Byrne's Eye View

Why do American voters have so many choices? The statistician and economist Harold Hotelling claimed that everyone has an incentive to make their products undifferentiated, and this applies quite nicely to politicians. Consider: the average voter seems to want the government to pay for a certain fraction of all health care. Let's say the average voter wants that fraction to be 30%. You might expect politicians to be scattered -- with Kucinich types advocating 99%, Paul-ish ones pushing for 0%, and a cluster of mainstream Democrats at 35% with a cluster of mainstream Republicans at 25%. But every politician has to be aware that if he's the most moderate, he'll capture the most moderate votes -- and if support for different levels of health care spending is distributed normally, the marginal benefit of moderation goes up the more of if you offer. So cynical politicians should all be exactly moderate, and differentiate themselves only with rhetoric.

The rhetorical differences are wider than the policy differences, but it's still amazing that, in 2008, an American voter will probably be able to vote for either leaving Iraq soon or leaving it a very long time from now -- whereas Hotelling might expect voters to decide between, say, leaving a month before the average voter wants to, and leaving a month later.

Why do voters have so many choices?

1. This relies on treating every position as a point on a scale, with no penalties for changing opinions. But a waffling politician could lose support from voters who want someone who is 99% honest (the other 1% involves forcing a smile; being "Thrilled to be here in" Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other places said politician would never visit voluntarily; being photogenically faithless, or having wayward relations, or enjoying unorthodox hobbies). Perhaps politicians are partisan enough to win the primary, but then moderate their positions just enough to get the maximum moderation benefit without suffering from too much of a dishonesty deficit.


2. Partisans only vote for partisans: going back to the 'health care' debate, it could be that 80% of voters who think health care should be 25% or 35% of the budget will turn out to vote for someone who says so, while only 50% of voters will turn out to vote for someone who takes the middle position. If there are a few very important issues, this would explain everything: but if everyone is voting for candidates based on a combination of different policies, the moderates would still have an advantage: it's better to win 50% of every voter group than 80% of one issue's single-sided fringe. Which is a surprising route to an obvious conclusion: voter preferences are best expressed when they vote for people with specific responsibilities; even though we all spend more time thinking about the Presidency, knowing who someone supports for terminally boring local offices like school boards.


3. Politicians may accumulate political capital by appearing moderate, then spend it when they're as powerful as they ever expect to be. This would explain the two halves of George W. Bush's career, the "Red-State Romney/Massachusetts Mitt" phenomenon, but doesn't explain Bernie Sanders' decades as a socialist.


4. Politicians are too honest. Anyone who can convince a majority of voters to send him to DC on their dime is probably persuasive enough to raise a few hundred million for his hedge fund, and live easy ever after on the generous 2 and 20. So maybe these guys are in politics because they genuinely care.

But the last is just too weird to contemplate.