Neopopulist Blog

Tom Dahlberg

When political "scientists" argue that an election "should" have resulted in an outcome unlike the one it actually produced, they become mere pundits and their opinion should be taken no more seriously by the people than those of obviously biased partisans.

More generally, when political "scientists" argue that pluralities are less desirable than simple majorities, they are expressing nothing more interesting than their own taste in elections; nothing more interesting than a taste for green over blue.  Because they are, by profession, rationalists, political scientists don't happen to like pluralities.  Because Neopopulists are not rationalists, they are perfectly comfortable with pluralities.  Neither preference is more rational than the other in and of itself.  The suggestion that the preference for majorities is somehow rationally binding is just one more sophomoric myth of the age of expertism.

The rationalist does not like it when a communist, a socialist, and a Republican receive 25%, 35%, and 40% of the vote respectively with the Republican therefore winning.  He thinks it is irrational that any political organizational unit would end up with a Republican representative where 60% of the voters are left wing.  He concludes that the "majority" is not being represented, and that this is absurd. 

But what is actually absurd is the political scientist imagining that he, the expert, knows better than the people, what the people want.

Obviously, the communists and the socialists must think that their differences are significant enough to have two parties and run two candidates, not one.  There is no clear majority.  It is all in the scientist's mind.  He thinks he is a better judge of whether or not the differences between communists and socialists are significant enough to warrant real hostility.  Of course, it is not empiricism when the expert imposes his view of what ought to happen when a communist and a socialist can't compromise. 

How might the political scientist fix this "problem" he sees from his relative point of view?

We can only assume that he would not blatantly eliminate the First Amendment right of either of the two left wing candidates to refuse any primary and register as a third party candidate.  In doing so one or the other is saying that the other candidate and his party does not speak for him or his supporters.  And he has every right to do so.

So if freedom, the First Amendment, is screwing things up for the "scientist" in a manner that cannot be fixed with a primary, what can he do?

He can propose a run-off.

But, of course, he'll then be disappointed when the Republican still wins because the bitter communists, who would otherwise come in last, wish to "spoil" the opportunity of the socialists.  Their preference is for ideological purity or bust. 

Or, as it may turn out, some of the moderate socialists just happen to like the Republican more than their own candidate, noticing that his hair is perfectly parted.  Or they may so dislike the way that the socialist parts his hair that it drives them to the Republican.

So, even after a run-off, the election is still screwed up from the standpoint of our rationalist friend.

So what to do next?  Perhaps test people for what he thinks are irrational motivations before he allows them to vote?

The voters, of course, are doing what they want to do.  It's just not what the scientist wants them to do.  He's got to get them to do what he wants them to do.  He has to trick them into doing what he wants them to do.  The voters understand the consequences of what they are doing, but nevertheless need to be protected from themselves.

So penultimately, what our rationalist friend can do, is propose "instant runoff voting" by designing a voting method which is not actually an instant runoff (because it is specifically intended to produce a different result than a real runoff).  He asks voters to rank their choices.  The communists are to rank their communist candidate first, the socialist candidate second, and the Republican candidate third.  The socialists are to rank their socialist candidate first, the communist candidate second, and the Republican candidate third.   The Republicans are to rank their Republican candidate first, the socialist candidate second, and the communist candidate third.  This, our rationalist friend thinks, will clearly elect the socialist consistently and provide the political unit with the obviously optimized representation of the majority's political perspective.  Given the opportunity to rank candidates, the scientist thinks, the people will behave rationally by his lights.

But lo and behold, the people simply will not cooperate with reason.  The communists still rank the Republican second to try to insure that the socialist will not win.  It's still all or nothing for them.  They hate those wimpy social democrats.  In the mean time the socialists are discovering that by ranking their candidate first, due to the strategy of the communists, they are actually hurting his chances of getting elected in the second round over the Republican.  The Republican's hair compares even better to the communist's than it does to the socialist's, and the Republican becomes a somewhat popular second choice among the moderate socialists.  Not only do the socialists consistently lose, they haven't got a clue as to how to vote, election to election, to optimize their candidate's chance of winning!  The Republicans, being rich, hire consultants who help them game the system by actually coordinating the Republicans around a second choice strategy.

Oh what a tangled web the experts weave.  All for the sake of rational outcomes.  This mess almost drives our scientist mad.  Or was he mad in the first place and is now sobering up?

Having created a mess that no one is happy with, our political scientist finally arrives at the best solution.  Too bad it turns out to be the old hat, traditional solution:  The political unit is divided up into more homogeneous districts, so everyone gets represented.   Unfortunately, when this is done honestly, there are more Republican districts than communist and socialist districts that meet all of the redistricting requirements, starting with size. 

Our poor rationalist just can't win and be truly reasonable and fair at the same time.  He hates Republicans.  But even worse, he hates the fact that his inventions are useless, irrelevant in principle, and even damaging. 

Perhaps he can find a way to improve economic rather than political choices.  He calls his parents to see if they can subsidize a degree in economics.