<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>This kind of modelling simplifies voter behaviour and political space quite a lot, but I found this kind of approach quite useful in simulations in a two-dimensional opinions space. The level of simplification of the candidate strengthening/weakening approach is roughly the same as the idea of assuming voters to have two-dimensional opinions. I used mostly *factors* to modify candidate strength.</div><div><br></div><div><div><a href="http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-July/027976.html">http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-July/027976.html</a></div></div><div><br></div><div>One can use the strength of a candidate e.g. in combination with strategies so that one can compensate loss of popularity due to recommending strategies to the actual benefits of the strategy. Or in a more basic se-up, just to check e.g. if nomination of some irrelevant candidates could be used as a strategy (and indeed in some situations this seemed to be the case in those simulations).</div><div><br></div><div>This kind of simplified simulations and simplified models do not give a full picture of what methods are but they are an excellent tool in demonstrating some properties of methods in a way that is not too far from (actually quite close to) what may happen in real life. I think weak and strong candidates are a good and useful approach as long as one remembers that one talks about a simplified model.</div><div><br></div><div>Juho</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On 6.11.2011, at 23.12, Kathy Dopp wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">From: Jameson Quinn <<a href="mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com">jameson.quinn@gmail.com</a>><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">To: EM <<a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a>><br></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">Here's a toy model where the math is easy and you can get some interesting<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">results.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">-Voters are distributed evenly from [-1, 1] along the ideology dimension.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">-Candidates are represented by an ordered pair (i,q) where i is an ideology<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">from -1 to 1 and q is a quality from 0 to 2.<br></blockquote><br>Such a one-dimensional ideology dimension grossly over-simplifies<br>IMO.In reality, people do not line up along a simple one ideology<br>dimension. Political scientists tend to oversimplify, beginning with<br>Anthony Downs. The mathematics could take into account more than one<br>issue position or dimension when using spatial geometry to model how<br>close voters and candidates are to each other. It's on my to-do list<br>to write up a far more logically coherent way of using spatial<br>analysis of positions of voters and candidates that would essentially<br>unify much of the field of voting behavior research -- although<br>political scientists seem to enjoy carrying on the same debates<br>endlessly rather than deriving new theory on what they agree on.<br>Condensing reality down to one ideological dimension, even adding one<br>quality dimension, grossly distorts the more complex picture of<br>reality. A unidimensional model cannot even accurately model how<br>three different persons, say candidates, stand on two different issues<br>relative to each other or to voters. I think Downs basic approach<br>makes sense only if his mathematics is repaired to respond to the<br>multi-dimensional nature of the real world.<br><br><br>-- <br><br>Kathy Dopp<br><a href="http://electionmathematics.org">http://electionmathematics.org</a><br>Town of Colonie, NY 12304<br>"One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the<br>discussion with true facts."<br>"Renewable energy is homeland security."<br><br>Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections<br>http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174<br><br>View some of my research on my SSRN Author page:<br>http://ssrn.com/author=1451051<br>----<br>Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>