IRV mailing party adventures

[LAYTON Craig]

Forest,

The scenario you have here is precisely what happened in both the UK and
Australia with the introduction of the Labor party (P3).  In Australia, the
result was a merge of P1 & P2 - in the UK P2 dissapeared altogether - I
think following the usual pattern of a major political party breakup - most
members join P1, a few form a new minor party with no chance of political
success, and a handful go over to P3.

-----Original Message-----
From: Forest Simmons [mailto:fsimmons at pcc.edu]
Sent: Friday, 6 April 2001 2:02
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Subject: Re: IRV mailing party adventures

Demorep has a good point here, namely that election dynamics tend to make
certain kinds of distributions of candidates and voter preferences more
likely than others, as they evolve with time.

For example, suppose that we start with two major parties, P1 and P2, and
that in the process of competing for corporate support, etc. they become
more and more alike.  Other parties start to arise to fill in the vacuum
of representing the needs of the common folk. One of these, P3, eventually
emerges as the new party with greatest support. 

P1 and P2 have maintained rhetorical differences and other superficial
differences in order to give the illusion of choice to the people. One of
these parties, say P2, is superficially closer to the new party P3, than
the other one is.

Therefore ...

1. At first the members of P2 are more sympathetic to P3 on average than
are the members of P3. 

2. As P3 grows it tends to get more conversions from P2 than from
P1.

3. Members of P3 tend to rate P2 candidates above P1 candidates.

4. P3 grows by depleting P2 of its members that are sympathetic to P3.

5. As P3 becomes more of a threat to the powers that be, P1 and P2 tend to
close ranks in opposition to the upstart. They become a sort of de-facto
coalition.

6. Within this coalition P2 is the weaker member because it is the one
most depleted by conversions to P3.

7. Yet P2 has nearly all of the second place support because on the one
hand it is in the same coalition as P1, and on the other hand most P3
members still prefer P2 to P1. 

8. As long as P2 has virtually all of the second place support (while
neither P1 nor P3 has a majority of first place support) P2 is the
Condorcet winner.

8. When P3 first surpasses P2 in size, it is still far from the strength
it would take to surpass the coalition {P1, P2}. 

9. At this point, if voters vote sincerely, IRV will give the win to the
stronger member of the majority coalition, P1, not the Condorcet winner
P2.

10. So we see that under IRV at this point of the evolution there are
two alternatives for the members of P3:
(i) vote sincerely and get their worst nightmare the P1 candidate.
(ii) vote insincerely and get their compromise candidate P2.

11. This dilemma continues until P3 has a clear majority of support over
the coalition, because if P3 has only a few percent majority, sincere
voting by P3 members still entails a high perceived risk of getting the
worst result. 

12. In other words this strong downward pressure continues as long as P3
is between about 30 and 55 percent of the voting population. 

13. How does a party grow from 30 to 55 percent of the population when
there is such a strong downward pressure?

14. It doesn't, unless some charismatic returning war hero gives it a
quantum boost.

In summary, under the rules of IRV, an initial two party system naturally
evolves to a state where the weaker member of a majority coalition is the
Condorcet winner. The evolution stagnates at this stage until some
catastrophe or miracle jolts the system into some other strange
configuration. 

Hence we see that under IRV, not all configurations are equally likely.

The random simulations referred to in recent postings are oblivious to
these over-riding dynamics, and therefore make IRV look much better than
it really is.

Demorep's intuition is correct (this time).

Forest


On Wed, 4 Apr 2001 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

> DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > That is, IRV will wipe out a compromise choice somewhat often (how often

> ???)
> 
> Mr. Harper wrote-
> 
> 3 candidates, 100 voters, IRV, ~20,000 tests
> Random electorate: in around 2-3% of elections.
> Two-dimensional electorate with a gaussian distribution: less than 1%
> 
> That is, in that percentage of the elections, there will be a Condorcet 
> winner,
> and IRV will elect a different candidate.
> ---
> D- A slight problem.  The electorates will NEVER be *random* in the *real*

> political world in *real* public elections.
> 
> In rough and tough political -economic times (such as 1858-1860 or
1930-1932 
> in the U.S.A.), the electorate *may* become very polarized.  
> 
> IRV will very likely produce a whole bunch of extremists taking office and

> claiming majority *mandates* for their extremist agendas.
> 
>