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The application to politics is especially relevant: "Anthony Downs noted that Hoteling's model could explain political competition. ... As with the ice cream se

by martian 17y ago

The application to politics is especially relevant: "Anthony Downs noted that Hoteling's model could explain political competition. ... As with the ice cream sellers on the beach the political candidates will choose a political position that is virtually the same as their opponent's. Furthermore the candidates will be driven to select the political position of the median voter." This jives with gut intuition, that in the end the differences between Republican/Democrat aren't really that great. Would love to see this as an interactive applet or widget where you could adjust the locations and quantity of sellers (or politicians).

davidw 17y ago
It depends on the voting system too, though. This doesn't happen so much in systems that are not "winner takes all". In Italy, you can happily vote for the hammer-and-sickle communists (or the extremists on the other end) and they'll pick up a few seats in parliament; it's not like their representatives need to win in any one district - it's enough to get a percentage of the national vote. This has both benefits and its own problems, as well.
- Luff 17y ago
  But to rule the country you need half of the votes, and no matter how many parties a country has, alliances form between them as to present themselves to the population as a viable alternative to the parties currently in power. People who dislike the current government do not want to throw their vote away on parties outside those two main alternatives - changing the alliance in power takes precedence. We have 7 political parties represented in our parliament("riksdag"), but in effect you can only choose between two alliances who each has joint policies. Which have now become about the same by the process described in the article. So the choice we have is between the guys who want to lower the tax by 1-2%, or the ones who want to raise the tax by 1-2%. The rest of the difference is rhetoric.
  - davidw 17y ago
    In Italy (but not just Italy), there are very real philosophical differences between the parties in the coalitions. On one side you still have real, unrepentant communists, on the other side, you have Alessandra Mussolini active in politics. What often occurs is that the big center left/right party has, say, 45%, and needs a minor party (that polled, say, 6%) to push them over 50%. The minor party then gets to hold the bigger party hostage: we want this, this, and this or else there is no deal. This gives the minor party a share of power all out of proportion to their actual percentage of the vote.
_pius 17y ago
This is already well studied and modeled as the median voter theorem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem
- martian 17y ago
  Nice. Also looks like Probabilistic Voting Theory works in N-dimensional space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_voting_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_voting_theory
btilly 17y ago
Not only are the differences between Republican/Democrat not that great, but in the last 50 years they have largely swapped constituencies! It started when JFK pushed civil rights. This made Democrats popular with Northern civil rights activists. Nixon took advantage of this with his "Southern strategy" that used the issue as a wedge to get Southerners to vote Republican for the first time ever. (Previously the South wouldn't vote Republican because they held the Republicans responsible for the Civil War.) The swap cascaded from there as each successful candidate got there by appealing to what had once been the other party's base. (Reagan took a particularly chunk, hence the phrase "Reagan democrat".) The swap completed with George Bush.

by martian 17y ago

davidw 17y ago

It depends on the voting system too, though. This doesn't happen so much in systems that are not "winner takes all". In Italy, you can happily vote for the hammer-and-sickle communists (or the extremists on the other end) and they'll pick up a few seats in parliament; it's not like their representatives need to win in any one district - it's enough to get a percentage of the national vote. This has both benefits and its own problems, as well.

Luff 17y ago
But to rule the country you need half of the votes, and no matter how many parties a country has, alliances form between them as to present themselves to the population as a viable alternative to the parties currently in power. People who dislike the current government do not want to throw their vote away on parties outside those two main alternatives - changing the alliance in power takes precedence. We have 7 political parties represented in our parliament("riksdag"), but in effect you can only choose between two alliances who each has joint policies. Which have now become about the same by the process described in the article. So the choice we have is between the guys who want to lower the tax by 1-2%, or the ones who want to raise the tax by 1-2%. The rest of the difference is rhetoric.
- davidw 17y ago
  In Italy (but not just Italy), there are very real philosophical differences between the parties in the coalitions. On one side you still have real, unrepentant communists, on the other side, you have Alessandra Mussolini active in politics. What often occurs is that the big center left/right party has, say, 45%, and needs a minor party (that polled, say, 6%) to push them over 50%. The minor party then gets to hold the bigger party hostage: we want this, this, and this or else there is no deal. This gives the minor party a share of power all out of proportion to their actual percentage of the vote.

_pius 17y ago

This is already well studied and modeled as the median voter theorem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

martian 17y ago
Nice. Also looks like Probabilistic Voting Theory works in N-dimensional space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_voting_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_voting_theory

btilly 17y ago

Not only are the differences between Republican/Democrat not that great, but in the last 50 years they have largely swapped constituencies! It started when JFK pushed civil rights. This made Democrats popular with Northern civil rights activists. Nixon took advantage of this with his "Southern strategy" that used the issue as a wedge to get Southerners to vote Republican for the first time ever. (Previously the South wouldn't vote Republican because they held the Republicans responsible for the Civil War.) The swap cascaded from there as each successful candidate got there by appealing to what had once been the other party's base. (Reagan took a particularly chunk, hence the phrase "Reagan democrat".) The swap completed with George Bush.