Kevin Venzke wrote:
Hi Kristofer,
--- En date de : Mer 16.6.10, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-el...@broadpark.no> a
écrit :
I think that a nomination simulation would have to be more
complex, to take feedback into account. Candidates would
position themselves somewhere in opinion space, then move
closer to the winners depending on the outcome of the
simulation (and possibly decide to drop out if this would
elect a candidate closer to their position).
It basically works (or will work) like this except I plan to have the
movement be in a random direction. If the movement is unsuccessful then
the change is undone and the next candidate gets to "go." It's an issue
but hopefully not an insurmountable one that the proper place for the
candidate to stand may be nowhere near where they are.
The way I was considering would be to start with a bunch of random
candidates. Run the election. Each candidate then determines whether he
would have made his side better off if he didn't run, in which case he
removes himself from further rounds. Then the candidates that remain
update their position by moving closer to those on its side that are
above it in the social ordering, subject to possible counterbalancing
forces (warding off nominations on one's own side, for instance).
Finally, the voters' opinions change somewhat, to model a change of
opinion as may happen between elections.
The result would be a sort of attractor/k-means clustering type of
algorithm, where the dynamics would depend on the method in question.
One might also have new candidates appear - perhaps probabilistically
depending on distance to closest existing (or recently elected?) candidate.
Even so, the simulation would fail to catch certain aspects
of the election cycle itself. Consider a two party state
under FPTP. In a pure opinion-space analysis, the two
parties would converge on a common point (the "center") in
an effort to eat into each others' voters, yet in reality
that doesn't seem to happen - the Republican and Democratic
parties appeal to different voters.
A possible theory: They could not converge to the center because a
third candidate could decide to sit on the outer side of one, and still
be somewhat viable. So, a candidate needs to be far enough from the center
to discourage a rival nomination from the same side.
That is possible. Would primaries encourage that effect? If so, would we
expect parties in two-party states without voter primaries to be closer
to each other?
Changes in voter sentiment might be able to handle some of
that problem; by having voters change their opinions between
elections, candidates know not to get too specialized
(because it takes time to move about in opinion space). That
would also limit stagnation in even advanced systems: if you
have a Condorcet method and a party places itself at the
(static) median voter, the game is over and all the other
parties can just as well go home.
Well currently the median is not static. On average it is static, but in
a given election it could move a bit.
What I was thinking about here is that the median may change in a
consistent way. For instance, say that someone pulls off a particularly
large robbery in the country in question; this may shift the voters'
opinions to the "right/tough justice" area of opinion space; or the
voters may consider environmental concerns more important than earlier
and so shift in that direction. Events in the real world can change the
voter opinion.
In a simulation, I suppose the shifts would be modeled in a fairly
random manner, since it would be hard indeed to determine which model
would be most realistic. Perhaps some sort of 1/f noise would work so
that there is both slight/noisy changes and slow, large, consistent ones.
There are other effects as well: Parties and candidates
might also slide into corruption unless checked by
competition. One could model that by a candidate wanting to
both be elected and to be placed at a certain point in
opinion space (individual corruption), or by candidates
being attracted towards a certain area in opinion space
(coordinated corruption, e.g. by lobbying).
Those are definitely interesting ideas. One would have to figure out the
formula that decides where increasing "electibility" is no longer desirable
to a candidate.
I imagine electability would be the first priority (excepting idealist
candidates, but they aren't likely to be corrupted anyway). The
candidate would reason: better to be elected and make a compromise than
not make a compromise and not be elected. Within the space of positions
he can take and still be elected, however, the candidate would tend
towards a self-serving/corrupted point.
Cartel-like corruption ("what are you going to do, vote for a third
party?") would be more difficult to model. I'm not sure if they happen
consciously or if they're just a mutual laziness/implicit agreement by
both parties, a kind of "I won't lower my prices (approach the voters at
the expense of my own gain) if you don't lower yours".
Candidates may
be of use (as opposition), even if not elected - not sure
how to model that; and the candidates, particularly
organized ones, may choose to employ strategy if doing so is
feasible (as the New York parties did under STV) - I'm not
sure how to model that, either.
I expect to have candidates behave naively since I don't want to pretend
to know beforehand what kinds of "transformations" could be helpful to
a candidate. I really hope to see odd equilibria in some methods that
have never been considered.
That's true; there's no need to burden the system unduly - strategic
transformations can be implemented later if the simulator works well for
sincere voting.
The idea of a candidate being nominated to improve expectation from the
election, rather than getting that candidate elected, raises the issue
of whether candidates are mainly concerned about being elected, or about
the expectation for their supporters. Also, whether "withdrawal" from
the election means that the candidate actually withdraws, or that the
voters simply decide that they will ignore this candidate as unhelpful.
In reality it's probably a combination of both.
I seem to recall Nader saying that Gore was as bad as Bush and thus the
spoiler effect was no problem for him. He would thus be an expectation
candidate, I think. At the other end, the Republican and Democratic
parties are definitely in it to win.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
