From Time: Political scientists Richard Lau at Rutgers and David Redlawsk at the University of Iowa have developed four models of how people actually pick candidates. No partisan or demographic group is predisposed to a particular model, and a voter might use different strategies for different contests. … More than 70% of the time, voters end up checking the box for the candidate who shares their views. …
Here is another spin on the topic of rational voting:
"The founders of the United States didn’t have the advantages of fMRI brain imaging and had no concept of the amygdala, but they were hesitant about political parties and political campaigning nonetheless. Fearful that a “torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose,” Alexander Hamilton railed against political parties in the first Federalist Paper, saying the parties would try to “increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
It turns out there was some reason to be concerned about the relative influence of information versus emotion when it comes to political judgments and affiliations. Though it is impossible to know for sure whether people actually vote along party lines, many psychological studies have shown that political affiliation plays a large role not just in the voting booth but also when people must decide how they feel about political issues."
"Efforts to better 'inform' oneself on issues/candidates are futile...
Worse than futile, they waste your precious time better spent elsewhere."
I think people are missing the most important news filters of all: You. You can filter the noise and get a good grasp on policies.
Most rhetoric, like speeches, can safely be ignored or taken with a huge grain of salt. Anyone trying to get elected has to say things to appeal to certain demographics of the population without offending other demographics too much, so as to appeal to the widest variety of people as possible.
For example, in most press, Barack Obama talks about 'main street and wall street'. You know, he's for 'main street' and against 'wall street'. What does that mean? Nothing. It doesn't mean anything. It's just something he says in speeches to hopefully appeal to a broad group of people who don't like 'wall street', whatever that means. Big business? Both mainstream candidates got most of their campaign money from big companies, so it's definitely not that. There's plenty of examples of rhetoric like that from McCain or any other politician, of course.
Personal stories about the candidates and profiles of their kids and how much they weight and how tall they are and where they shop and all this trivial information is easy to get drawn into, but it doesn't mean anything. All that news is pushed at the general population because we humans are drawn to people, not ideas (there was a recent post here about this).
The point is, ignore the rhetoric. Actions speak louder than words. If you want to see what a person will do in the future, look at what they did in the past. Look at where the money is coming from, look at what that group or political party has done in the past, and look at history to get an idea of what's going on. That's a lot of work, and every source of information has their own agenda, so it's up to you to weight things as you see fit.
I find this hard to believe, and I'll do more investigation. I find this hard to believe because, Bryan Caplan is convincing in telling us that voters normally make bad decisions, and more education leads to more reasonable choices.
Yes, I meant a representative democracy, though I think the point applies to a direct democracy as well. Even if voters weren't biased and only voted on issues they felt educated on, they'd still have to be incentivized and able to accurately identify which issues they were qualified to vote on (which I think may be a problem this study highlights: How does a voter know when he or she is informed?). Absent policy prediction markets I'm not seeing how this could work well.
America's government and voting schema is incompatible with a knowledgeable electorate - who knew?!I agree its government supports irrational voting, but we couldn't we also say its electorate cannot elect a rational government with a decent voting schema? These factors seem self-reinforcing.
Are there any studies showing less voter irrationality in countries with direct democracies, as you seem to be suggesting?
My hypothesis is that "informed voters" weigh all issues more equally than they should. For example, let's assume the following are the only three issues, war being the biggest one:
- Voter A is for the war, but against abortion rights and against gay marriage- Candidate X is for the war, for abortion rights, and for gay marraige.- Candidate Y is against the war, against abortion rights, and against gay marriage.
War here is obviously the biggest issue. If Voter A is uninformed and only knows the candidate's positions on the war, then he'll vote for Candidate X. But if he decides to research the positions more... who knows what will happen! If Voter A irrationally weighs all positions equally, then he'll vote for Candidate Y.
The thing is, not all issues are equal. Has Bush ever even voted for a bill on gay marriage? No. Abortion rights? Well, he's only denied some stem cell research funding, but again, that's not a big issue when compared to the war. Staying uninformed means that you'll only get to hear the candidate's views on the big issues, and all things considered, it's what your vote should boil down to.
I always find it interesting that sociologists who read and believed Hayek's notion of dispersed, tacit knowledge could turn around and support democratic outcomes.
Maybe the ones who actually believed Hayek were all intellectually dishonest, insane, or just not very analytical?
Specialized intelligences of any sort should encounter similar problems in democracies, shouldn't they?
I suspect that you're still talking about voting and electing leaders, and equating this with democracy (e.g. a system in which a lot of people vote and members of the electorate have specialized intelligence...). Correct me if I have you wrong.
Only a handful of mature democracies exist on the planet - Switzerland, and the Nordic countries which are de facto democracies. These countries are also home to some of the most intelligent and educated populaces on the planet.
Maybe large amounts of information and knowledge is a problem in the U.S. (if this study says so), but one of the most annoying things one can do is extrapolate good data from the American system and try to apply it as a general rule. America's government and voting schema is incompatible with a knowledgeable electorate - who knew?!
What jumps out at me is that nobody would actually do what the category "rational voter" says. It says:
You actively seek as much information as possible about all candidates
Nobody would do that. There's just too much information out there. Nobody would, say, read political news on Google News 24x7 just so they could vote well.
Sounds good, though, doesn't it? Why, you haven't left out any information you possibly could get. None at all. I think this category appeals to a certain sort of posturing that wants to be above reproach.
I have to suspect that the category "rational voter" was full of people who placed themselves in it for the wrong reason.
To some extent this phenomenon makes sense. If you know one fact about a candidate, for example that you agree about gun control, then they're positive. However, if you then learn that you disagree about something far less important, for instance, ten years ago they voted for legislation to change taxes in a way that you didn't like, they may be demoted to "neutral" status again.
People inherently have a difficult time managing levels of significance. The more you learn about someone, the more you have to do this. If you learn only the major positions that a candidate takes, you have a more accurate representation of whether you'll agree on important issues.
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink discusses this concept in many different forms; I highly recommend it.
Maybe the correct interpretation of this data is that, even with an informed populace, the concept of representative democracy is inherently flawed.I always find it interesting that sociologists who read and believed Hayek's notion of dispersed, tacit knowledge could turn around and support democratic outcomes. It seems obvious to me that democracy and the division of knowledge cannot occupy the same space.
I'm not seeing this as a flaw in humans necessarily. Specialized intelligences of any sort should encounter similar problems in democracies, shouldn't they?
I agree with Yvain - Being a "rational voter" implies, by definition, that you vote using information not easily available to someone conducting a study.
Aron makes a good point; I also am interested in applying neural network learning methods to voting.
Putting aside critiques of the study's methodology, I think some of this is just what the voter's demand.
Because voter's don't demand rational, contradiction-free information on each candidate, the media doesn't supply that sort of information. It supplies partisan (e.g., Fox News) and sensationalist data which makes it nigh-impossible for any real political truth-seeker to figure out what the hell is going on. I think if the majority of voters were truth-seekers (not going to happen, I know), the information would be much, much easier to process.
Put another way, imagine if the learning materials which covered other complicated topics (such as solving differential equations or computer programming) were all made for irrational people instead of largely truth-seekers. How difficult would it be to really learn from that material?
1) It is impossible for any voter to understand all the relevant policy issues in large state or national elections.
2) It is impossible for any voter to discern candidate(s) true views on any/all relevant policy issues.
3) It is effectively a zero probability that any voter will determine the outcome of any large election.
4) It is illogical,therefore, to vote in large elections, as a rational cause & effect human action.
"Irrational Voting" {..'emotional voting'} cannot be avoided in any but the smallest local elections.
Efforts to better 'inform' oneself on issues/candidates are futile... the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio decreases exponentially as a voter attempts to collect & sift large amounts of conflicting and often unreliable "data". Confusion results, rather than rational enlightenment... "informed voters" do worse.
Large-scale "informed-democracies" are logically impossible... they are oligarchies in the real political world.
Here is another spin on the topic of rational voting:
"The founders of the United States didn’t have the advantages of fMRI brain imaging and had no concept of the amygdala, but they were hesitant about political parties and political campaigning nonetheless. Fearful that a “torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose,” Alexander Hamilton railed against political parties in the first Federalist Paper, saying the parties would try to “increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”
It turns out there was some reason to be concerned about the relative influence of information versus emotion when it comes to political judgments and affiliations. Though it is impossible to know for sure whether people actually vote along party lines, many psychological studies have shown that political affiliation plays a large role not just in the voting booth but also when people must decide how they feel about political issues."
From: http://www.psychologicalsci...
Geez, I don't recall any of these empirical insights being expressed as axioms that a social choice function has to satisfy.
"Efforts to better 'inform' oneself on issues/candidates are futile...
Worse than futile, they waste your precious time better spent elsewhere."
I think people are missing the most important news filters of all: You. You can filter the noise and get a good grasp on policies.
Most rhetoric, like speeches, can safely be ignored or taken with a huge grain of salt. Anyone trying to get elected has to say things to appeal to certain demographics of the population without offending other demographics too much, so as to appeal to the widest variety of people as possible.
For example, in most press, Barack Obama talks about 'main street and wall street'. You know, he's for 'main street' and against 'wall street'. What does that mean? Nothing. It doesn't mean anything. It's just something he says in speeches to hopefully appeal to a broad group of people who don't like 'wall street', whatever that means. Big business? Both mainstream candidates got most of their campaign money from big companies, so it's definitely not that. There's plenty of examples of rhetoric like that from McCain or any other politician, of course.
Personal stories about the candidates and profiles of their kids and how much they weight and how tall they are and where they shop and all this trivial information is easy to get drawn into, but it doesn't mean anything. All that news is pushed at the general population because we humans are drawn to people, not ideas (there was a recent post here about this).
The point is, ignore the rhetoric. Actions speak louder than words. If you want to see what a person will do in the future, look at what they did in the past. Look at where the money is coming from, look at what that group or political party has done in the past, and look at history to get an idea of what's going on. That's a lot of work, and every source of information has their own agenda, so it's up to you to weight things as you see fit.
I find this hard to believe, and I'll do more investigation. I find this hard to believe because, Bryan Caplan is convincing in telling us that voters normally make bad decisions, and more education leads to more reasonable choices.
"War here is obviously the biggest issue."
Says you!
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Peter,
Yes, I meant a representative democracy, though I think the point applies to a direct democracy as well. Even if voters weren't biased and only voted on issues they felt educated on, they'd still have to be incentivized and able to accurately identify which issues they were qualified to vote on (which I think may be a problem this study highlights: How does a voter know when he or she is informed?). Absent policy prediction markets I'm not seeing how this could work well.
America's government and voting schema is incompatible with a knowledgeable electorate - who knew?!I agree its government supports irrational voting, but we couldn't we also say its electorate cannot elect a rational government with a decent voting schema? These factors seem self-reinforcing.
Are there any studies showing less voter irrationality in countries with direct democracies, as you seem to be suggesting?
My hypothesis is that "informed voters" weigh all issues more equally than they should. For example, let's assume the following are the only three issues, war being the biggest one:
- Voter A is for the war, but against abortion rights and against gay marriage- Candidate X is for the war, for abortion rights, and for gay marraige.- Candidate Y is against the war, against abortion rights, and against gay marriage.
War here is obviously the biggest issue. If Voter A is uninformed and only knows the candidate's positions on the war, then he'll vote for Candidate X. But if he decides to research the positions more... who knows what will happen! If Voter A irrationally weighs all positions equally, then he'll vote for Candidate Y.
The thing is, not all issues are equal. Has Bush ever even voted for a bill on gay marriage? No. Abortion rights? Well, he's only denied some stem cell research funding, but again, that's not a big issue when compared to the war. Staying uninformed means that you'll only get to hear the candidate's views on the big issues, and all things considered, it's what your vote should boil down to.
I always find it interesting that sociologists who read and believed Hayek's notion of dispersed, tacit knowledge could turn around and support democratic outcomes.
Maybe the ones who actually believed Hayek were all intellectually dishonest, insane, or just not very analytical?
Specialized intelligences of any sort should encounter similar problems in democracies, shouldn't they?
I suspect that you're still talking about voting and electing leaders, and equating this with democracy (e.g. a system in which a lot of people vote and members of the electorate have specialized intelligence...). Correct me if I have you wrong.
Only a handful of mature democracies exist on the planet - Switzerland, and the Nordic countries which are de facto democracies. These countries are also home to some of the most intelligent and educated populaces on the planet.
Maybe large amounts of information and knowledge is a problem in the U.S. (if this study says so), but one of the most annoying things one can do is extrapolate good data from the American system and try to apply it as a general rule. America's government and voting schema is incompatible with a knowledgeable electorate - who knew?!
What jumps out at me is that nobody would actually do what the category "rational voter" says. It says:
You actively seek as much information as possible about all candidates
Nobody would do that. There's just too much information out there. Nobody would, say, read political news on Google News 24x7 just so they could vote well.
Sounds good, though, doesn't it? Why, you haven't left out any information you possibly could get. None at all. I think this category appeals to a certain sort of posturing that wants to be above reproach.
I have to suspect that the category "rational voter" was full of people who placed themselves in it for the wrong reason.
To some extent this phenomenon makes sense. If you know one fact about a candidate, for example that you agree about gun control, then they're positive. However, if you then learn that you disagree about something far less important, for instance, ten years ago they voted for legislation to change taxes in a way that you didn't like, they may be demoted to "neutral" status again.
People inherently have a difficult time managing levels of significance. The more you learn about someone, the more you have to do this. If you learn only the major positions that a candidate takes, you have a more accurate representation of whether you'll agree on important issues.
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink discusses this concept in many different forms; I highly recommend it.
Maybe the correct interpretation of this data is that, even with an informed populace, the concept of representative democracy is inherently flawed.I always find it interesting that sociologists who read and believed Hayek's notion of dispersed, tacit knowledge could turn around and support democratic outcomes. It seems obvious to me that democracy and the division of knowledge cannot occupy the same space.
I'm not seeing this as a flaw in humans necessarily. Specialized intelligences of any sort should encounter similar problems in democracies, shouldn't they?
So either humans just aren't capable of supporting a more informed democracy. . .
Democracy is not synonymous with electioneering, nor elections in general. It doesn't even mean that a country has to hold elections.
Maybe the correct interpretation of this data is that, even with an informed populace, the concept of representative democracy is inherently flawed.
I agree with Yvain - Being a "rational voter" implies, by definition, that you vote using information not easily available to someone conducting a study.
Aron makes a good point; I also am interested in applying neural network learning methods to voting.
Putting aside critiques of the study's methodology, I think some of this is just what the voter's demand.
Because voter's don't demand rational, contradiction-free information on each candidate, the media doesn't supply that sort of information. It supplies partisan (e.g., Fox News) and sensationalist data which makes it nigh-impossible for any real political truth-seeker to figure out what the hell is going on. I think if the majority of voters were truth-seekers (not going to happen, I know), the information would be much, much easier to process.
Put another way, imagine if the learning materials which covered other complicated topics (such as solving differential equations or computer programming) were all made for irrational people instead of largely truth-seekers. How difficult would it be to really learn from that material?
Efforts to better 'inform' oneself on issues/candidates are futile...
Worse than futile, they waste your precious time better spent elsewhere.
How did the frugal voter do? The frugal voter sounds more rational than the "rational voter" ...
..
1) It is impossible for any voter to understand all the relevant policy issues in large state or national elections.
2) It is impossible for any voter to discern candidate(s) true views on any/all relevant policy issues.
3) It is effectively a zero probability that any voter will determine the outcome of any large election.
4) It is illogical,therefore, to vote in large elections, as a rational cause & effect human action.
"Irrational Voting" {..'emotional voting'} cannot be avoided in any but the smallest local elections.
Efforts to better 'inform' oneself on issues/candidates are futile... the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio decreases exponentially as a voter attempts to collect & sift large amounts of conflicting and often unreliable "data". Confusion results, rather than rational enlightenment... "informed voters" do worse.
Large-scale "informed-democracies" are logically impossible... they are oligarchies in the real political world.