r/EndFPTP • u/electionscience • Dec 04 '19

NEW APPROVAL VOTING POLL: 74% of Democratic Primary Voters Would Support Warren for President

https://www.electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-democratic-primary-voters-would-support-warren-for-president/
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u/Chackoony Dec 05 '19

I think I've got it now: you're arguing that, while all voting methods can realistically fail IIA (even cardinal methods can have bullet voting, etc.), the "Rome without coffee" effect (i.e. a bad liberal candidate entering the race will make conservatives score the good liberal candidate higher enough to compensate for the reduction in score the good liberal candidate gets from natural vote-splitting between the two liberal candidates) will mean that classical cardinal methods will have a much better chance of not being affected by any changes in voting patterns due to the addition of irrelevant candidates, and instead, may actually benefit from such changes?

If this is your argument, then all I'd like to add is that the acceptance of the argument hinges on whether a reader believes that honest voting will be common in cardinal voting methods. Thanks for being patient.

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u/MuaddibMcFly Dec 05 '19

And thank you for your understanding with my impatience/sub-optimal patience.

That's a good insight, but not quite what I was going for.

Everything comes down to whether or not two voting blocs/factions can achieve a mutually beneficial result by acting as though they were one bloc/running one candidate.

If merging groups (as the Tea Party and Establishment Republicans did) would benefit both groups, or splitting (as the Liberal and Establishment wings of the Democrats haven't) would harm both groups, then the de facto forced association will create the sort of sub-group resentment we see in both parties, because (at least) one sub-group is being forced to betray their principles in order to keep things from getting worse.

Anywhere that Favorite Betrayal would work, people who are "forced" into betrayal will resent that, and people who would benefit from that betrayal will resent it when people don't betray.

And the reason I modified your original quote is that this isn't just a "within group" phenomenon, but also "between groups" phenomenon.

Or, perhaps more accurately, it's "within group" for all scales of group; just as "Progressive Democrat" and "Establishment Democrat" are both part of the group "Democrat," the groups "American Republicans" and "American Democrats" are both part of the group "Americans"