Game theory can help explain how proportional voting changes the behavior of candidates, and the elites who support them. Consider a high-profile election with five or six candidates. To win an election, you cannot simply appeal to your base. And you can’t alienate your opponent’s base. You want supporters of other candidates to think of you as “the worst,” because if they hate you, they might put you down a lot and take you out quickly.
Candidates are therefore encouraged to moderate their positions and behavior – that is, not call each other too many names. If one voter’s favorite candidate calls another’s favorite “weird,” for example — to pick an example that doesn’t happen at random — the latter voter may respond by voting the name down.
The result? Negative campaigning is declining, and politics is balancing. The effect can be particularly pronounced in party primaries, which are sometimes dominated by extreme voters.
Candidates also compete in different ways. They especially try to outdo others when it comes to regional service, which is a way to be popular without offending anyone.
Much evidence of selective voting shows that, when used, it has moderated US politics. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting helped moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski defeat many of her opponents in 2022. In Idaho, some conservatives view limited voting with suspicion, fearing it is a conspiracy to erode their power.
In Ireland, politics is largely abstract on many policy issues, and elections are not generally seen as major, course-changing events. After more than a century of this system, the Irish seem happy to keep it.
The lesson here is that it is not possible to evaluate selective voting in the abstract. It often makes politics less extreme and less ideological, but those are descriptive words, not general ones. I’d like Californian politics to be less ideological, for example, but that’s only because it includes ideas that differ from mine. And sometimes the extremes and ideals are completely right, such as John Stuart Mill’s advocacy of women’s rights and birth control in the 19th century.
In general, moderate voting is best in areas where voters feel that things are going the right way and should stay there. It’s a polling system for the complacent. What parts of modern America might explain it? No polling method yet can answer that question.
Source link