4 ms·

Very well put! What keeps amazing me about US politics is that (as in other places) there is a small number, n, of top issues, e.g. gay marriage, abortion, off-

by Jun8 16y ago

Very well put! What keeps amazing me about US politics is that (as in other places) there is a small number, n, of top issues, e.g. gay marriage, abortion, off-shoring work, gun control. I think n~10. Assuming the simplistic approach that your stance on of these issues are binary valued, there are 2^n ~ 1000 different positions available. Since these are highly correlated, the real value is much lower than this, though. The thing is: we are trying to cram all those different stances into two parties! Your vote is in essence binary valued. Why should I be shoehorned? I am a gnostic, against excessive off-shoring, pro-choice, against gun banning and so on. It's a curious mix. Yet, I have to choose between two packages.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
This leads to a very curious phenomenon: pick any 2 random U.S. Citizens of either party. Take them out for a beer and start talking politics. If both of them are fairly secure in their beliefs, within a very short amount of time you'll realize that they are very close on maybe 80-85% of all these issues, although they each adopt talking points from their chosen party to describe their differences! This is a natural consequence of only having two parties to choose from. Extremely fascinating stuff. I wonder how the parallels hold out in multi-party systems? EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I agree with you that folks have a huge variety of opinions on all sorts of issues. I just wanted to point out that even then, they are much less attached to the issues themselves as they are to the talking points their party has around those issues It's a strange thing.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
Comments like this sadden me. There is a field called political science. There are lots of researchers in that field publishing in journals, attending conferences, writing books, etc. And they've actually come up with some interesting results. In particular: voters do not make voting decisions based primarily on issues. In fact, there's some evidence that the causation often goes the other way. Any model that starts with the assumption that voters choose candidates based on issue matching starts with fail. Why should I be shoehorned? I am a gnostic, against excessive off-shoring, pro-choice, against gun banning and so on. It's a curious mix. Yet, I have to choose between two packages. Because the nature of political parties that can function in any society is heavily dependent on the institutional structure of the government. Again, this is a question that actual political scientists have researched and answered.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  voters do not make voting decisions based primarily on issues. In fact, there's some evidence that the causation often goes the other way. Interesting, I'd like to read more about this. Can you point me to something (less than book-length) that would tell me more? (I'm familiar with The Myth of the Rational Voter thing, but it sounds like you're going even a step farther than that)
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I can't find any direct links, but I'd suggest Robin Hanson's blog (overcomingbias.com). His hypothesis is that most political/voting activity is done primarily for the purposes of a sense of identity and signalling. He discusses this in a number of posts. His basic thesis: I have no incentive to vote "correctly", since the odds of my vote affecting the result are nil. Therefore, it costs me almost nothing to vote D solely to show my friends what a caring intellectual I am, or to feel good about myself. My hypothesis is that this is the main reason scientists vote D (the caring/intellectual image).
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    One hilarious example of this effect at work can be found at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_9_29_04.html http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_... -- the gist of it is that polling indicates that a decent number of Bush voters in 2004 believed that Bush held policy positions that he never held and in fact never claimed to have held. It is not that Bush lied to these voters about his issue preferences: they just liked him for other reasons and ascribed their own issue preferences to him. John Sides explains a related phenomena here: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_on_2010.html http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_... whereby voters don't necessarily know much about most issues and end up adopting issue positions held by parties they trust. See the link towards the end of that piece. In general, there's been a ton of political science work on how election outcomes are largely determined by non-issue factors, like economic conditions. An electorate that voted based primarily on issues should have stable preferences that don't swing wildly based on the state of the economy.
- 16y ago

by Jun8 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

This leads to a very curious phenomenon: pick any 2 random U.S. Citizens of either party. Take them out for a beer and start talking politics. If both of them are fairly secure in their beliefs, within a very short amount of time you'll realize that they are very close on maybe 80-85% of all these issues, although they each adopt talking points from their chosen party to describe their differences! This is a natural consequence of only having two parties to choose from. Extremely fascinating stuff. I wonder how the parallels hold out in multi-party systems? EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I agree with you that folks have a huge variety of opinions on all sorts of issues. I just wanted to point out that even then, they are much less attached to the issues themselves as they are to the talking points their party has around those issues It's a strange thing.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

Comments like this sadden me. There is a field called political science. There are lots of researchers in that field publishing in journals, attending conferences, writing books, etc. And they've actually come up with some interesting results. In particular: voters do not make voting decisions based primarily on issues. In fact, there's some evidence that the causation often goes the other way. Any model that starts with the assumption that voters choose candidates based on issue matching starts with fail. Why should I be shoehorned? I am a gnostic, against excessive off-shoring, pro-choice, against gun banning and so on. It's a curious mix. Yet, I have to choose between two packages. Because the nature of political parties that can function in any society is heavily dependent on the institutional structure of the government. Again, this is a question that actual political scientists have researched and answered.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
voters do not make voting decisions based primarily on issues. In fact, there's some evidence that the causation often goes the other way. Interesting, I'd like to read more about this. Can you point me to something (less than book-length) that would tell me more? (I'm familiar with The Myth of the Rational Voter thing, but it sounds like you're going even a step farther than that)
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I can't find any direct links, but I'd suggest Robin Hanson's blog (overcomingbias.com). His hypothesis is that most political/voting activity is done primarily for the purposes of a sense of identity and signalling. He discusses this in a number of posts. His basic thesis: I have no incentive to vote "correctly", since the odds of my vote affecting the result are nil. Therefore, it costs me almost nothing to vote D solely to show my friends what a caring intellectual I am, or to feel good about myself. My hypothesis is that this is the main reason scientists vote D (the caring/intellectual image).
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  One hilarious example of this effect at work can be found at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_9_29_04.html http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_... -- the gist of it is that polling indicates that a decent number of Bush voters in 2004 believed that Bush held policy positions that he never held and in fact never claimed to have held. It is not that Bush lied to these voters about his issue preferences: they just liked him for other reasons and ascribed their own issue preferences to him. John Sides explains a related phenomena here: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_on_2010.html http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_... whereby voters don't necessarily know much about most issues and end up adopting issue positions held by parties they trust. See the link towards the end of that piece. In general, there's been a ton of political science work on how election outcomes are largely determined by non-issue factors, like economic conditions. An electorate that voted based primarily on issues should have stable preferences that don't swing wildly based on the state of the economy.
16y ago