?"

ktRolster6• 10 years ago

There is no position that either party holds so strongly that they wouldn't switch immediately if it became expedient.

Which party is the 'pro-war' party? Which party is the 'pro-public healthcare' party? Which party is the 'small-government' party? Both parties have been on both sides of these lines in the last two decades.

Yes, and you can see it happening after every election. For example, as soon as gay marriage passed the 50% level of popularity, both parties switched position, saying they favored it to some degree. Democrats switched faster (because of their local politics), but Republicans had a gay speaker at their convention.

One of the toughest issues used to be abortion, until democrats softened on it somewhat, and they let anti-abortion candidates into the party (which is why Bart Stupak, a democrat, held up Obamacare based on opposition to abortion).

Democrats were anti-war under Bush (but they voted for his wars anyway), and Republicans were anti-war under Clinton (but they voted for his wars anyway).

If any view on an issue is clearly a loser, no candidate will espouse that view.

AnimalMuppet3• 10 years ago

And this is part of why voters are so angry at establishment politicians. They've figured out that politicians have positions, not convictions. Many of the voters, on the other hand, actually have convictions, and want to vote for people that share those convictions.

This is what the Tea Party was about - people got tired of Republicans who were happy to vote for large government spending. Many Republicans quit voting for candidates who wore the "R" label but didn't have any actual convictions (at least, they voted against them in the primaries).

But I think in this election cycle, the anger is higher than it's been in my memory, partly because neither presidential candidate's convictions are what anybody wants.

Hillary doesn't have any convictions, except that she should be elected by any means necessary.

Trump has convictions, though they change from day to day, and many of them are convictions that an honorable man would be ashamed of having ever thought, let alone spoken aloud.

morgante2• 10 years ago

For example, as soon as gay marriage passed the 50% level of popularity, both parties switched position, saying they favored it to some degree.

Where are you getting that from? The Republican party platform explicitly condemns gay marriage and wants to ban it federally. [0]

The fact that they're willing to accept millions from a gay Republican is hardly evidence of a changing worldview.

[0] http://time.com/4411842/republican-platform-same-sex-marriag...

saalweachter5• 10 years ago

tldr: Article claims elections are close because the two major parties are intentionally ideologically similar.

I am not impressed by the article, which does not delve into actual party positions, reasons voters give for voting, or well-known blocks of voters, and instead gives an analogy about ice cream vendors.

waqf• 10 years ago

Then you missed the point of the article, which is about why the parties in a system like the US's can be expected to be ideologically similar, based on game-theoretic considerations.

I mean, you may have the opinion that it's a trivial or incorrect point that wasn't worth expressing, but you seem not to be aware that it's there at all.

(tl;dr: you didn't like the article because it had the temerity not to be the article you were expecting. Who knows, if one read such articles one might learn something one didn't already know!)

saalweachter5• 10 years ago

Well no, it's more that I thought it was completely insane to state that the Republican and Democratic parties are ideologically similar. They diverge radically on a large number of issues that voters care about. So talking about "why they become similar" is inane.

golemotron• 10 years ago

The Median Voter Theorem is too specific. Both sides don't have become as much like each as possible to compete. They can compete by taking positions on new issues progressively over a campaign to seek advantage or by reframing earlier positions.

eli_gottlieb2• 10 years ago

While the article nicely deploys undergrad political science, I don't really think that the median voter theorem can possibly be true as described. The thing is, the nominal "center" around which the two-party system orbits moves, on timescales of decades. If we assume both parties gravitate towards a genuinely "privileged" (in the sense that the origin point of a coordinate system is privileged) center, it shouldn't do that: the center should remain exactly where it allows the two parties to split the country down the middle and never shift.

Instead, what we observe is that our political center has been moved further and further into the Republican Party, ever since the '70s. Prior to that, during the fifth party system, the political center rested with a coalition of urban and Southern working-class Democrats.

Now in our current election, the center seems to be moving into wealthy suburbs and Silicon Valley, libertarian-lite.

The interesting question is what sort of forces move the center and alter the composition of the party-system at any given time.

zeveb• 10 years ago

Instead, what we observe is that our political center has been moved further and further into the Republican Party, ever since the '70s.

Perhaps in an economic sense, but hardly in a cultural sense (other than guns, is there a single Republican cultural issue which has been winning against its Democratic inverse?).

eli_gottlieb2• 10 years ago

You're right: the cultural center has shifted glacially to the left over time, with erratic jumps back to the right when the Republicans actually hold supermajority power, followed by further gradual leftward drift when they lose it.

Though in an economic sense, yeah, my original point stands. And actually, it's strengthened in a way: how can we talk about the median voter theorem pushing the parties to the center if they spent the whole most recent party system both moving strongly to the right on economic issues while moving erratically but consistently to the left on social issues? That would mean there isn't even one center!

marmaduke• 10 years ago

Think tanks, reframing issues? I'm thinking of Lakoff's work.

maxerickson4• 10 years ago

The Republican party isn't an ideological center, it is a coalition (same with the Democratic party).

For example, Republicans in congress strongly supported the 1965 Voting Rights act, 111-20 in the house and 30-1 in the Senate (Democrats 217-54, 49-17).

I think this is an important point because there is a good chance that the existing Republican coalition will break down in the next 4 or 8 years.

kordless• 10 years ago

Dissonance, basically. Dissonance manifests as diametrically opposed views in society. It's also what makes reality, reality. See "this video will make you angry" on Youtube for the meme context.

komali25• 10 years ago

This is what I don't like about the current zeitgeist. Things are either black or white. You are either Red or Blue. Conservative or Liberal. Democrat or Republican. Right or Left. There is no room in this political system for a pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal, or an anti-war economic conservative. There's no room on the internet for a third party voter, or someone who both believes cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter, or any other middle ground. You're either a 4chan user or a Tumbler user, you're either a Hillarybot or a Trumpbot.

Reasons for this I believe include upvote/downvote trains on the internet, clickbait headlines, and networks streamlining content to cater to certain audiences. People who watch Fox news don't want to hear about Trump rape allegations, they want to watch news casters talk about Evil Hillary. It's the reverse for CNN. Remember in the Bush era how blatantly Fox news was a Republican news-horn, and how the case is the same now for CNN and Clinton?

Euck. Can't stand it. No room for moderates, your voice won't get heard if you aren't making someone stamp their feet.

Ninjaedit: I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them. It doesn't make sense.

mars4rp2• 10 years ago

anti-war economic conservative : Gary Johnson

markonthewall• 10 years ago

I always enjoy a leppo after a good workout!

saalweachter5• 10 years ago

In a pluralistic, democratic society you don't get to have everything go your way. You have to compromise with your fellow citizens to adopt the policies least-objectionable to the most people.

A fifth or sixth major candidate in the election with exactly your political views is almost exactly as superfluous as three hundred million candidates, so each of us gets a candidate with exactly our views and we don't have to compromise at all when voting.

Figure out which of your beliefs and views are most important and which you're willing to compromise on. Or get used to being a very bitter member of a pluralistic democratic society.

blurbleblurble4• 10 years ago

It's very well established that the U.S. federal electoral system is game-theoretically "rigged", to use Trump's words.

I want proportional representation, not this phoney pluralism. I'm talking about something beyond "ranked choice". I want serious mathematical, scientific rigor to be applied in developing a new voting system that is humane and practically secure from gaming in the 21st century.

To be perfectly frank, my internal reaction to your comment was infuriation. Don't take it personally, just know that I'm "triggered" by this kind of patronizing political attitude that has marginalized me out of the conversation since before I even became eligible to vote. I know I'm not alone in that.

There are thousands of representatives local and federal levels. It's not unreasonable for people like me to be asking for a less "compromising" process.

I'm from Minnesota, and I remember when I was 17 and Paul Wellstone was killed, very possibly assassinated, before the Iraq war vote. Meanwhile, many of my classmates, children of politically established Minnesotans, told me that a vote for Ralph Nader was just short of treason. I'm writing this comment right now to say that I reject these kinds of attitudes entirely.

On the contrary, people falling in behind these busted-ass mainstream parties should be grateful that, given the state of U.S. politics, we even have political participation from marginalized positions at all. This election is an indictment on this split populism of the establishment 2-party.

The U.S. political process needs to evolve in a serious way or it's going to result in social/political/spiritual upheaval... for better or worse.

I know it might sound irrational to you, but I'm getting ready to vote for Jill Stein right now. I am not "a liberal". I see no good reason, at this point, to vote for either of the "two choices". Seeing as how I'm not in a swing state, it strikes almost me as duty to vote against the two parties. Maybe if I lived in Florida, I'd vote for Clinton.

But right now my "strategic vote" is to send a strong warning to the DFL establishment that they need to take voting reform very seriously.

branchless3• 10 years ago

I don't like the current system because it has lots of side issues where parties claim to differentiate yet none of these effect the ruling classes.

Where is the choice on land value tax, on money creation as debt? Nowhere, because they only want us to have a choice on issues that might actually challenge the roots of the system.

uabstraction2• 10 years ago

Call me crazy, but I feel like there has to be a full blown conspiracy between the two parties (not necessarily the individual candidates), to keep us fighting over petty social issues which have no bearing on the social order.

We fight over issues like gay marriage and abortion which make no difference to the establishment, while the cable companies strategically raise rates while reducing service and avoiding competition. The medical industry extorts us so the insurers' can get a 20% cut off a larger pie. Police departments around the nation use civil forfeiture to pay their bills and buy margarita machines.

As long as elections can be won on bullshit tired issues like abortion, we'll never see any political progress - and that's just how the robber barons want it.

mxfh• 10 years ago

"cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter" Who says otherwise, seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Practicality5• 10 years ago

Regarding your link:

But the middle ground often is the best solution in politics (not necessarily exactly in the middle, but definitely not on the extremes).

Some examples: The best government is between Authoritarianism and Anarchy, rather than one or the other.

Likewise the best government has an economy that is somewhere between completely free-market and absolutely government controlled and regulated. Both extremes have issues.

The best legal government is somewhere between ultra-capitalist and ultra-communist: We don't want only two classes, super-rich and super-poor, but we don't need to make everyone exactly the same either.

Likewise, private investment is definitely a good thing, and we want incentives, but we also don't want CEOs or boards being completely blameless when things go wrong, and we want good pay and good rights for the employees. Most people are ok with CEOs getting paid more that most employees, but most would prefer they not be paid anywhere near as much as they are.

On and on it goes. Generally, the best position is a moderate one. The extremes are where the failure comes from. (There are always exceptions, so that is why I say generally).

rybosome• 10 years ago

Nobody (credible) says so outright, but by dismissing the concerns of either group who says one or the other, it is said implicitly. I felt that Michael Jordan, of all people, issued one of the more competent statements on the matter. He highlighted both the distrust that black people have of police due to some of the recent violent incidents, as well as the tremendous service that officers provide by literally risking their lives, and spoke about those who do so with integrity in a respectful manner.

Because this is the only real solution. We have to acknowledge the arguments and feelings of both sides, not shout one another down.

notoothpaste3• 10 years ago

"Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!"

"What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"

Practicality5• 10 years ago

I don't get why we don't just have a moderate party that represents the majority. Despite what the news would seem to have us believe most people are moderate, rather than one extreme or the other.

barsonme5• 10 years ago

First, the two major parties are so incredibly established that third parties barely exist. So, starting a third party that can compete with the other two is near impossible.

Second, since radio and television (media) started catering towards individual interests (echo chamber) people get so wrapped up in "Hillary/Trump/Somebody is so evil!" that they _don't_ want to experiment because it could cause the person they dislike to win.

Third, nobody cares about politics. We get ~40% turnout in midterm elections, ~60% for presidential. That's pitiful. Those who vote are those who _really_ like voting--those who are engaged.

To break the stranglehold you'd need:

- people to stop consuming sound bite media (Now This, Twitter) and tailored media (talk radio, some major news stations)

- better civic engagement at the local level (this is _the_ most important bit)

- better civic knowledge (the previous bullet point is predicated on this one)

- people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo

csallen• 10 years ago

Because the moderate party would lose every election in a landslide. What would its policies even be? People tend to be extreme on individual issues that they care about and apathetic on the rest. The more extreme parties could, for example, just come out for or against abortion and steal a huge percentage of your voters. Same with many other issues.

gbhn• 10 years ago

That's happened before (look at articles on the "era of good feelings").

What happens is that factions develop along a new politically-important axis which have different answers for a new pressing problem, and the moderate party bifurcates into two.

maxxxxx3• 10 years ago

Read up about "wedge issues".

wwweston• 10 years ago

What do you find extreme about the parties we have now?

notoothpaste3• 10 years ago

The Democratic Party and the pre-Trump GOP were, once you looked past the social signals each sent to pander to certain vocal minorities, practically identical. It's no coincidence that the Bushes endorsed Hillary after Jeb! dropped out.

I don't expect anyone here to believe it, but ironically Trump's GOP is pretty close to being a real moderate party. Dispensing with the astroturfed tribal warfare by supporting gays, not making abortion into a big-ticket issue, reaching out to minorities, and so on, he has drawn in record numbers of supporters from across the line. "We're all Americans" and "America first" are the creeds of him and his supporters. An openly gay man spoke at the RNC to genuine applause, as did Trump holding a rainbow "LGBTQs for Trump" flag at a rally. The barriers once thought concrete are rapidly deteriorating for the ordinary citizens that have successfully pried their eyes away from the propaganda machine.

aokyler• 10 years ago

I agree completely with this. The spoiler effect has never been so real.

afterburner7• 10 years ago

I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them.

They don't; just like the article says, it's an effect of the first-past-the-post election model. Two strong parties emerge out of that.

Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich.

barsonme5• 10 years ago

Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich.

And Republicans would say the opposite. This is why we never get anywhere.

RandomName20202• 10 years ago

pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal,

I am both. And understand the pain of being a square peg.

Practicality5• 10 years ago

You sound like a fun person to have drinks with and discuss ideas :)

baddox2• 10 years ago

I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them. It doesn't make sense.

You're confusing how someone votes with what their ranked preferences are. I suspect that many people vote for someone who is not their most preferred candidate (particularly in this election, where the two major party candidates are extremely unpopular). And that makes sense, given that only one person can be President at a time and the USA uses first-past-the-post voting for presidential elections. This tends to lead to only two dominant parties (Duverger's law).

btrask• 10 years ago

I came up with a voting strategy that I call single issue tactical voting. The idea is that you pick what you think is the single most underrated issue, and announce you will either vote for your major candidate, or third party, depending on whether the major candidate agrees to support your issue. This works around Arrow's impossibility theorem and doesn't require any changes to the voting system. The goal is not to change the outcome of the election (if everyone is rational the outcome will be the same), but to influence the candidate's specific policies.

I was partly inspired by this application of game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWgbmlvRTU

I've been meaning to do a full writeup but hesitant in the current election climate... :)

ktRolster6• 10 years ago

If you're going to do a writeup, you might as well just add your research to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics

mcv7• 10 years ago

That's basically what Sanders did with Clinton. He supports her in exchange for her embracing many of his issues.

tdb7893• 10 years ago

I've always been under the impression that the two party system exists in an equilibrium and it naturally goes to about a 50/50 split. Both parties are fighting for support so if one party gets more than 50% of the vote there is a huge incentive to shift your positions to get back to equilibrium. Imagine if there were policies that would get Republicans reliably 70% of the vote, in this situation Democrats would want to adopt very similar policies and restore the balance. I think you'll see this happen with gay marriage in the next decade or so where both parties are for it.

maxxxxx3• 10 years ago

I really wish that a party that gets a certain amount of votes would get representation in Congress without having to win districts. That's an incredibly high bar for a new party.

One or two more parties in Congress would make the current obstruction tactics much more difficult.

dsr_• 10 years ago

Changing to a parliamentary system would require a huge constitutional amendment. Remember that the innocuous Equal Rights Amendment has still not passed: the chance of a sweeping reform on that scale is probably very similar to the chance of having a successful revolt.

So, in short, if you really want a parliamentary democracy, you'll need to move to one.

farright• 10 years ago

The problem is people are taught from an early age that it's good to be an activist which means to focus on convincing people of a certain policy or viewpoint, instead of stating one's own reasoning. You'll often see "10 reasons to support X" which is unlikely to be intellectually honest since usually people will support X for 1 or 2 reasons, and might agree with certain arguments against X.

E.g. I support something like basic income, but I notice two contradictory arguments are used. The first says that basic income increases the incentive to work for the poor. The second says that basic income releases the poor from being forced into low pay work, and allows them to use their free time on positive things. These are contradictory, but you never see basic income advocates arguing this point among themselves.

Instead of encouraging people to be activists, we should be encouraging them to be intellectually honest. Very few issues are so important that they justify using marketing techniques that ultimately corrode the effectiveness of public debate.

robomartin• 10 years ago

Hey, apparently now you can fire them both! Saw this earlier today on HN, don't have a link to the post handy. The site is easy to remember though: http://www.youarefired.com The guy/gal who posted was trying to figure out what to do after the elections.

To your point, Maybe allow for more than two points of view? :)

jimbokun• 10 years ago

" People who watch Fox news don't want to hear about Trump rape allegations, they want to watch news casters talk about Evil Hillary. It's the reverse for CNN."

I think you are falling into your own "black or white" trap here.

Sean Hannity is singular in the way he is a sycophant for Trump. I struggle to think of a similar personality for Hillary on any other news network. I mean, CNN made a point to hire Trump's former campaign manager, and he seems to be on the air around half the time I randomly turn on their channel.

pj_mukh• 10 years ago

I'm all for America having multiple parties. But remember, for any execution to happen, for the Government to function, pass laws and stay adaptable, the multiple parties will have to align and agree. To not go to war, the anti-war economic conservative and the Code Pink socialists would have to agree to come together on the issue. The way America is divided, I don't see how this happens easily.

It is difficult even in politically stable countries (see: Liberals and NDP in Canada). However, it is by and large the primary mode of operation for most democratic countries. The largest democracy, India, has 10's (100's?) of federal parties that organically align and dis-align to gain power on wedge issues.

imgabe2• 10 years ago

cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter

This isn't an issue that needs a middle ground. Black Lives Matter never said that cop lives don't. It didn't need to be said that cop lives matter because cops were already treated as though their lives mattered. When a cop gets killed nobody says "Well, he probably had it coming".

brandon272• 10 years ago

BLM should really have been called Black Lives Matter Too

komali25• 10 years ago

Well he probably had it coming

I've witnessed people saying exactly that. You can't argue that anti-cop violence is any less real of a problem than anti-black violence. What about the shooting in Dallas?

jlj2• 10 years ago

This is one reason why https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

lsh123• 10 years ago

In my experience (including my experience on HN), people who are in the middle get slashed from both sides. Qui non nobiscum, adversus nos est.

btbuildem• 10 years ago

The first part of your post is the answer to the part after "ninjaedit".

If the political spectrum had more than one-bit resolution, you'd see all sorts of colours. Here, is only black or white. From afar, it looks grey, hence the apparent 50-50 split. Everyone falls into one of two buckets, and chances are roughly equal.

odbol_• 10 years ago

pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal, or an anti-war economic conservative

You just described Libertarianism

SapphireSun2• 10 years ago

Here's an analysis of the problems with First Past the Post which nearly always generates a two party system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

sampo2• 10 years ago

USA gets some slack for being more or less the first (still existing) democracy in the world. But in the modern world, First-Past-the-Post should not be considered full democracy anymore, but only some level of proto-democracy, since proportional representation systems are so much better.

It's like, democracy-wise, Americans are all still driving around in Ford T-Models.

mvid• 10 years ago

Is there a way to have proportional representation for a single person elected office? I understand how it works in parliament or multiple person offices, but isn't there still a necessity for a direct voting mechanism when you are electing a single person?

mtw• 10 years ago

This would have been the perfect election to have a third alternative. But unfortunately, the american political system is not made for this. Time for change?

merpnderp• 10 years ago

But which party is going to spearhead allowing for more party choice?

knz• 10 years ago

I don't disagree but I do wonder what that would even look like.

Do we need to change the system? The players/politicians? Groups exerting influence onto the system (the media, big business, big unions)? Push more decisions to the State level?

Good luck untangling that mess... we can't even agree to end crap like gerrymandering and voter suppression.

wrsh073• 10 years ago

There's a "law" that describes this: Duverger's Law [1]

Pedantry follows:

First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one candidate. Candidate with plurality [that's a generalization of a majority, ie the person with the most votes even if they don't have > 50%] wins.

There are lots of alternatives, and even a ballot initiative in Maine [2] to switch to a different type of voting system known as Ranked Choice Voting.

New types of voting systems are exciting, but complexity lends itself to a poor user interface. So more sophisticated forms of voting actually depress poll #s [I'll just cite Harry talking about this ballot initiative in this podcast [3]].

If you're looking to ever have a real alternative to the big two, the path to that is convincing your local government to switch voting systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ... [3]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countd...

[Edit: put scare quotes around law]

abecedarius• 10 years ago

The issue of complexity is why I'd push for approval voting (i.e. you can upvote multiple candidates). http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ shows some of the weirdness that comes up with ranked choice voting (what I'd always heard of before as instant runoff voting). It looks even more surprising than what we have!

I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.

perilunar• 10 years ago

In Australia we use Preferential or Optional Preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff) for pretty much all elections (federal, state and local), and it works reasonably well. First-past-the-post voting seems like a completely backward way to vote, and perfectly designed to make voting for a third party candidate a difficult choice.

acedinlowball• 10 years ago

Also known as First Past the Post.

jmcphers• 10 years ago

Currently we have two candidates, who are each more or less reviled by at least 50% of the population.

Would it really be better to have three candidates, each of which was more or less reviled by 66% of the population?

The truth is that Americans don't agree on many major issues, and that the major parties are a personification of this unhappy fact. Adding more parties doesn't help that. In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate!

krapp2• 10 years ago

In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate!

The obvious answer to this is to dismantle the Federal system, devolve as much power as possible to the states, and perhaps abolish the office of President altogether.

It would probably be a terrible idea on the one hand, but on the other hand, no more Presidential elections.

CalChris3• 10 years ago

I've often wished to be on the other side of the fence with a proportionally representing parliament. You can take a look at other parliamentary systems in the world and it's not markedly better or worse. There are other structural changes I'd make first (direct Presidential election, ...).

harshreality• 10 years ago

Also, Trump is not acting like a rational ice cream seller. He has not appeared to move his policy portfolio, to the extent he has one, toward the center. “Rational candidates end up pivoting, and trying to move as much as they can back toward the center. But of course right now there’s one presidential candidate who’s not doing that at all,” Tom Vogl, a Princeton economist, told me.

Because the "rational" policy depends on politics being 1-dimensional. Trump has refused to deal with politics that way.

The ice cream theory is how things work normally, the same way that Newtonian mechanics works normally, but when you find yourself in a situation with extreme gravity wells or high velocities, using Newtonian mechanics to solve problems can get you killed.

Everyone knows politics isn't really one-dimensional. It just ends up being treated that way in plurality voting races because mathematics enforces it, unless you want to take a big risk and upset the apple cart. When you get an opponent who can triangulate an extreme non-centrist position in multi-dimensional politics, moving to the 1-dimensional center might be fatal because of negative traits that centrism implies on certain dimensions that the other candidate has made the campaign about.

LordHumungous• 10 years ago

The competition for votes between the Republican and Democratic parties does not lead to a clear drawing of issues, an adoption of two strongly contrasted positions between which the voter may choose. Instead, each party strives to make its platform as much like the other’s as possible

Problem with that theory is, the two parties aren't close in the slightest. Democrats prefer expanding the social safety net, minority rights, etc. Republicans prefer... the opposite.

ktRolster6• 10 years ago

Democrats prefer expanding the social safety net

Which party had a healthcare plan in 2008? Was the 'individual mandate' a Republican or Democratic idea?

lutorm• 10 years ago

The other dimension is turnout. With the ridiculously low turnout in US elections, the people not voting could probably elect a third candidate if they all suddenly decided to.

It seems that elections are won and lost at least as much by whose supporters bother to show up as by people switching allegiances.

jlj2• 10 years ago

9% of American voters was all it took for Clinton and Trump to win the primaries.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/01/us/elections/n...

The "public" debates are sponsored by a partisan non-profit that is controlled by the Democrats and Republicans. Ogliarchs do not like competition. Their tax-exempt status is being challenged in court but other lawsuits have been unsuccessful.

http://www.shapiroarato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Memor...

Polling requirements for other political parties are arbitrary 15%, but the media companies write the polls to exclude minor party candidates, and the major parties control the media.

Billions $USD are spent on political advertising and propaganda. The Citizens United case allows unlimited spending for political activities.

Congress does not have term limits, further consolidating power within the major parties.

Most Americans don't know or don't care that there are other options. In WA there are 7 candidates on the ballot. But in the left/right paradigm that the powers insure is the only public dialogue, there will always be a race to the middle. This explains why: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

I'll be voting for Gary Johnson. Ignoring biased media accounts of him, he's one of the few honest candidates and his platform mostly aligns with my own. Being public about this has cost me some relationships this year. I've never seen the amount of negativity and belligerance on social media. The only good thing to come of it, is I finally deleted my Facebook account.

This election has brought out the worst in us, and we will get who we deserve on November 8th.

rahrahrah• 10 years ago

The median voter theorem isn't the whole story, not even close. In particular, it assumes that most of voters are driven by what parties say about themselves in terms of policy, which is manifestly not true. When Trump says he won't cut social security, people from deep republican states say "yeah he cares about the american people, he's with the little guy", whereas when a democrat says the same thing they go "boo he wants to social medicine, commie".

There was this study that showed when remove parties from policies, something like 90% of the population wants free health care for all, free education for all, richer people to be taxed more, not less. 90% isn't really split down the middle.

Why Are US Presidential Elections So Close?

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