Timeline for Why is insincere/tactical/strategic voting considered undesirable?
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18 events
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| Oct 29, 2021 at 23:00 | comment | added | agc | @Publius, Deductive answers are as "real" as any, provided both that the logic is valid and the premises are true. If lacking agreement on the premises, (suppose an answer's premises are only held to be true by a faction), a logical deductive answer helps clarify the ideas of that faction. When the truth of the premises are uncertain, and hard to test, deductions can sometimes lead to conclusions that are easier to test, or even conclusions absurd enough to imply the falsity of one or more premise. | |
| Dec 13, 2017 at 12:39 | comment | added | Emilio M Bumachar | @Avi: I think I found some proof: Most Americans want a third party. news.gallup.com/poll/195920/… Almost no one votes for one, because they don't have a chance a priory. | |
| Feb 28, 2014 at 20:06 | comment | added | Publius | @viliambúr I want a study demonstrating that this actually happens in elections, not that voter psychology is such that it could happen. | |
| Feb 28, 2014 at 15:40 | comment | added | Viliam Búr | @Avi: If I understand correctly, you want something like a survey for specific country for specific elections where majority of people asked "whom will you vote?" answered X, but majority of people asked "whom would you vote if you knew 100% sure that your vote will not be wasted?" answered Y. Or not necessarily majority in both cases, but some numbers that show that in these two scenarios different party would vote. (I don't have the data, I just want to know what kind of answer would you accept.) By the way, this actually shows how to fix the problem: always ask both questions in survey. | |
| Feb 20, 2014 at 15:03 | comment | added | Publius | @supercat I understand the logic behind it, but you want a citation showing that this is a common phenomenon in actual elections. | |
| Feb 20, 2014 at 4:03 | comment | added | supercat | @Avi: Suppose there are three voters; one are going to vote for Dr. Evil, and the other two don't want him and would prefer J.B. Goode to Mead E. Ochre. Each of those two should vote for whichever of those latter the other one is going to vote for, regardless of which candidate is actually better. If each voter had a crystal ball and knew who the other was going to vote for, then both voters voting for Mead. E. Ochre, or both voting for J.B. Goode, would both represent outcomes of individually-optimal behaviors. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 6:24 | comment | added | Publius | @supercat If you have evidence of that, which shouldn't be too hard to find, I think it could make for a very good answer. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 4:53 | comment | added | supercat | @Avi: "...or have substantial hysteresis". Plurality voting tends to have substantial hysteresis (e.g. a widespread belief that an inferior candidate Joe will be more popular than a superior candidate Fred may cause everyone to vote for Fred even if nobody thinks he's better than Fred.) | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 1:55 | comment | added | Publius | @supercat do you have evidence that could happen? Systems like plurality voting that encourage tactical voting tend to be extremely stable, settling on two parties. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 0:33 | comment | added | supercat | @Avi: Even if one isn't concerned about media influence on the election, the fact that tactical voters' actions will be influenced by the actions of other people will often imply feedback which will often be unstable (e.g. if X wanting to do the opposite of Y, while Y wants to do the same as X) or have substantial hysteresis (e.g. X will want to choose the same one of his two favored candidates as Y, and Y likewise with X, but without the selection between the two candidates having anything to do with merit). | |
| Aug 18, 2013 at 11:14 | comment | added | Publius | I'm not sure how I'd prove it, but that doesn't matter. Burden of proof doesn't disappear just because it's hard to meet. | |
| Aug 17, 2013 at 21:31 | comment | added | dan04 | @Avi: How would you prove it? Is there a country without tactical voting that we could compare against? | |
| Aug 14, 2013 at 13:47 | comment | added | Publius | If you don't have proof or statistics, you answer is speculation, and thus not a real answer. | |
| Aug 14, 2013 at 12:53 | comment | added | Viliam Búr | I don't have any proof or statistics, it just seems to me that discussions about whether given party or candidate "has a chance" (i.e. whether you should vote tactically someone else whom the newspaper owner would prefer) are pretty frequent in newspapers before any elections in my country. I also don't have numbers about how media influence other types of voting. At least for other types of voting the media always have to invent a new story (why this specific candidate should not be voted by his specific voters), while for tactical voting the same argument is always recycled. | |
| Aug 10, 2013 at 11:40 | comment | added | Publius | Do you have evidence that the media influence tactical voting more than they would influence other voting? | |
| S Aug 9, 2013 at 19:46 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Minor grammatical fix
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| Aug 9, 2013 at 17:25 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Aug 9, 2013 at 19:46 | |||||
| Jan 7, 2013 at 14:03 | history | answered | Viliam Búr | CC BY-SA 3.0 |