8 ms·

Modeling suggests friendships may lead to lopsided elections

50 points by rustoo 5y ago

WaitWaitWha 5y ago
I will make an'unacceptable' proposal. Tie voting to some citizen benefit(s). (Note that I am not defining any mechanism, and the dependencies themselves.) Prove my core conjecture wrong (or right).
- nickff 5y ago
  >"Prove my core conjecture wrong (or right). " What is your core conjecture? You seem to be presenting a proposal, not a conjecture. What is your objective? Improved voter participation? Resident engagement? Political discourse? Citizen informed-ness?
- techbio 5y ago
  Sure it gets more people to vote, but for whom, and how are the benefits distributed, and by whom? Not proof, and I may not like the inevitable conclusion, but this would be immediately corrupted by the democracy it intends to improve, if not sooner.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Not sure what your conjecture is, but it's illegal to not vote in Australia...
- PhoenixReborn 5y ago
  There are countries with mandatory voting already (Australia is a good example). It hasn't really changed very much about their elections though.
lionkor 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Still, risky click as I misread that last word very much.
- Gwarzo 5y ago
  Lol, lopsided erections?
- meepmorp 5y ago
  Electrons?
sva_ 5y ago
> And most surprisingly, I don't think that it is surprising at all. I wouldn't call it friendship, but if a group of people who share a common political goal that opposes others, thinks that their group is a majority who will win a vote by a big margin, then those people are less likely to vote. See Brexit. Or maybe even the 2016 US election, where most people seemed assured that Clinton would win, and perhaps because of that didn't vote (also because they didn't get Bernie as a candidate.)
amelius 5y ago
If the minority is sufficiently large, say 40%, is it really that bad if their preferred candidate wins? And if the minority is small, say 10%, then does this research still apply?
- p_j_w 5y ago
  If the loser of a 60/40 split wins, yes, that sounds pretty bad. Those kinds of majorities don't happen very often.
  - svachalek 5y ago
    Yup, 40% is not a "large" minority. It's a landslide loss.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    Give the gerrymandering time to work its magic, wont be long now until those sorts of results at least in the US house are not uncommon.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Well, at 60% turnout, you've got a true distribution of: 1. 36% unfairly unhappy 2. 24% unfairly happy 3. 40% meh as intended Honestly, that places it at 64% meh-to-happy vs 36% unhappy vs. it going the other way as 76% meh-to-happy vs 24% unhappy. I think that's a pretty big improvement in happiness but I can see why the question was asked.
- amalcon 5y ago
  If it happens once in a century, by some fluke? Probably not. If it happens with any consistency (say, 20% of the time, favoring a particular side) over a long enough time period, the majority is going to become disillusioned for obvious and frankly good reasons. A disillusioned majority is not good for a democracy. Edit to add: Of course, with this particular effect, it is not necessarily clear to the demographics whether they are in the majority or the minority. This can lead to the paradoxical situation where everyone believes they are in the majority, and still get their way less often than they should. I think this is the case in much of the world today.
dillondoyle 5y ago
There is also some research showing this 'wisdom' of crowds in polling that theorizes if you ask someone who they think will win - versus who they support - the result will be more accurate prediction [1] This article mentions "complacency" and "dejectedness" which are so sad to me and so prevalent among people under 40 I work in politics and hear online: why vote it doesn't matter, all politicians are bought for corporate stooges there are no differences between R and D. There are valid critiques on these issues, but from my perspective this attitude is a cancer which benefits a conservative minority.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  I had also written this longer bit but felt more political, and less political science, then top comment so separated it. Would be hard to build into this model, but it would be interesting to see how powerful self reinforcing voter suppression has been in driving this anti-turnout group bias. The more they suppress the vote and play games the more people feel it's rigged and don't participate. Social media both amplifies and provides a platform for campaigns to weaponize. Deliberately targeting voters on FB to enforce messages of black complacency - using BLM as 'dejectedness' and 'complacency' of no change so that their vote doesn't matter. [2,3]. Lots of instances of targeting black and brown voters with calls giving wrong info on when or how to vote [4]. Russia copied this race baiting and they also targeted conservatives [5]. This past election saw targeted Hispanic voters, having candidates change their names in Florida to confuse the ballot. I can't find a quick source but one of these spoiler candidates even shaved their head lol to have a more similar look so far as I can remember. To be fair there is also a history of similar racist push polling by Dems in the south during primaries too but the overwhelming suppression of voters is perpetrated by conservatives. [1] https://theconversation.com/election-polls-are-more-accurate-if-they-ask-participants-how-others-will-vote-150121 https://theconversation.com/election-polls-are-more-accurate... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938187233/trump-push-to-invalidate-votes-in-heavily-black-cities-alarms-civil-rights-group https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938187233/trump-push-to-inval... [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/09/28/trump-election-campaign-voter-suppression-black-americans-2016/3567588001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/09/28/trump-electio... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/robocall-election-day/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/robocal... [5] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49987657 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49987657
Invictus0 5y ago
The author of this paper, Steven Strogatz, is also the author of Nonlinear dynamics and Chaos. This is a seriously good math textbook, and really accessible to beginners. I highly recommend the book.
literallyaduck 5y ago
Democracy is unrecoverable. Imagine for a moment that the employees of McDonald's get to vote for a CEO every four years. A bunch of employees get together and vote their friend Reggie in. Reggie doesn't do anything crazy, but his supporters now all are promoted to management, he signs a bunch of contracts to supply things from his brother in law and he takes the company jet to Thailand and never leaves. Reggie gets voted out and Sally gets voted in. The company is making a little less money but it is her turn and she throws out all of the Reggie followers in management and promotes the Sally followers to management, voids the contracts causing costly lawsuits and gives a bracelet for free McFlurries for life. She then mandates that Wendy's employees get a vote. She takes a flight to Thailand and stays for two terms thanks to the Wendy's vote. Dave III takes over and promises to heal the burger divide and promises that Wendy's employees votes will count double because they have been disenfranchised for years, he voids all Sally's contracts once again a costly move that almost bankrupts the company. He leaves her employees because of the Wendy's deal. With new brother in laws and new contracts signed, Dave rallys the voters and tells them he is going to protect their future by putting their pensions and retirement into the company's trust, and appoints his wife as trustee. They take the remaining money and retire in New Zealand. Every shift in power weakens the company. Every clean out and replacement of staff is a huge cost to the company. Common people can never exert enough influence to better their situation beyond short term nepotism.
- allemagne 5y ago
  Good thing nepotism is pretty easy to fix in alternative systems of government.
- namlem 5y ago
  The problem isn't democracy, it's voting. Sortition is a better way of conducting democracy. Experiments with citizens' assemblies in Ireland and elsewhere have so far yielded promising results. Sortition combined with a robust deliberative structure yields surprisingly good performance.
- sjg007 5y ago
  The voiding the contracts thing doesn't make sense but otherwise a good laugh!
virtualbluesky 5y ago
How off-base is the idea of functional voting? Form a bloc that pledges to vote for the party that will do something about their key issues, ignoring the normal party split. If their bloc has a substantial impact on the outcome, next election they have a touch more ability to influence the incumbents. So form an explicitly disloyal "party" from within the existing system. If it catches on...

50 points by rustoo 5y ago

I will make an'unacceptable' proposal. Tie voting to some citizen benefit(s). (Note that I am not defining any mechanism, and the dependencies themselves.) Prove my core conjecture wrong (or right).

nickff 5y ago
>"Prove my core conjecture wrong (or right). " What is your core conjecture? You seem to be presenting a proposal, not a conjecture. What is your objective? Improved voter participation? Resident engagement? Political discourse? Citizen informed-ness?
techbio 5y ago
Sure it gets more people to vote, but for whom, and how are the benefits distributed, and by whom? Not proof, and I may not like the inevitable conclusion, but this would be immediately corrupted by the democracy it intends to improve, if not sooner.
klyrs 5y ago
Not sure what your conjecture is, but it's illegal to not vote in Australia...
PhoenixReborn 5y ago
There are countries with mandatory voting already (Australia is a good example). It hasn't really changed very much about their elections though.

lionkor 5y ago

That makes a lot of sense. Still, risky click as I misread that last word very much.

Gwarzo 5y ago
Lol, lopsided erections?
meepmorp 5y ago
Electrons?

sva_ 5y ago

> And most surprisingly, I don't think that it is surprising at all. I wouldn't call it friendship, but if a group of people who share a common political goal that opposes others, thinks that their group is a majority who will win a vote by a big margin, then those people are less likely to vote. See Brexit. Or maybe even the 2016 US election, where most people seemed assured that Clinton would win, and perhaps because of that didn't vote (also because they didn't get Bernie as a candidate.)

amelius 5y ago

If the minority is sufficiently large, say 40%, is it really that bad if their preferred candidate wins? And if the minority is small, say 10%, then does this research still apply?

p_j_w 5y ago
If the loser of a 60/40 split wins, yes, that sounds pretty bad. Those kinds of majorities don't happen very often.
- svachalek 5y ago
  Yup, 40% is not a "large" minority. It's a landslide loss.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Give the gerrymandering time to work its magic, wont be long now until those sorts of results at least in the US house are not uncommon.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Well, at 60% turnout, you've got a true distribution of: 1. 36% unfairly unhappy 2. 24% unfairly happy 3. 40% meh as intended Honestly, that places it at 64% meh-to-happy vs 36% unhappy vs. it going the other way as 76% meh-to-happy vs 24% unhappy. I think that's a pretty big improvement in happiness but I can see why the question was asked.
amalcon 5y ago
If it happens once in a century, by some fluke? Probably not. If it happens with any consistency (say, 20% of the time, favoring a particular side) over a long enough time period, the majority is going to become disillusioned for obvious and frankly good reasons. A disillusioned majority is not good for a democracy. Edit to add: Of course, with this particular effect, it is not necessarily clear to the demographics whether they are in the majority or the minority. This can lead to the paradoxical situation where everyone believes they are in the majority, and still get their way less often than they should. I think this is the case in much of the world today.

dillondoyle 5y ago

There is also some research showing this 'wisdom' of crowds in polling that theorizes if you ask someone who they think will win - versus who they support - the result will be more accurate prediction [1] This article mentions "complacency" and "dejectedness" which are so sad to me and so prevalent among people under 40 I work in politics and hear online: why vote it doesn't matter, all politicians are bought for corporate stooges there are no differences between R and D. There are valid critiques on these issues, but from my perspective this attitude is a cancer which benefits a conservative minority.

dillondoyle 5y ago
I had also written this longer bit but felt more political, and less political science, then top comment so separated it. Would be hard to build into this model, but it would be interesting to see how powerful self reinforcing voter suppression has been in driving this anti-turnout group bias. The more they suppress the vote and play games the more people feel it's rigged and don't participate. Social media both amplifies and provides a platform for campaigns to weaponize. Deliberately targeting voters on FB to enforce messages of black complacency - using BLM as 'dejectedness' and 'complacency' of no change so that their vote doesn't matter. [2,3]. Lots of instances of targeting black and brown voters with calls giving wrong info on when or how to vote [4]. Russia copied this race baiting and they also targeted conservatives [5]. This past election saw targeted Hispanic voters, having candidates change their names in Florida to confuse the ballot. I can't find a quick source but one of these spoiler candidates even shaved their head lol to have a more similar look so far as I can remember. To be fair there is also a history of similar racist push polling by Dems in the south during primaries too but the overwhelming suppression of voters is perpetrated by conservatives. [1] https://theconversation.com/election-polls-are-more-accurate-if-they-ask-participants-how-others-will-vote-150121 https://theconversation.com/election-polls-are-more-accurate... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938187233/trump-push-to-invalidate-votes-in-heavily-black-cities-alarms-civil-rights-group https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938187233/trump-push-to-inval... [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/09/28/trump-election-campaign-voter-suppression-black-americans-2016/3567588001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/09/28/trump-electio... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/robocall-election-day/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/robocal... [5] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49987657 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49987657

Invictus0 5y ago

The author of this paper, Steven Strogatz, is also the author of Nonlinear dynamics and Chaos. This is a seriously good math textbook, and really accessible to beginners. I highly recommend the book.

literallyaduck 5y ago

Democracy is unrecoverable. Imagine for a moment that the employees of McDonald's get to vote for a CEO every four years. A bunch of employees get together and vote their friend Reggie in. Reggie doesn't do anything crazy, but his supporters now all are promoted to management, he signs a bunch of contracts to supply things from his brother in law and he takes the company jet to Thailand and never leaves. Reggie gets voted out and Sally gets voted in. The company is making a little less money but it is her turn and she throws out all of the Reggie followers in management and promotes the Sally followers to management, voids the contracts causing costly lawsuits and gives a bracelet for free McFlurries for life. She then mandates that Wendy's employees get a vote. She takes a flight to Thailand and stays for two terms thanks to the Wendy's vote. Dave III takes over and promises to heal the burger divide and promises that Wendy's employees votes will count double because they have been disenfranchised for years, he voids all Sally's contracts once again a costly move that almost bankrupts the company. He leaves her employees because of the Wendy's deal. With new brother in laws and new contracts signed, Dave rallys the voters and tells them he is going to protect their future by putting their pensions and retirement into the company's trust, and appoints his wife as trustee. They take the remaining money and retire in New Zealand. Every shift in power weakens the company. Every clean out and replacement of staff is a huge cost to the company. Common people can never exert enough influence to better their situation beyond short term nepotism.

allemagne 5y ago
Good thing nepotism is pretty easy to fix in alternative systems of government.
namlem 5y ago
The problem isn't democracy, it's voting. Sortition is a better way of conducting democracy. Experiments with citizens' assemblies in Ireland and elsewhere have so far yielded promising results. Sortition combined with a robust deliberative structure yields surprisingly good performance.
sjg007 5y ago
The voiding the contracts thing doesn't make sense but otherwise a good laugh!

virtualbluesky 5y ago

How off-base is the idea of functional voting? Form a bloc that pledges to vote for the party that will do something about their key issues, ignoring the normal party split. If their bloc has a substantial impact on the outcome, next election they have a touch more ability to influence the incumbents. So form an explicitly disloyal "party" from within the existing system. If it catches on...