[EM] Problems with finding the probable best governor

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>Was Ross Perot the likely Condorcet winner in 1992, or at least close to
>it?  It seems to me that he did a good job of positioning himself in
>between the two major candidates, at least on a Left-Right scale.

My impression was that he probably wasn't sincere CW. I didn't feel
that he was likely to have majorities of all the voters preferring
him to each of the other 2 annointed (well-funded) candidates.

There were some ways in which he wasn't middle: He advocated sending
the police into the poor neighborhoods and searching everyone's house,
(If I remember correctly)
just because it's in a suspect neighborhood, as his solution to the
drug problem. When stating that position, he'd give his no-nonsense
chuckle and say "Just do it." So in that regard he was to the right
of the Republican.

He advocated some sort of "town meetings", which would have an
important role in government, something that was far too progressive
for Clinton to propose. It seems to me that at the time it seemed
that some of the numbers in his assessments or proposal were more
believable than those of the other 2 media-buying candidates.

So I think Perot was in some ways right of Bush, and in some ways
left of Clinton. How could he squeeze between candidates who are
so close together anyway? :-) So maybe he wanted to distinguish himself
from both by saying extreme things, toward both extremes.

I expect the progressives were scared of him because of some of the
things he said, and that's why I doubt very much that he could
get a majority against Bush in a rank-balloting election.

One of my answers to the disliked-middle argument is that if he
isn't really middle, people will know it. For instance, I wouldn't
have ranked him, or Bush, in a rank-balloting election. At least one
faction will know that he isn't a middle compromise.

Or, if he _is_ middle, then, for Democrats & progressives, he'd
be somewhat better than Bush, and for Republicans, he'd be somewhat
better than Clinton. So if that compromise wins, nothing wrong with
that, right? If he were really between Clinton & Bush.

Or he could be middle, but have some sort of nonpositional disutility.
Maybe he could be perceived as insincere (and therefore maybe not
really middle). Or unstable, or crooked, etc., or just not liked.
But, again, that would keep him from getting those majorities over
Bush & Clinton. If he isn't really better, in spite of being middle.
If he isn't better, they won't rank him over.

If a Democrat votes Perot over the Republican, it must be because
that voter really judges that Perot is better than the Republican.
It wouldn't happen, but if it did, it's just an expression of voters
voting for what they consider to be better.

When a good voting system (Condorcet or Approval) is used, there
will be plenty of candidates, plenty of selection & choices. And
the voter-median point will be a popular & crowded position. How
likely is it that the only candidate there will be someone unknown
and even more insincere than the other middle candidates?

In any case, he wouldn't remain unknown for long. There'd be plenty
of writers & commentators who'd dig up information. The campaign
organizations of his rivals would publicly expose his real nature.

But the possibility that Condorcet could elect a low-utility middle
candidate could be tested by Norm's simulation, by printing-out
, for each voting system, not only its average SU over the run,
but also it's maximum & minimum utilities. But I'd expect that
a median candidate really will have better SU, in those spatial
simulations that don't include nonpositional disutility. And if
you added that in--if, for some middle candidates, we added a certain
constant disutility to each voter's rating of that candidate--I'd
expect it to become unlikely for that candidate to win. But it could
be investigated in the simulations.

Mike Ossipoff

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