4 ms·

What is the probability your vote will make a difference? (2012) [pdf]

15 points by ghosh 12y ago

subtenante 12y ago
I find unhealthy this obsession with "making a difference", more precisely the way it is often interpreted as it is in this article. Voting is the essence of democracy. If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. It makes a difference in how you take part in the decision making, how you are a citizen. Concluding that "On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election." can not be understood any other way than "your individual vote is useless", and it is completely ignoring the roots of democracy: every one vote counts the same as all the others. You do not vote to "make a[n individual] difference", but to participate in a collective decision. Voting it is a collective act, not an individual one.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  > If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. I think that belief has become tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you live in a community that has an overwhelming number of people who hold a belief that you oppose, there is little purpose in voting. The sensible thing to do would be to leave and find another community. Unfortunately, that itself is not always possible.
- busterarm 12y ago
  > Voting is the essence of democracy. If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. It makes a difference in how you take part in the decision making, how you are a citizen. We are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. Pure democracies are generally terrible systems anyway. Voting is for people who have delusions about what our system really is.
  - subtenante 12y ago
    Those two things are not exclusive (you can have both, any of them, or none). A republic means the laws are applicable to all citizens ; it defines a juridic order. A democracy means that the sovereignty is in the people ; it defines a way of taking collective decisions. I agree that even in France where I live, and which defines itself as a democracy (under its 5th republic), the democratic principles are not followed to the letter. It does not mean however that voting is useless, on the contrary, it is one of many ways to contribute to the political life and participate in making a better system.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > We are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. We are (in theory, at least) all of: (1) A representative democracy, (2) A constitutional republic, (3) A federal republic, (4) A democratic republic, (5) A constitutional democracy. (In addition, many states also have substantial elements of direct democracy.) "Democracy" and "Republic" are not exclusive categories. > Pure democracies are generally terrible systems anyway. Presumably by "pure", you mean "direct". But that's not the only kind of democracy, nor is it more "pure" than any other kind.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Voting is the essence of democracy. That's, at best, misleading. Voting is a key mechanism by which preferences are aggregated in a democracy, but citizen engagement and participation is the essence of democracy. > If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. No, if you believe in democracy and understand it, you realize your vote very rarely makes any meaningful difference, but that your engagement (including voting) over an extended period of time can.
  - subtenante 12y ago
    > That's, at best, misleading. I don't think so. Talking about engagement and participation is very well, those are indeed important aspects of a citizen's life, but they can also happen in regimes which are not democracies. Democracy means the sovereignty of the people. This sovereignty is embodied at decision time, which is elections/votes. Most certainly freedom of speech, good education, political debate, etc. are requirements for a democracy to be healthy, but these traits can be found in other regimes. > you realize your vote very rarely makes any meaningful difference It all depends on how you define meaningful, I guess.
  - lazyant 12y ago
    Nobody will call a country without free elections a democracy, so it's a necessary (not sufficient) condition for democracy.
crystaln 12y ago
This does not account for the full effect of the act of voting. The greatest influence on human behavior is the behavior of other humans. By voting you are making voting the standard of your community, and those who vote because of your encouragement likewise encourage others. Consider how much easier it would be to not vote if your best friend says he won't, or how isolated you might feel if all your friends vote. Behaviors within communities can change rapidly, sometimes as a chain reaction to obscure individuals - studies show that "influencers" do not have all that much more influence than anyone else. Your vote could influence thousands of others to vote, who in turn could influence millions. Your vote may not matter, but the act of voting does matter.
- subtenante 12y ago
  > Your vote may not matter, but the act of voting does matter. I don't even believe so. Consider someone who has no family nor friends, and lives isolated 50 miles from the nearest village with a voting urn. Her vote has no social value. Does it have no importance at all? Your vote matters, as long as it's counted. Thinking in "ceteris paribus" terms concerning votes is completely ignoring the collective nature of voting. Even if the final count was to have a single vote difference (say 1000001 for X to 1000000 for Y), all the ones who voted for X are as legitimate as the others to claim to have "made the difference". So even in that edge case, there can be no one to be held "responsible" for the collective decision, and all of these votes did matter in the same, unmeasurable, amount.
  - mcv 12y ago
    Unmeasurable? Those votes for X were each the one vote that made X win. If any single one of those votes had not been cast, it would have been a tie. Those votes all mattered as much as a vote can possibly matter. When you win by 1000000 to 1, then all the winning votes mattered for an unmeasurable amount.
    - subtenante 12y ago
      By measurable, I mean objectively. Mattering "as much as a vote can possibly matter" is not objective. Because in that case, all the ones who did not express their vote also had a decisive (non-)vote. Their (non-)vote made the same difference. All of this does not make any sense. Voting is by essence a collective action, and can not be divided into individual actions. Well it can, of course, but is has the same kind of meaning as wondering which of somebody's cells triggered his/her cancer, or what is the responsibility of a given car in a given traffic jam (especially those created by slowing cars on the opposite lane of the one having a real accident).
ddebernardy 12y ago
> In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied, conditional on your state being necessary. While perhaps correct on paper it isn't if you do not assume all else equals. If my probability of making a difference is 1 in sixty million, and I reason that voting isn't worth my time, and everyone else does the same, then it all breaks apart. Truth is, every vote makes a difference with a probability of 1, when considering the fact that a ballot's outcome can turn upside down due to voters not showing up, votes for odd candidates in protest or (when they're ignored) blank votes. See what happened in France when Chirac got re-elected facing extreme right wing contender Le Pen.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Every vote makes a difference iff you believe your decision of whether or not to vote is correlated with that of other people. If your decisions are correlated, you and a mass of people will either vote or stay home, thus making a difference. If you're entirely alone, the voting system is not fine-grained enough to capture preference information from one single vote cast or lost.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Every vote makes a difference iff you believe your decision of whether or not to vote is correlated with that of other people. No. Correlation =/= Causation. Every vote (of yours) would obviously makes a difference if it caused a (sufficient number) of votes (for the same candidates/propositions) of other people, but it merely correlates with but does not cause other votes, then it doesn't make any difference other than the impact your vote alone has on the final decision.
cmdrfred 12y ago
I'm a libertarian living in Pennsylvania + We have an electoral college in the country = My vote makes no difference.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  Democrat in Texas. We're lucky we don't get shot by random passing Republicans & Libertarians.
mherrmann 12y ago
0.0 - if you don't vote.

15 points by ghosh 12y ago

I find unhealthy this obsession with "making a difference", more precisely the way it is often interpreted as it is in this article. Voting is the essence of democracy. If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. It makes a difference in how you take part in the decision making, how you are a citizen. Concluding that "On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election." can not be understood any other way than "your individual vote is useless", and it is completely ignoring the roots of democracy: every one vote counts the same as all the others. You do not vote to "make a[n individual] difference", but to participate in a collective decision. Voting it is a collective act, not an individual one.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
> If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. I think that belief has become tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you live in a community that has an overwhelming number of people who hold a belief that you oppose, there is little purpose in voting. The sensible thing to do would be to leave and find another community. Unfortunately, that itself is not always possible.
busterarm 12y ago
> Voting is the essence of democracy. If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. It makes a difference in how you take part in the decision making, how you are a citizen. We are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. Pure democracies are generally terrible systems anyway. Voting is for people who have delusions about what our system really is.
- subtenante 12y ago
  Those two things are not exclusive (you can have both, any of them, or none). A republic means the laws are applicable to all citizens ; it defines a juridic order. A democracy means that the sovereignty is in the people ; it defines a way of taking collective decisions. I agree that even in France where I live, and which defines itself as a democracy (under its 5th republic), the democratic principles are not followed to the letter. It does not mean however that voting is useless, on the contrary, it is one of many ways to contribute to the political life and participate in making a better system.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > We are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. We are (in theory, at least) all of: (1) A representative democracy, (2) A constitutional republic, (3) A federal republic, (4) A democratic republic, (5) A constitutional democracy. (In addition, many states also have substantial elements of direct democracy.) "Democracy" and "Republic" are not exclusive categories. > Pure democracies are generally terrible systems anyway. Presumably by "pure", you mean "direct". But that's not the only kind of democracy, nor is it more "pure" than any other kind.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Voting is the essence of democracy. That's, at best, misleading. Voting is a key mechanism by which preferences are aggregated in a democracy, but citizen engagement and participation is the essence of democracy. > If you believe in democracy, you know your vote makes a difference every time. No, if you believe in democracy and understand it, you realize your vote very rarely makes any meaningful difference, but that your engagement (including voting) over an extended period of time can.
- subtenante 12y ago
  > That's, at best, misleading. I don't think so. Talking about engagement and participation is very well, those are indeed important aspects of a citizen's life, but they can also happen in regimes which are not democracies. Democracy means the sovereignty of the people. This sovereignty is embodied at decision time, which is elections/votes. Most certainly freedom of speech, good education, political debate, etc. are requirements for a democracy to be healthy, but these traits can be found in other regimes. > you realize your vote very rarely makes any meaningful difference It all depends on how you define meaningful, I guess.
- lazyant 12y ago
  Nobody will call a country without free elections a democracy, so it's a necessary (not sufficient) condition for democracy.

crystaln 12y ago

This does not account for the full effect of the act of voting. The greatest influence on human behavior is the behavior of other humans. By voting you are making voting the standard of your community, and those who vote because of your encouragement likewise encourage others. Consider how much easier it would be to not vote if your best friend says he won't, or how isolated you might feel if all your friends vote. Behaviors within communities can change rapidly, sometimes as a chain reaction to obscure individuals - studies show that "influencers" do not have all that much more influence than anyone else. Your vote could influence thousands of others to vote, who in turn could influence millions. Your vote may not matter, but the act of voting does matter.

subtenante 12y ago
> Your vote may not matter, but the act of voting does matter. I don't even believe so. Consider someone who has no family nor friends, and lives isolated 50 miles from the nearest village with a voting urn. Her vote has no social value. Does it have no importance at all? Your vote matters, as long as it's counted. Thinking in "ceteris paribus" terms concerning votes is completely ignoring the collective nature of voting. Even if the final count was to have a single vote difference (say 1000001 for X to 1000000 for Y), all the ones who voted for X are as legitimate as the others to claim to have "made the difference". So even in that edge case, there can be no one to be held "responsible" for the collective decision, and all of these votes did matter in the same, unmeasurable, amount.
- mcv 12y ago
  Unmeasurable? Those votes for X were each the one vote that made X win. If any single one of those votes had not been cast, it would have been a tie. Those votes all mattered as much as a vote can possibly matter. When you win by 1000000 to 1, then all the winning votes mattered for an unmeasurable amount.
  - subtenante 12y ago
    By measurable, I mean objectively. Mattering "as much as a vote can possibly matter" is not objective. Because in that case, all the ones who did not express their vote also had a decisive (non-)vote. Their (non-)vote made the same difference. All of this does not make any sense. Voting is by essence a collective action, and can not be divided into individual actions. Well it can, of course, but is has the same kind of meaning as wondering which of somebody's cells triggered his/her cancer, or what is the responsibility of a given car in a given traffic jam (especially those created by slowing cars on the opposite lane of the one having a real accident).

ddebernardy 12y ago

> In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied, conditional on your state being necessary. While perhaps correct on paper it isn't if you do not assume all else equals. If my probability of making a difference is 1 in sixty million, and I reason that voting isn't worth my time, and everyone else does the same, then it all breaks apart. Truth is, every vote makes a difference with a probability of 1, when considering the fact that a ballot's outcome can turn upside down due to voters not showing up, votes for odd candidates in protest or (when they're ignored) blank votes. See what happened in France when Chirac got re-elected facing extreme right wing contender Le Pen.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Every vote makes a difference iff you believe your decision of whether or not to vote is correlated with that of other people. If your decisions are correlated, you and a mass of people will either vote or stay home, thus making a difference. If you're entirely alone, the voting system is not fine-grained enough to capture preference information from one single vote cast or lost.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Every vote makes a difference iff you believe your decision of whether or not to vote is correlated with that of other people. No. Correlation =/= Causation. Every vote (of yours) would obviously makes a difference if it caused a (sufficient number) of votes (for the same candidates/propositions) of other people, but it merely correlates with but does not cause other votes, then it doesn't make any difference other than the impact your vote alone has on the final decision.

cmdrfred 12y ago

I'm a libertarian living in Pennsylvania + We have an electoral college in the country = My vote makes no difference.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
Democrat in Texas. We're lucky we don't get shot by random passing Republicans & Libertarians.

mherrmann 12y ago

0.0 - if you don't vote.