[EM] Any published scholarship discussing or describing the Center Squeeze effect?

[robert bristow-johnson]

Subject header says it all.  Do any of you know of or have a reference to any decent scholarship discussing the Center Squeeze effect that Hare RCV has? 

There is a really stupid page at the Center for Election Science describing what they call "Center Squeeze" of FPTP.  But there is nothing in it about **center** squeeze.  It's about the problem of vote splitting with two clones that happen to be in the center.  There is nothing about it which demonstrates any bias against candidates in the *center* of the spectrum.  It's just about clones, wherever they lie on the spectrum.

I have always understood (and even put it in my paper) that Center Squeeze was is a problem of Hare RCV (IRV) and the source of the problem is that Hare RCV is opaque to second-choice votes until such votes are promoted to effectively first-choice and actually counted.  The centrist candidate is at a disadvantage because the centrist candidate can expect to receive a lot more second-choice votes from the Left and Right than those two candidates on the Left and Right can expect to receive from voters in the opposite wing.

Anyway, I am looking for a good scholarly reference, if one exists.

bestest,

robert

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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