[EM] In political elections C (in terms of serious candidates w. an a priori strong chance of election) will never get large!

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 05/29/2013 12:15 AM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> <km_elmet at lavabit.com <mailto:km_elmet at lavabit.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 05/27/2013 09:19 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>         Smith's http://rangevoting.org/__PuzzIgnoredInfo.html
>         <http://rangevoting.org/PuzzIgnoredInfo.html>
>
>         needs to be taken w. a grain of salt.
>
>         The short-comings of IRV depend on the likely number of serious
>         candidates whose a priori odds of winning, before one assigns
>         voter-utilities, are strong.  If real life important single-winner
>         political elections have economies of scale in running a serious
>         election then it's reasonable to expect only 1, 2 or 3 (maybe 4
>         once in
>         a blue moon) candidates to have a priori, no matter what
>         election rule
>         gets used, serious chance to win, while the others are at best
>         trying to
>         move the center on their key issues and at worse potential
>         spoilers in a
>         fptp election.
>
>
>     That argument is too strong in the sense that it can easily be
>     modified to lead to any conclusion you might wish. And it can be
>     modified thus because it is too vague.
>
>
> Hi Karl, good to hear from you again.  I doubt economies of scale args
> are completely flexible and the evidence need not be as rigorously
> presented when one is initially communicating ideas.

Who is Karl?

>     Let me be more precise. You may claim that if there're some
>     economies of scale, then it's reasonable to only expect 1, 2 or 3
>     viable candidates. But here's a problem. Without any data, you can
>     posit that the economies of scale kick in at just the right point to
>     make 2.5-party rule inevitable even under Condorcet, say. But
>     without any data, I could just as well posit that the economies of
>     scale, if any, kick in at n = 1000; or, I could claim that the
>     economies of scale kick in at n = 2 and thus we don't need anything
>     more than Plurality in the first place[1].
>
>
> No, because non-competitive candidates still serve a useful purpose even
> if their odds of winning are low.  And a non-plurality election is
> harder to game, as illustrated by the GOP's 40-yr use of a nixonian-
> Southern Strategy of pitting poor whites against minorities when
> outsiders are given voice to reframe wedge issues that tilt the de facto
> center away from the true political center.

So you say the non-competitive candidates still serve a purpose. But 
your economics-of-scale argument only considered competitive candidates. 
Call the set of competitive candidates X, and the set of noncompetitive 
candidates "that still matter", Y. Then I could just as easily apply 
your objection so that it argues in favor of advanced methods, too. I 
just say that even if you're right about economics of scale for X, that 
says nothing about the relative size of Y under IRV with respect to Y 
under an advanced method.

The problem with the argument is that it's very hard indeed to construct 
a simple model that considers Plurality inadequate, IRV good enough, and 
the advanced methods wasteful, yet can't also be tuned to either 
consider Plurality adequate or IRV inadequate. The model has to be 
complex or the parameters finely adjusted, and complex models without 
evidence have little value.

>     So one may claim that "important single-winner political elections"
>     necessarily have economies to scale that make anything beyond
>     2.5-party rule exceedingly unlikely. But without data, that's claim
>     isn't worth anything. And without data that can't be explained as
>     confusing P(multipartyism) with P(multipartyism | political dynamics
>     given by Plurality), the simpler hypothesis, namely that there is no
>     such barrier that we know of, holds by default.
>
>
> How about economics?  There exists X a cost of running a competitive
> campaign.  There exists Y a reward, not per se all economic, for winning
> a campaign.  There exists P a probability of winning.  P is roughly
> inversely proportional to the number of competitive candidates, albeit
> less for the last candidate to decide to compete.  If there exists N
> likely competitive candidates then if the calculation is k*Y/(N+1)<X
> holds, w. k<1, for the N+1 candidate, who then chooses not to run, it
> implies that N>(kY-X)/X.   A better election rule might increase k some,
> but arguably X will also tend to be higher for the less well-known
> candidate, regardless of the election rule used.
>
> So I agree that the average number of competittive candidates can be
> increased by the use of a different single-winner election rule, but
> with limits due to the other aspects of running an election and how a
> single-winner election tends to discourage too many from putting a lot
> into running for the office.

Then I set (assume, claim) k high enough that the stability Condorcet 
(etc) provides is worth it. You set k low enough that it isn't, and then 
we sit on each our numbers and claim that our k is right and the other 
one's k is wrong.

Or, I lower X by saying that extreme expense of current US presidential 
elections is caused by Plurality rather than being a prior constraint. 
It might be even more specific: the political dynamics given by United 
States history plus the third-party exclusion of Plurality combine to 
make presidential races extremely expensive. For instance, IIRC, the 
televised debates only include parties that have a chance of winning, 
and parties that don't get into the debates are fighting at a severe 
disadvantage, so it becomes very important to signal from the very start 
that one's own party is viable, which is extremely costly[1].

I could also then point at other nations, either other presidential 
countries making use of runoff (to strengthen the first claim), or other 
presidential countries in general, even those under Plurality (to 
strengthen the second), and say that the expense of presidential 
elections in the US is pretty much unequaled elsewhere in the world. 
That is, I think it is, but I'm not going to investigate in detail 
unless I know you won't pull the "it's different in the US than in every 
one of those other countries" response.

But most likely of all, I'd say: "economics of scale? Please robustly 
show that they exist within politics. Then show that the real world 
parameters are so as to strengthen your position, rather than the 
position of Plurality supporters or of advanced-method supporters".

>     And, if you're not claiming that there is such economics of scale,
>     but simply that there *might* be, then it's still less risky to
>     assume multipartyism is right and use an advanced method. If we're
>     wrong, nothing lost but "momentum". If we're right, we avoid getting
>     stuck at something that would still seriously misrepresent the
>     wishes of the people.
>
>
>   Well, I am claiming there exists inherent economies of scale in
> single-winner elections such that the number of competitive candidates
> are likely to have a fuzzy ceiling apart from the specific election rule
> used, and that single-partyism/multipartyism is a function of the mix of
> single-winner and fair multi-winner election rules used.  My implication
> of the first is that it relativizes the import of alternative
> single-winner election rules for political elections and thereby
> elevates the import of marketing/first-mover advantage in the
> replacement of FPTP.

Again, without data, there's no reason to set the parameters at your 
sweet spot as opposed to somebody else's sweet spot. So the most 
reasonable approach would be to not claim there is a sweet spot (or 
economics of scale or whatnot) until otherwise can be shown.

----

[1] And the same dynamic is replicated within the parties out of need to 
be seen as winnable in the general election. For instance, Romney paying 
$1M on TV ads and busing to get his supporters to the Iowa poll in 2007 
can be explained in this context. He had to show himself as winnable to 
win the primaries and in turn have a chance at the general election. 
Warren Smith has made arguments in this direction.