A people divided
Excuse my sappy title. Why is it that so many elections in the US are so close? Is there a dynamic that leads to really close elections? Party leaders wanting to pursue their own agendas, but not to compromise more than they have to on ideology, and that leads naturally to selecting the politicians that can appeal to just barely enough of the voters to win the election? Then again, I guess there haven’t really been that many close elections in the US. I wonder if the recent trend will continue, or if it’s a fluke.
And I think we’ve all heard about the study that 90% of our past presidents have been the more handsome of the candidates, or something along those lines. Is there a source for that? (A few seconds of googling puts the number for elections in general at 56%, but that’s not what I remember.)
August 3rd, 2006 at 13:36
Yes, there is such a dynamic, given that U.S. parties aren’t really ideological. Economic efficiency says that given a spectrum of views among voters, each party will adjust its current platform (formal and actual) until it appeals to just 50% + 1 of them. Obviously this is Pareto-unstable.
There’s an Asimov story about an election reform where all races are settled just by selecting a single “most typical” voter and asking him questions. That’s a parody of polling, of course, but it’s an extreme version of what actually happens.
August 3rd, 2006 at 15:36
If that’s the case, then it would imply that it’s pointless for liberals to try to change the ideological makeup of the the party from the inside out. The only way to change the party is to change the opinions of the voters who elect the party. This connects to the thesis that’s been going around for I don’t know how long that the ascendency of the new Republican party had everything to do with effective media manipulation that shifted the cultural zeitgeist rightward, and that the only effective way to turn the tide is to use the same mass-media tactics. Complicating the issue, of course, is that mass media itself has been undergoing a revolutionary change for the past seven or eight years that will probably be complete in another five absent further disruption.
August 3rd, 2006 at 15:38
Oh, and has this dynamic been historically present in America? Or am I mistaken in thinking that recent elections have been trending to be closer and closer?