David L Wetzell wrote:
The two major-party equilibrium would be centered around the de
facto center.
But positioning yourself around the de facto center is dangerous in
IRV. You might get center-squeezed unless either you or your voters
start using strategic lesser-evil logic - the same sort of logic
that IRV was supposed to free you from by "being impervious to
spoilers".
dlw: the cost of campaigning in "less local" elections is high enuf that
it's hard for a major party to get center-squeezed. And if such did
happen, they could reposition to prevent it.
Yes, I said that parties or voters could escape this problem by
repositioning, i.e. adopting strategic lesser-evil logic.
If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two major
parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech) will still
have serious influence. You might say that this is counterbalanced by
the more local elections, so that minor parties can grow into major ones
and there will be different minor-to-major parties in each location --
but you still have to convince the more local divisions (counties,
cities, etc) to use IRV, and so the same problem applies there.
Or in other words: if you're right and there are only two major parties
on the national scene (and so no center-squeeze problem), there will
still be a center-squeeze problem in, say, Burlington's mayoral
elections. Either Burlington has only two major parties (but then where
would your more-local accountability come from?) or it has multiple
parties, each of which has its own mayoral candidate, and the centermost
n of which will be susceptible to center squeeze.
You want local areas to support smaller parties so they can grow and
challenge the major parties. Well, then the local environment must be
conducive to growth. If the parties have to strategically balance IRV's
center squeeze (which forces them towards the wings) against the voter
support they get from moving closer to the center, that's not exactly
conducive to such growth. Nor is it so if the voters have to keep the
breakdown point of IRV (when minor becomes major) in mind when voting.
Can the parties really be as flexible as you'd like when they're facing
the additional constraint of having to walk that tightrope produced by
the election method itself?
(It might well be that the nature of IRV, plus cost of campaigning means
there could only be two national-level parties. I don't think cost of
campaigning alone would force there to be only two national-level
parties - e.g. France - but the answer to that question isn't critical
to what I wrote above. I'm saying that even if we assume what you're
saying, you get into trouble on a more local level.)
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