Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Limited Influence of the Median Voter

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2009-10-10T08:59:08.506-04:00

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Moderation has its benefits This analysis complet...

2009-06-30T22:40:42.997-04:00

Moderation has its benefits

This analysis completely discounts the other benefits of being a "moderate" in Congress, the Senate or any legislative body: you get more attention from the other legislators. This attention can translate into getting your pet projects turned into amendments on bills, which can indirectly lead to votes and/or campaign contributions.

In some cases, this can even turn into additional power and influence, for example NY State Senator Pedro Espada is in the midst of trying to turn his "Moderate" card into becoming the President Pro Tem of the NY State Senate.

This would also explain why the "moderates" in the legislature tend to position themselves between the two parties, rather than positioning themselves in the middle ground of public opinion. It's all about the sausage making, not about the votes back home.

I'm sorry to comment prior to reading, but that "q...

2009-06-30T14:59:37.951-04:00

I'm sorry to comment prior to reading, but that "quantitative rather than quantitative" typo is still up, at 3:00pm Eastern.

Typos are not a huge deal, imo, unless they confuse the meaning of the piece. And this typo certainly meets that criterion.

Please fix this quickly!

Could be that it holds up as a reflection of scien...

2009-06-30T13:22:28.412-04:00

Could be that it holds up as a reflection of scientific (computer-aided) redistricting designed to assure the re-election of incumbents. Seems logical to me.

There are several reasons why the median voter the...

2009-06-30T13:13:44.751-04:00

There are several reasons why the median voter theorem does not work. For example, there are multiple reasons why people vote for a candidate; character, specific issues, ideology etc...

But probably the biggest reason why the median voter theorem does not work is because the model is static. That is, it does not consider that there is always a next election. Candidates that always try to find the center eventually loses credibility by becoming flip-floppers and may be viewed weak in character. Thus, they can be beaten by someone with a strong non-centrist ideology. A good example is Reagan beating Carter. Also, good campaigners can persuade people and in turn can shift the center.

When it come to politicians and for that matter ev...

2009-06-30T12:32:34.257-04:00

When it come to politicians and for that matter even things like economic theory or political theory there is a driving force of money that promotes ideas that can be ludicrous to be taken seriously and deep insights suppressed if they push the wrong way.

It is not that people like Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky have not laid out alternative visions but their work is little mentioned, and would not be discovered except by those who sought them out.

Meanwhile patent absurdities like the formulas of Johm Nash that even in his most schizophrenic state said would only work if people behaved like robots becomes a central fixture in economics almost impossible to tease away.

If it were possible to put together honest research that was not skewed by politics then it might just resemble Physics on a structural engineering level at least.

Also the politicians might be more sensitive to voters needs if taxpayers actually paid for them at the key juncture (like the Arizona plan) instead of renting them out to the highest bidder.

@All the Physics Jokers It was mentioned that the...

2009-06-30T11:35:51.374-04:00

@All the Physics Jokers

It was mentioned that the moderates may decay by the weak interaction, but I think the speed at which this transformation occurs would imply a strong decay; we should look into this.

Also, if a politician is a flip-flop, one might expect to find some form of radiation .. what form would it take?

And finally, for the stat mech kids.. when forming your statistical ensemble of politicians, be sure to correct for the individual's hot-air production when calculating the temperature.. production rates may vary.

alas, the 538 comments section has become the have...

2009-06-30T11:23:24.548-04:00

alas, the 538 comments section has become the haven of stat-heads. I guess it was inevitable, but I strongly prefer the old, pre-election section where people actually had discussions relevant to the day...

"It's worth considering the hypothesis that lots o...

2009-06-30T10:48:17.102-04:00

"It's worth considering the hypothesis that lots of Democratic politicians do not share the values and policy preferences of lots of Democratic voters, and similarly for the Republicans."

I've been wondering myself whether the truth is:

a) Republican politicians are into anonymous gloryhole hookups and in that way differ from their voting base, or
b) The Republican Party is one big public casual sex fest, and all the Republican voters know this but are committed to not spoiling the joke for us poor, sincere, naîve, deluded liberals who believe that the Right believes its Family Values Rhetoric.

"I am sympathetic to Cowen's larger point . . . " ...

2009-06-30T09:58:17.125-04:00

"I am sympathetic to Cowen's larger point . . . "

Could you please explain the significance of this link? It goes to a three-sentence post that seems to have nothing to do with what you are talking about.

Just a question? My intuition says that being a mo...

2009-06-30T09:36:41.083-04:00

Just a question? My intuition says that being a moderate only helps candidates that run in districts where their party is disadvantaged. Is there evidence to support of refute that claim?

wv: aplea - an appropriate meadow.

My guess is the political field exists in two stat...

2009-06-30T09:33:26.369-04:00

My guess is the political field exists in two states with a fairly sharp phase transition between them.

In the "loose" state, people don't much care what the politicians are doing, because they are happy enough and busy with other things. Politics is a side show with no consequences. Thus it is chaotic, difficult to form predictive rules, and politicians are generally ruled by self-interest in retaining power, raising campaign funds, and ideology. They are not fearful, public scrutiny is down. They are partying on the public dime. Positions float left or right as needed to maximize self-interest.

In the "tight" state, something has happened that makes people very much care what is going on in politics. Scrutiny is high, the public perceptions of incompetence, corruption and hypocrisy are elevated, and positions are in real danger. Suddenly everybody must work, and this causes panic, both among the politicians and those that fund them.

The panic is because the politicians must pretend to please a majority of voters while actually pleasing their rich backers, and this can be near impossible. It leads them to say idiotic things (see Reid, Pelosi, Boehner, McConnell and Steele) that make zero sense.

The tight state is revealing; and although it is actually dangerous and causes lost seats, it eventually subsides. The vast majority of time is spent in the normal state, and this is what politicians like.

These two states apply to politicians both individually and collectively.

Politicians may be genuine, as you claim. But wha...

2009-06-30T09:27:59.067-04:00

Politicians may be genuine, as you claim. But what of political parties? Are they not choosing candidates from a near-infinite reservoir, hoping to maximize "electability"?

Perhaps there is a "Political Free Energy" that is always minimized by the voters. Terms (with appropriate coefficients) would include: fund-raising, political beliefs as compared to the public, political beliefs as compared to the primary voters, political experience, etc.

To the physicists out there, can you construct a phase space of political offices, and populate these offices using the ergodic hypothesis? Could you define a temperature that then corresponds to political climate?

There seems to be a lot going for the notion that ...

2009-06-30T03:14:16.919-04:00

There seems to be a lot going for the notion that politicans are generally driven more by their ideological convictions than by cold electoral calculations. I vaguely remember a study into American campaign finance that suggested that politicians' voting records are generally driven by their personal convictions and retroactively rewarded by political contributors, for example.

The downside, of course, is that it's frightening to think that our elected representatives genuinely believe in some of the policies they favour...

{Disclaimer: Physics/Math/EE major} After appplyi...

2009-06-30T02:17:38.946-04:00

{Disclaimer: Physics/Math/EE major}

After appplying electronic circuits theory to analyze traffic and determine where are the best (and worst) places to stand when it rains, I'm happy to see someone finally tackling the greater goal of developing a physical model for politics.
My humble contribution- the reason spin works so well (the macroscopic effect, not the quantum phenomenon discussed by Ezzie and Mark above) is that a charge moving along a loop generates a propagating electro-magnetic field, which is the most efficient mode of radiation (decays the slowest). You can only get so far with conduction (i.e. actually convincing people) or with transport (lit.).

Thanks Andrew for starting up another fun debate!

L.

Physics is clearly applicable to congressional pol...

2009-06-30T01:54:16.287-04:00

Physics is clearly applicable to congressional politics, as is evident from the predictive ability of the Principle of Least Action.

What I would like to know is what techniques were ...

2009-06-30T01:10:37.080-04:00

What I would like to know is what techniques were used to arrive at that estimate. The graph itself is nearly meaningless without the methodology.

Andrew, Does it matter that voters in different p...

2009-06-30T00:58:35.435-04:00

Andrew,

Does it matter that voters in different points along the ideological continuum might care less or more about voting?

I'm assuming you used some kind of regression to reach find the effect, but I only have a basic familiarity with stats.

I ask because I know in the median consumer model, consumers can have varying purchase thresholds, and can be distributed non-uniformly along a dimension.

@Andrew--typo: "The median voter theorem has limit...

2009-06-29T23:38:12.075-04:00

@Andrew--typo: "The median voter theorem has limitations, though, which are essentially quantitative rather than quantitative."

quantitative rather than quantitative?

wv: ingetsky (what happensky when you paysky the feesky)

@Mark: Spin is reversed. Spin is conserved by an ...

2009-06-29T23:35:36.937-04:00

@Mark:

Spin is reversed. Spin is conserved by an increase in the Club for Growth's total spin.

Oh, come on, Phillip. Yes, string theory probably ...

2009-06-29T23:29:26.685-04:00

Oh, come on, Phillip. Yes, string theory probably shouldn't be called a theory because its supported by circumstantial rather than experimental evidence ("gee, that's weird, this seems to solve a bunch of problems it wasn't designed to solve.")

Its certainly not an embarrassment. Even if it turns out to be wrong, the advances made under its name appear very promising (i.e., its given an incredible boost to Susy research, which should be testable in the near term).

WV: simpl: it means what it says

@Ezzie: But is spin preserved through the decay p...

2009-06-29T23:27:12.202-04:00

@Ezzie:

But is spin preserved through the decay process? Or is it reversed?

And is this an Abelian field?

Of course, there will always be different ideologi...

2009-06-29T23:24:52.103-04:00

Of course, there will always be different ideological factions within the parties in our two-party system, and a change within the party will lead to benefits for moving to the right or left. Also, attempting to skim as close to the center as possible will lead to loss of the base voters who will be less likely to turn out (which reduces the 'moderation benefit') and then being beaten by a more extreme candidate in the primary.

The weak force binds moderately charged politician...

2009-06-29T23:08:15.329-04:00

The weak force binds moderately charged politicians to a party. When exposed to the Club for Growth, weakly bound politicians may decay into a moderate of the opposite charge.

this will always ebb and flow as there's a pullbac...

2009-06-29T22:59:43.369-04:00

this will always ebb and flow as there's a pullback from irrational zealots/gravitation to moderation and then a new firebrand comes along and bamboozles people