Republican Primary Structure Distorted McCain's Popularity

[Brainster]

The words "conservative" and "liberal" have become so warped in American politics that, linguistically, they are almost useless. Call Huckabee and/or Romney whatever you want, they are splitting the votes of Republicans who didn't vote for John McCain.

No. Exit polls in Florida showed that if Huckabee weren't in the race, more of his votes would have gone to McCain than to Romney, and that if Romney weren't in the race, most of his votes would have gone to McCain.

 

[UserGoogol]

That's probably because the theorem assumes rational voters. For rational voters range voting colapses into tolerance voting for which Arrow's theorem IIRC does apply.

No it doesn't, not even if you do approval voting straight. (Which is a kind of range voting, just with a very small range of either 0 or 1.) To prove it for approval voting:

1. Independence of irrelevant alternatives: If N people approve of candidate X and M people approve of candidate Y and P people approve of candidate Z, then whether or not Z is on the ballot, X will still get a score of N and Y will get a score of M so X will still beat Y.

2. Montonicity: If a candidate changes his mind about whether or not he wants to approve candidate X, then X's total approval score will increase and everyone else's will remain constant, therefore X will not be hurt by voting for them.

3. Non-dictatorship: Obviously, since every voter contributes to the result equally, no person is dictator.

4. Unrestricted domain: It takes in a every single person's preferences and then deterministically produces a ranking of candidates by score.

5. Non-imposition: Any ranking of candidates is possible since if you want to rank candidates in the order X1 X2 X3.. all you have to do is have N voters approve of X1, N-1 approve of X2, and so on.

Therefore, approval voting satisfies the Arrow criteria. I imagine the general case of range voting can be proven in a similar way. Arrow's Theorem only describes deterministic functions which map a collection of individual preferences onto a single social preference, but since approval and range voting don't work quite that way it's okay.

(Also, it's not my understanding that Arrow's theorem assumes rational voting in the sense of trying to game the system by tactically voting. I think that even if voters can be expected to vote in a completely honest way Arrow's impossibility theorem applies to preference based voting systems.)

ETA: Technically, I think approval voting might violate unrestricted domain, but I think it seems to violate it which doesn't imply any injustice but that merely violates the mathematical assumptions underlying the theorem.

 

[Meadmaker]

No. Exit polls in Florida showed that if Huckabee weren't in the race, more of his votes would have gone to McCain than to Romney, and that if Romney weren't in the race, most of his votes would have gone to McCain.

If that's the case, then my crackpot theory is even more crackpot.

We'll see. If Huckabee wins no primaries outside the South, then we'll know I'm wrong.

 

[Random]

If yesterday's results are any indication, it seems that most of the party doesn't want McCain to be the nominee. We shall see if that's true in upcoming weeks.

Most of the GOP doesn't want any of them to be the Republican nominee. I don't think any of them have a fifty percent approval rating among conservative voters. They all annoy large segments of the pary for various reasons.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

If you don't vote, you have no right to complain.

False. That foolish belief has long since been discredited.

 

[rtalman]

False. That foolish belief has long since been discredited.

I believe it is the 28th amendment to the Constitution that states "The right of the citizenry to bitch, piss, and moan about the government shall not be infringed by self-important, self-righteous ********."

Of course, that is a somewhat rough translation.

 

[New Ager]

Because the system is rigged. It's a contrived system that makes people think they have a say in our 'democratic' process.

I don't think so. If the fix was in, Guiliani or Romney would have been picks for conservatives.

Anyway, no one could have forseen all the primaries and opponents falling exactly for McCain to win.

 

[New Ager]

McCain got just a few more votes than Romney. So what? He got them where it counted. Everyone played by the same rules. And I say that as someone who would have preferred both Giuliani and Romney to McCain.

Arguing points I didn't make.

Any comments about what I did say?

 

[New Ager]

You speak like having a race much like the Democrats is something to be desired.

Getting the best candidate is most desired.

In fact, most observers believe that wrapping up the race early is a distinct advantage for the GOP. McCain can start declaring a significant proportion of his donations as general election funds, something he would not be able to do if he were still battling Romney.

Yeah, but he's going to have to start wooing conservatives which, for now doesn't look so promising.

And getting it over early with the wrong candidate is not good.

In fact, McCain had huge leads in a few winner take all states--New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, notably, and had those states' delegates been awarded by, say, congressional district there would not have been a significant difference in the number of delegates he won there. Evidence? Look at California, where they're still working out the totals, but the delegates were awarded in each district. McCain won the state by 10 percentage points over Romney. Currently, he has been awarded 152 delegates. Romney has garnered six. Given that McCain won the mid-Atlantic states by even larger margins, it is extremely unlikely that he would have suffered more than a token loss of delegates.
He won narrowly in Florida and Missouri, and had those state delegations been awarded proportionally or congressionally, he clearly would lose some delegates. But Mitt would lose some in Colorado.

Campaigns are all about momentum. If Florida isn't a
winner take all state, Romney is leading after that one.

And Super Tuesday would have been very different.

And you call yourself a conservative? One of the bedrock principles of conservatism is that we believe in fairness when it comes to opportunity, but not fairness when it comes to outcomes.

Wrong. That's equality of outcomes. Fairness we do expect.

But, even the opportunity was slanted and didn't reflect the people.

Why do you think there is so much commotion?

The same applies to the elections. Conservatives believe in laying out the rules and enforcing them, but beyond that they do not obsess with fair outcomes.

That's just silly.

McCain was actually severely hampered by the fact that Iowa comes first in the events people pay attention to, because his longstanding antipathy to ethanol subsidies means that he is unable to garner a lot of support in a state where corn-growing is a major industry (even though the largest newspaper endorsed him).

Immaterial to my point.

New Hampshire? Mitt Romney's face was beamed into the homes of most of the people in the state from Boston TV stations on a regular basis. He owned a vacation home there, and spent a great deal of money on TV advertising.

Came in second, but had a crowded field.

South Carolina? The veteran population helped McCain there, but Fred Thomson was from a neighboring state and Mike Huckabee had the Southern thing going as well.

Again, a lot of conservatives.

The primary system has developed over the years.

I'm not arguing having primaries. I'm arguing the disparity in counting votes.

For example suppose a district has a 60%-40% split between two real candidates, and four delegates to award. What is the "fairest" way to split that up? It's to give 2 delegates to each candidate, because if you gave 3-1, that's a 75-25% split, or 15 percentage points off the actual outcome, versus 50%-50% which is only 10 percentage points off.

Again, not arguing how they do it. I'm arguing the lack of a uniform way of doing it.

Caucuses have been around for a long time, and they make a lot of sense. The idea is to reward those who have actually borne the burden of doing the party's business, generally on a volunteer basis. These people are presumably much more involved and knowledgeable about politics than the voters at large.

Nothing to do with my point.

I rather like the current system. If anything, I would like to see more winner-take-all states in the primaries for the Republicans because there is no prize for finishing second in a state in the general election.

Winner take all is good in the general and even in the primaries when there are two candidates, but it gives a distorted view of a candidates strength when there is a crowded field.

McCain has won this largely on winner take all. Do you see this groundswell of support for him?

 

[New Ager]

You're complaining about politics being unfair? Huh. You did just fall off the turnip truck.

Nope, not politics, just the primary voting system.

And I don't like turnips.

 

[drkitten]

Yeah, but he's going to have to start wooing conservatives which, for now doesn't look so promising.

No, he's not. Who are the conservatives going to vote for in the general election? Hillary?

At this point, he could more or less declare the intention to legalize gay marriage at a federal level, introduce a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and nationalize the entire health care industry, and still not lose the conservative vote in the general election.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Only the actual election for a political office needs to be "fair". Parties are free to select their candidates however they want. The Republicans have a preference for "winner take all" primaries because it decreases the chance that there will be a fight over the nominee at the national convention.

I have trouble classifying the USA as a democracy. IMHO, it is better described as being a two-party state.

 

[New Ager]

The "winner takes all" type of primary can indeed lead to quick capture of the primary by a candidate, even if the total votes are close. Perhaps the Republicans do this because the electoral system in the general election works the same way.

I'm not totally against winner take all if that was rule all over, but mixing them is really silly.

And the Dems had some winner take all, but ironically I heard they decided to only have a few so they could get their nominee out there quick.

 

[New Ager]

When I heard Romney had dropped out, I was stunned, but I came up with a theory to explain it. It was one of those theories that flashed into your head for about 12 seconds until you realize how ridiculous it is.

Now I'm seeing the results of today's contests, and it doesn't look so ridiculous. It has morphed all the way to far fetched.

Here's the theory:

On Super Tuesday, McCain racked up a huge, presumably undefeatable, delegate margin. However, he didn't win a majority in any state. It was obvious that there were two conservatives and McCain, and the two conservatives were going to keep splitting votes. Between Huckabee and Romney, Huckabee was going to win where there were huge numbers of Baptists who weren't going to vote for a Mormon as long at least as long as there was a Baptist in the race. Romney would win in elsewhere. However, in the three way race, McCain would win a lot of states, including almost all the big ones, because the conservative votes were split.

If Romney could have talked Huckabee out of the race, it was clear Romney would win the nomination, but Huckabee wasn't going to get out. Instead, Romney quits. Why? The crackpot theory that occurred to me was that by quitting, Romney could throw an awful lot of states to Huckabee, because the Limbaugh wing wasn't going to vote for McCain as long as there was an alternative. Maybe there would be enough states that went for the sole remaining conservative that McCain could actually be denied a majority.

Then, in a brokered convention, Romney gets picked.

I so like the way you think. Would unify the Republican Party.

OK, it's a crackpot idea. I put it out of my mind until today. Then today, after everyone said, "With Romney out, McCain is the nominee," as of this moment McCain has lost two out of three contests, and is "leading" in Washington with 26% of the vote.

You have to ask whether McCain can win a two way contest with Huckabee, and if it's obvious that he can't, would it make sense for him to be the nominee? Of course, maybe what happened is that the McCain voters just got complacent today, while the Huckabee, Romney, and Paul folks still felt like they had something to prove. Perhaps John will rally the troops a little more seriously on Tuesday when he sees that the nomination isn't really in the bag just yet.

Sorry, it's just not that way. You're under the impression that every state starts free and clear. States are either moderate or conservative, so by looking at the polls, most of the time we can tell who will win and no work on the part of the candidates will change the outcome.

There was nothing Huckabee could do about yesterday's outcomes.

Well, there's plenty of room for weirdness between now and August. I guess we'll see where this goes.

I'm for that. McCain against Hillary/Obama is a snoozefest.

 

[New Ager]

Interesting thoughts. Something that moves down the path you have presented is the fact that Romney has not quit, he has only "suspended" his campaign.

It's just a technicality. If one quits, they lose their delegates. If one suspends it, he keeps them and may use them for influence at a later date.

 

[New Ager]

Huckabee isn't a conservative. As governor of Arkansas he raised taxes more than Bill Clinton. Evangelicals vote for him because he is one of them and because they aren't that conservative in the first place. They just hate gay people and evolution which is socially conservative. They don't understand political philosophy anymore than porn stars understand modesty.

Oh my, I think you got everything wrong.

So much for you understanding politics.

 

[New Ager]

The words "conservative" and "liberal" have become so warped in American politics that, linguistically, they are almost useless.

Not so. I think they describe perfectly many of today's politicians. Sometimes, though, moderate or extreme needs to be put in front of them.

Call Huckabee and/or Romney whatever you want, they are splitting the votes of Republicans who didn't vote for John McCain.

Yep, a system is thwarting the will of the people.

If yesterday's results are any indication, it seems that most of the party doesn't want McCain to be the nominee. We shall see if that's true in upcoming weeks.

Most of the party hasn't wanted McCain from the beginning. That's the problem.

 

[Meadmaker]

It's just a technicality. If one quits, they lose their delegates. If one suspends it, he keeps them and may use them for influence at a later date.

There's also a less nefarious, more human, reason for suspending versus quitting. The candidates understand that for a lot of their delegates, the convention is the experience of a lifetime. Sure, delegates are often party officials and such, but a lot of delegates are people who are never going to hold public office. Maybe they'll be a city council member. Being a delegate to the convention is huge for them.

If the candidate pulls out after the delegates are chosen, and those delegates end up not being seated, that would be a really rotten thing to do to those people who put in a lot of work trying to get votes for their candidate. They earned their convention spot, and a reasonable candidate won't do anything that takes it away from them.

 

[New Ager]

No. Exit polls in Florida showed that if Huckabee weren't in the race, more of his votes would have gone to McCain than to Romney, and that if Romney weren't in the race, most of his votes would have gone to McCain.

Florida isn't the whole country, so your comment proves nothing.

 

[New Ager]

No, he's not. Who are the conservatives going to vote for in the general election? Hillary?

Mainstream conservatives are not happy with McCain and those are the ones he will need to convince to vote for him.

And you are under the mistaken impression that not voting for McCain means voting for someone else. Some times people just won't vote. That's how Dole lost the election.

At this point, he could more or less declare the intention to legalize gay marriage at a federal level, introduce a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and nationalize the entire health care industry, and still not lose the conservative vote in the general election.

LOL!! He would lose in a landslide.

Another Kool-Aid drinker. Oh my.