[EM] Three rounds

[Juho Laatu]

--- On Fri, 14/11/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:

> Raph Frank wrote:

> > In a condorcet election, the top 2 candidates would be
> at the 50% mark
> > in the 1d policy space.
> > 
> > The runoff would held the voters decide from 2 pretty
> good candidates.
> 
> This does mean that a party can crowd out its competitors
> by running two candidates of the exact same position. On the
> other hand, that may be what you want, since one could
> reason that this brings a competition of quality to the
> center position, where the two best centrists would be
> picked for the runoff. That doesn't give the people much
> to discuss between the first and second rounds, though,
> since the candidates' position would be identical.

Since the party doesn't know beforehand what exactly is the winning formula/candidate they should name candidates that differ from each others and cover the whole expected potential winning area.

If there is a final runoff between two leading candidates then one could nominate only identical twins as candidates to make sure that if one of the party candidates goes to the final runoff then also the other candidate will be from the same party. But it may be more efficient to spread one's (limited number of?) candidates in the opinion space more evenly and thereby try to guarantee that one has at least one candidate at the final round, and that one has a candidate close to the spot that represents the public opinion.

Another theme is that all candidates of all parties should position themselves in the area that is expected to represent the public opinion. Of course within the limits of maintaining credibility. It may also be clever to seek areas that are not too densely populated by other candidates yet.

The US presidential elections may serve as a good example. Obama will not say "I'm a Democrat, I want free abortion and high taxes". He should rather  trust that he will get most of the Democrat votes anyway and focus on getting some Republican votes. In a 1d space (where Democrats cover 0%-50%) he may even present himself as being at the 55% mark. McCain on the other hand could present himself as a 45% mark candidate.

In addition Obama and McCain of course have to convince also the 0%-25% and the 75%-100% voters respectively well enough so that they will vote and not stay at home. But it is better to do that without too much publicity.

So, based on this discussion each party should first estimate the potential winning area, then populate that area well enough, and maybe also try to identify ideal spots within that territory (no competitors nearby at least on one side, can be reserved with one nice speech/slogan,...). If current candidates are D40%, D45%, R47%, D50% and R60% then an ideal spot for the last Republican candidate could be e.g. at 52%.

Juho