4. is particularly persuasive. The old adage in politics is that if your goal is to find a candidate that you agree with on every issue, run. Otherwise voters have some beliefs held more deeply than others and accept that the politician who supports the view on taxation they prefer does other things they don't like, but do not value as much. They are "buying" a package.
Given the likelihood of being the deciding vote and the costs of getting good answers from politicians to tough questions it is a wonder that anyone votes at all... Regards, Brian Moore ESI Corporation -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of fabio guillermo rojas Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 9:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Median Voter and Sampling > So what are you getting at? Since there is a series of elections, each > with a different median voter, the MVT doesn't actually predict that the > median general voter gets his way? Or what? > Prof. Bryan Caplan I think that applications of MVT are very, very sloppy. Four criticisms: 1. You seem to assume that policy responds quite well to public opinion. You assume that if opinion shifts, policy will quickly follow. I believe that policy is very "sticky" with respect to public opinion. To make it econo-talk, I think policy is not very elastic with respect to changes in the median voter. 2. Institutions are designed to prevent policy from being overly sensitive to public opinion. Ie, we don't have elections every day. We create rules that allow policy makers to resist every whim of opinion. Examples: rules for changing the constitution, judicial dependence on precedents, etc. In a sense, institutions play the role that contracts do in the labor market - set practices over some time period (ie, you've bought labor at price X and the employee can't leave just because the price is now more than X). 3. When people (ahem, Mr. B.C.) say "look - puzzle - people want X but we get Y" - the poll that measures opinion is probably a random sample of adults, or maybe voters. But as I've argued before, this might not be the relevant group. Maybe it's party activists, or party-rank and file. Policies may have select audiences and there is no puzzle until you show that the relevant audience does in fact strongly oppose a policy. 4. Cognitive limitations: I'm no expert, but my hunch is that many people are only willing to get worked up over a small # of issues - taxes, abortion, immigration, defense... and the dedicated might add their favorites like gun control or affirmative action. Therefore, it's no risk to screw the voter on an issue as long as you don't do it on certain big issues. Therefore it's easy to get a list of dozens of issues and find a descrepancy - what's so puzzling about that? So my beef isn't the MVT per se, but the knee jerk use of it. Fabio
