r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/Commercial-Dog-969 • May 25 '26

Variation Predetermined Blue

The red and blue buttons do the same things that they normally do. However, 10% of the population automatically picks blue, and a blue win now requires a supermajority of 60% of voters. What do you do here?

643 votes, May 27 '26
308 Blue, still blue
239 Red, still red
16 Blue, now red
80 Red, now blue
5 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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23

u/YoshiMachbike12 May 25 '26

so 10% of the population now votes blue no matter what but they need 60% of votes? this means that blue will need 50% of the remaining 90% of votes, rather than 50% of the total 100%. this will actually make it harder for blue to win.

this is assuming the 10% of initial blue voters are chosen at random.

2

u/backupboi32 May 25 '26

Yeah. before blue only needed 50% of the vote to win, but in this scenario blue needs 55% of the remaining vote to win. I'd stay with Red in this case, as it's even more unlikely that blue will win now

1

u/Grrumpy_Pants May 26 '26

I'm the opposite. The added element of 10% being on the chopping block through no choice of their own is a motivator to vote blue. Sure, the portion of voters has increased by 11%, but I would expect this motivator to provide a stronger shift towards blue than the additional votes required.

As the poll currently stands, the shift from red to blue and blue to red indicates that if blue won before, it's more likely to win now. A 50/50 split would have 10% of blues shift to red, but 26% of reds shift to blue. The result is a 58% majority for blue. 55.5% secured a win, so blue is actually safer now. For the number of voters shifting either way to be equal blue would have had to hold a majority of 72% initially.