[EM] serious strategy problem in Condorcet but not in IRV?

[Eric Gorr]

At 11:38 PM -0400 8/21/03, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>Polling is a painful subject:
>       Accurate polling is needed to help candidates decide whether current
>strategy needs amending.

I'm curious, why would a candidate tell their supporters to provide 
accurate information?

When polling there would seem to be three possible outcomes:

1. Accurate information will help you
2. Accurate information will neither help nor harm you
3. Accurate information will harm you

Since there would then appear to be only a 1/3% chance that accurate 
information will help you, why take the risk and provide it?

Of course, if you want to harm the candidate you dislike and know 
they trust polls, one of the best ways would be to provide them with 
inaccurate information.

>       Not clear to me whether forbidding polling immediately before
>elections would help or hurt.

It would seem to be just unnecessary.

-- 
== Eric Gorr ========= http://www.ericgorr.net ========= ICQ:9293199 ===
"Therefore the considerations of the intelligent always include both
benefit and harm." - Sun Tzu
== Insults, like violence, are the last refuge of the incompetent... ===