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Political science seems to be going through a phase of questioning the rationality of voters. The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1]

Political science seems to be going through a phase of questioning the rationality of voters. The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why. This sounds very similar to the debate in economics around Efficient market hypothesis[3] and the emergence of behavioral economists. While it is seems easy to attribute things to emotion, we might miss other explanatory variables underneath. A great sound-bite from Thomas Ferguson who first proposed [2]: "The electorate is not too stupid or too tired to control the political system. It is merely too poor." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

nordsieck 6y ago
> The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why. I read an interesting political science piece[1] about the fall of professional (i.e. corrupt) politicians and the rise of amateur (i.e. ideological) politicians. The claim is largely that voters started to care more about politicians implementing their favorite policies than being the recipient of trickle-down graft. They started choosing zealots who (at least seem to) have uncompromising stances on issues which won't change later in their term for some reason. Needless to say, these sorts of politicians don't tend to be the moderate, nuanced type. ___ 1. I wish I could find it, but it's lost in the mists of the internet.
- ChainOfFools 6y ago
  Perhapa shorter messages reach more targets' emotional activation potential with better propagation fidelity and much less energetic commitment per impression? Mass media is increasingly a battle of bottlenecked channel management and rationally persuasive content simply doesn't survive this infrastructure without being ground down into smooth, bite sized harangues. And if you are going to get massed support for an issue, emotional persuasion content suffers much less from propagation distortion because it's distorted to begin with.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Or, to put it another way, and at the risk of taking this discussion out of the abstract, "Lock her up!" only has to work as a tribal shibboleth, not as an actually deliverable policy (especially if your voters have already given up on the idea that politicians actually mean what they say).
    - Tiltowait-- 6y ago
      Reality Winner was sentenced to federal prison for far less than Hillary Clinton did. She mishandled a single classified document while Hillary mishandled many, including top secret. She's not in prison because the US has one justice system for us and another for establishment elites. Billionaires pay millionaires to tell the middle class that the poor are the problem. Punch up and fight the ruling class criminals.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        We have had an increasingly hostile reaction to members of intelligence leaking to the media for decades especially where it has caused notable embarrassment. I am actually glad that Winner leaked but there is little doubt she intended to break the law. This is manifestly different from Hillary Clinton keeping email on a private server something other politicians have done without incident or controversy. She clearly intended to receive email more conveniently rather than intending to break the law. >News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous" matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s; however, the very existence of the program is technically classified, so sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security breach according to the CIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...
Balgair 6y ago
Whatever the data that Social Media companies have on their ad-spends in terms of politics should provide a very healthy data-set. Add in some mailer data for roundness. You should be able to pull the theories out of that with some elbow grease. I'm fairly certain that's what 538 pretty much does right now, what with most sports cancelled.
jnxx 6y ago
> Median Voter theory [...] political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter That only seems to work in voting systems with proportional representation (as opposed to first past the post systems). The latter seem to promote polarization, and this alone seems to explain a lot of the differences between the US/UK and countries with proportional-representative systems.

nordsieck 6y ago

> The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why. I read an interesting political science piece[1] about the fall of professional (i.e. corrupt) politicians and the rise of amateur (i.e. ideological) politicians. The claim is largely that voters started to care more about politicians implementing their favorite policies than being the recipient of trickle-down graft. They started choosing zealots who (at least seem to) have uncompromising stances on issues which won't change later in their term for some reason. Needless to say, these sorts of politicians don't tend to be the moderate, nuanced type. ___ 1. I wish I could find it, but it's lost in the mists of the internet.

ChainOfFools 6y ago
Perhapa shorter messages reach more targets' emotional activation potential with better propagation fidelity and much less energetic commitment per impression? Mass media is increasingly a battle of bottlenecked channel management and rationally persuasive content simply doesn't survive this infrastructure without being ground down into smooth, bite sized harangues. And if you are going to get massed support for an issue, emotional persuasion content suffers much less from propagation distortion because it's distorted to begin with.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Or, to put it another way, and at the risk of taking this discussion out of the abstract, "Lock her up!" only has to work as a tribal shibboleth, not as an actually deliverable policy (especially if your voters have already given up on the idea that politicians actually mean what they say).
  - Tiltowait-- 6y ago
    Reality Winner was sentenced to federal prison for far less than Hillary Clinton did. She mishandled a single classified document while Hillary mishandled many, including top secret. She's not in prison because the US has one justice system for us and another for establishment elites. Billionaires pay millionaires to tell the middle class that the poor are the problem. Punch up and fight the ruling class criminals.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      We have had an increasingly hostile reaction to members of intelligence leaking to the media for decades especially where it has caused notable embarrassment. I am actually glad that Winner leaked but there is little doubt she intended to break the law. This is manifestly different from Hillary Clinton keeping email on a private server something other politicians have done without incident or controversy. She clearly intended to receive email more conveniently rather than intending to break the law. >News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous" matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s; however, the very existence of the program is technically classified, so sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security breach according to the CIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...

Balgair 6y ago

Whatever the data that Social Media companies have on their ad-spends in terms of politics should provide a very healthy data-set. Add in some mailer data for roundness. You should be able to pull the theories out of that with some elbow grease. I'm fairly certain that's what 538 pretty much does right now, what with most sports cancelled.

jnxx 6y ago

> Median Voter theory [...] political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter That only seems to work in voting systems with proportional representation (as opposed to first past the post systems). The latter seem to promote polarization, and this alone seems to explain a lot of the differences between the US/UK and countries with proportional-representative systems.