4 ms·
The game theory is not complicated at all for a first-past-the-post election with two candidates: candidates will cater to the median voter. There's even a theo
by lbarrow 14y ago
The game theory is not complicated at all for a first-past-the-post election with two candidates: candidates will cater to the median voter. There's even a theorem proving it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem
"Skewing" a democratic political system towards regions with more people in them would be vastly, vastly preferable to our current system. A number of big warts in US policy can be explained, at least in part, by the biases and misincentives introduced by our election system.
Probably the most obvious is the federal government's support of corn ethanol: supposedly it's done in the name of energy independence, but in reality it's done because almost all US Senators believe that they're going to run for President one day, and none of them have to try to win an Iowa caucus with a vote against corn ethanol on their record.
- nitrogen 14y agoFrom the article you quoted: The assumptions include a majoritarian election system in which political views are along a one-dimensional spectrum. Political views are not along a one-dimensional spectrum. As soon as you add another dimension, FPTP elections favor extremism according to the visualizations I linked to elsewhere in the thread (http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/).
- Zakharov 14y agoAdding another dimension doesn't make a difference; adding another candidate does.