Down with party poopers and primary poopers
Hi folks,
This email is a followup to my reply to Ted Stern his proposed "High5"
voting system:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-December/005181.html
.... and it's a followup to this blog post:
https://robla.blog/2023/12/17/down-with-party-poopers-and-primary-poopers/
I've been debating the value of "primary elections" versus "general
elections" with many people (mainly in the United States) over the years.
Some electoral reform advocates believe that we should do away with
"expensive" primary elections, and use a system that eliminates this step
Some even believe that political parties could be made obsolete with the
right method. I believe those advocates are paying too much attention to
the math of the final two stages of the electoral process, and not enough
to the psychology of elections.
There are (at least) THREE very important voter-certified checkpoints that
unaffiliated candidates generally need to pass through to get to office:
- The signature-gathering process
- The primary election
- The general election
Candidates can sometimes skip the first step if they find an established
political party who really likes them (e.g. because they "worked their way
up the ranks" within the party or because the political party "drafted"
them). Ultimately, though, the value of political parties is to build a
trusted brand with voters by being an organization that vets candidates,
and doesn't let crackpots use their trusted brand name. The better the
party is at vetting candidates, the better their brand.
As we know, in the United States, we have a duopoly: the Republican Party
and the Democratic Party. These days, most voters don't trust at least one
of the parties as far as they can throw them, but most voters have picked
one or the other as the "good enough" party. They may not LOVE the
candidates churned out by their "favorite" party, but they usually prefer
that to letting the nutjobs from the other party have any more power than
they already have.
Brands have value, even if all of the big brands in a particular market
category kinda suck. Personally, I don't LOVE the Democratic Party, but
I'd generally rather have their chosen candidate for most offices in power
than the Republican Party's chosen candidate. I'm sure that most folks
that currently vote for Republicans feel the same way about the Democratic
Party's vetting process.
I bring up this point because some election methods proposed here (and
elsewhere) try to tout the benefits of eliminating primaries. Personally,
I'd prefer it if we could somehow eliminate (or streamline) the signature
gathering process needed for ballot access. I wouldn't particularly mind
being presented with 100 candidates for the county coroner's office if I
didn't ALSO have to seek out activists on the sidewalk with clipboards that
are gathering signatures for alternatives to the two big parties here in
the United States in order to ensure "third party" candidates make it on
the ballot.
A system that I think would work really well:
-
Make it easier for candidates to get on the ballot. For small,
relatively low-stakes offices (e.g. county coroner), have minimal paperwork
and vetting process (for minimal qualifications) to get on the ballot. For
big offices (POTUS, State Governor), have a state-operated website where
minimally-qualified candidates can gather a required number of e-signatures
(in addition to allowing for old-school paper signature gathering). -
Have a "unified primary" (or rather, an approval-based primary). I'm
not sure if two, or three, or five is the right number of candidates to
advance out of the primary. One could avoid having a fixed number of
candidates by having a minimum approval threshold (say, 30% approval),
which would (hopefully) make it less likely that candidates would talk
about why the other candidates are bad, and instead nudge them focus on
earning positive name recognition and approval of 30% (or whatever) of the
electorate. -
Have a general election with (potentially) three or more candidates
from the primary, using a system that doesn't fail miserably when there are
three or more candidates seeking a single office.
The three stages above seem like they would both give voters ample time and
tools to vet the candidates, while at the same time offers a broader
opportunity to become a candidate, and rejects candidates before they
distract public consideration of worthier candidates.
Rob
[1] The "unified primary" is basically the approval-based system used in
St. Louis:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Unified_primary
On 2023-12-18 08:12, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Brands have value, even if all of the big brands in a particular market
category kinda suck. Personally, I don't LOVE the Democratic Party, but
I'd generally rather have their chosen candidate for most offices in
power than the Republican Party's chosen candidate. I'm sure that most
folks that currently vote for Republicans feel the same way about the
Democratic Party's vetting process.
I bring up this point because some election methods proposed here (and
elsewhere) try to tout the benefits of eliminating primaries.
Personally, I'd prefer it if we could somehow eliminate (or streamline)
the signature gathering process needed for ballot access. I wouldn't
particularly mind being presented with 100 candidates for the county
coroner's office if I didn't ALSO have to seek out activists on the
sidewalk with clipboards that are gathering signatures for alternatives
to the two big parties here in the United States in order to ensure
"third party" candidates make it on the ballot.
A perspective from someone living in a country with more than two viable
parties:
One way I tend to think of it is that in a two-party system, the two
parties contain factions that, in a multiparty system, would be separate
parties. Thus, in a two-party system, first the factions negotiate and
then people vote; whereas in a multiparty system, the people vote and
then the factions negotiate.
It seems to me that if there is a possibility for the relative strengths
of factions to be decided by the people rather than by party insiders,
we should take it.
Now, this has to be balanced against the burden of being familiar with
more parties. If there were a thousand parties, there would be a big
problem because nobody would care to read a thousand party programs.
But at least in this country, the voters don't seem to have a problem
dealing with eight parties.[1] While brand recognition is important,
there doesn't seem to be a significant penalty to having eight rather
than two.
There are definitely caveats worth mentioning: it's harder to have a
negotiation phase if the president is directly elected, since there's no
parliament where this discussion can happen. And we don't vote on minor
positions like city coroner, either. But it's still possible for
presidential systems to be multi-party, and to my knowledge, these do
not have primaries.
-km
[1] 8.36 parties by
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election.
Hi Kristofer,
Good to hear some non-American perspective. The United States' two-party
democracy leads us to think that fixing the "duopoly" will fix everything.
There is a certain comfort in the stability with our Coke/Pepsi duopoly in
the United States. You're clearly correct that voters can handle more than
two parties (given the multitude of parties in Norway as an example), and I
think that it sucks that the top two here in the United States are so
safe. It bothers me that we actually DO have more choices than Coke and
Pepsi, and that so many people almost immediately understand that metaphor
for "duopoly". I wish that our collective IQ could be applied to more than
beverage shopping (and more generally, that alternatives to "Republican"
and "Democrat" in the United States had greater brand recognition than
"Coke" or "Pepsi")
More inline...
On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 6:34 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de
wrote:
One way I tend to think of it is that in a two-party system, the two
parties contain factions that, in a multiparty system, would be separate
parties. Thus, in a two-party system, first the factions negotiate and
then people vote; whereas in a multiparty system, the people vote and
then the factions negotiate.
That sounds nice. I'd be surprised if there weren't intraparty factions as
well, though. I have to believe the eight (or so) major parties in your
country have at least a little semi-structured infighting. Intraparty
factions almost certainly still have to be a thing, even when there are
more choices when one leaves a particular party.
It seems to me that if there is a possibility for the relative strengths
of factions to be decided by the people rather than by party insiders,
we should take it. [...] Now, this has to be balanced against the burden
of being familiar with more parties. If there were a thousand parties,
there would be a big problem because nobody would care to read a
thousand party programs.
I also think that this is a problem for historians and for the electorate
being able to learn from history. Having such a swirling soup of parties
makes it difficult for newcomers and outsiders to understand how local
politics work. I suppose it's not any worse than trying to understand what
happened to the Rockerfeller Republicans in the United States, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
But at least in this country, the voters don't seem to have a problem
dealing with eight parties.[1] While brand recognition is important,
there doesn't seem to be a significant penalty to having eight rather
than two.
[1] 8.36 parties by
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election.
It's interesting to me that you chose "eight" as the number of parties in
Norway when you used the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election as a
reference. By my count, there were ten parties that received seats in the
"Storting" (a.k.a. "the supreme legislature of Norway" according to
Wikipedia) in 2021. It would seem based on a cursory glance at the 2021
results that the parties can be classified large/medium/small:
- The "Labour", "Conservative", "Centre", and "Progress" parties --
these are the four big parties in Norway, and an overwhelming majority of
Norwegians at least partially align with one of these parties. It would
seem impossible to really understand the 2021 election without
understanding these four. - The "Socialist Left", "Red", and "Liberal" parties are the
medium-sized parties that earn a modest number of seats. I'm guessing that
each of them must really rely on alliances with at least one of the larger
parties to get anything done. - The "Green", "Christian Democratic", and "Patient Focus" parties are
the boutique parties that appeal to a very narrow slice of the population.
As I look back over the past 40 years of elections, my taxonomy above
breaks down, since it's based on a single election. Labour, Progress,
Conservative, Socialist Left, Centre, Christian Democratic, and Liberal
seem to be the only seven that have a substantial history. Green, Red, and
Patient Focus seem like weird little newcomers, but I guess the Red party
is seemingly on the rise, no? Also, does the modern Liberal party have
anything in common with Mowinckel's Liberal party of the 1930s (arguably
the Liberal party's heyday)?
Interestingly, the "Christian Democratic" seems to have fallen
precipitously from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s (under Bondevik's
leadership). This Wikipedia article seems to confirm my speculation about
intraparty infighting being a thing, even with a lot of parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
That would also be true of the Liberal party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
...though I suppose the answer to intraparty strife is to FORM A NEW PARTY
(or two)!!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party(Norway)
I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at "8.36 parties", which seems
awfully precise given the fluctuation of seat-earning parties in Norway.
There are definitely caveats worth mentioning: it's harder to have a
negotiation phase if the president is directly elected, since there's no
parliament where this discussion can happen. And we don't vote on minor
positions like city coroner, either. But it's still possible for
presidential systems to be multi-party, and to my knowledge, these do
not have primaries.
I suspect voters in the United States are way too fond of micromanaging
their leadership to allow for taking away voting for city coroner or to
vote for a party, and let the party leaders negotiate who gets to be
president or prime minister or grand poobah or whatever. I didn't fully
realize just how recent primary elections were anywhere in the world until
the 20th century, and that the first time primary elections mattered for
the U.S. presidency as in 1912:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
While I'll concede that there are multi-party democracies that haven't
found a need for primaries, and I'll concede that the brief history of
primary elections here in the United States and elsewhere has been messy, I
still think it's a good idea for high-stakes elections. For high-stakes
positions, it seems wise (to me) to allow the general public two big stages
of consideration: the primary process and the general election process.
Though many aspects of the current mechanisms we use are awful, I think
having two elections rather than one gives us enough time to collectively
think through the decisions we make. For high-stakes elections, this seems
worth it.
Rob
Rob—
Here's you today:
[quote]
I wish that our collective IQ could be applied to more than beverage
shopping (and more generally, that alternatives to "Republican" and
"Democrat" in the United States had greater brand recognition than "Coke"
or "Pepsi")H
[/quote]
Here’s you 3 months ago:
…
[quote]
It would seem that you are deep into the community/tribe of the Greens
based on this quote:
"Greens win all of our non-mass-media polls."
…
I don't think the Greens are a mainstream party. They seem to be quite
happy being a niche party complaining about how the Democrats are not as
pro-socialism and pro-environment as they are. I'm going to guess that the
Greens are fighting for fully compostable voting booths right now, and for
all of the weapons used by the police and the military to be fully
compostable. You know, the important stuff ;-)
[/quote]
…
I’ll paste it again below, & reply inline:
…
[quote]
It would seem that you are deep into the community/tribe of the Greens
based on this quote:
"Greens win all of our non-mass-media polls."
[/quote]
…
Let me guess: You’re deep into the tribe of the Democrats
…
Whenever there’s an Internet political poll among the various parties or
their candidates, the winner is usually the Green, or maybe Bernie Sanders,
but sometimes the Libertarian. Actually, Andrew Yang (Founder of the
Forward Party)wins pretty much every poll that includes him as a candidate
(I haven’t heard that he’s running for office, though it seems he should).
…
[quote]
I don't think the Greens are a mainstream party.
[/quote]
…
Translation: Your mass-media don’t cover them at all.
…
Yes, if “mainstream” means “in the corporate mass-media”, then they aren’t
mainstream.
…
[quote]
They seem to be quite
happy being a niche party complaining about how the Democrats are not as
pro-socialism and pro-environment as they are. I'm going to guess that the
Greens are fighting for fully compostable voting booths right now, and for
all of the weapons used by the police and the military to be fully
compostable. You know, the important stuff ;-)
[/quote]
…
Just maybe you might want to consider looking at their platform before
expounding on their policies.
…
The Greens have a detailed progressive platform. It probably fits the
“Social Democracy” classification.
…
The above-pasted quote of your September comments is pertinent to your
comment today the one that this post replies to.
…
Yes, it’s a pity that people in this country haven’t looked at any party
platforms, & don’t know that there are any offerings significantly
differing from the Democrats & Republicans.
…
People speak of having to vote for the lesser-evil (Democrat) to keep the
Republican from winning.
…
In non-mass-media Internet polls, the Republican always finishes last.
There’s no way the Republican could beat the Green in an honestly-voted &
honestly-counted election.
…
In one 23-candidate poll that I conducted at the Condorcet Internet Polling
Service, the lowest finishing Communist finished above the highest
finishing Republican.
…
In a recent poll on political categories, the winner was Social-Democracy. In
2nd place was Socialism. Liberalism was way down in the finishing-order, &
Conservatism was at the bottom.
…
But, with our Vote-For-1 (VF1) voting-system, one problem (among several)
is the split-vote problem when there are several Progressive candidates.
For some reason, Cornell West decided not to run as a Green, but, instead,
to run against the Green Party. That isn’t how we keep from splitting the
vote. If West has said what he thinks is wrong with the Green platform, &
why it’s necessary to run against it, proliferating progressive candidates
& split vote, I haven’t found that explanation.
…
Gore Vidal pointed out that we don’t have a 2-party system—We have 1 party
with 2 right-wings.
…
There of course are various non-Republocrat parties,& candidates… & yes,
they don’t get mass-media coverage, & therefore are not “mainstream”.
…
It’s bad enough with the progressive vote split as it is, but there are all
kinds of non-Republocrat parties.
…
I’ve felt that there should be a party whose only platform policy-changes
consist of electoral-reform. Then all the non-Republocrat parties could
combine their vote on that one party’s candidate. …& with that enhanced
winnability, the lesser-evil voters might even be willing to vote honestly,
for that combining-place party, which, if in office, would establish
genuine democracy, with a single-winner voting system that allows
multicandidate rating or preferences in multicandidate elections. (…a
pretty obvious requirement for freedom of choice in a democracy), &
proportional-representation.
…
Well guess what: Now there is such a party. Andrew Yang’s Forward Party.
The changes offered in its platform consist of a better single-winner
voting system...no more VF1. …& propotional-representation.
…
Libertarians, Greens, People’s, Working-Family, Socialist, Constitution,
American Independent, & all the other non-Republocrat parties needn’t split
the vote, when they could combine on one electoral-reform party.
…
I should add that Forward also offers better local autonomy. Why should
people who want different policies have to live under the same policies?
On Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 12:59 AM Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Kristofer,
Good to hear some non-American perspective. The United States' two-party
democracy leads us to think that fixing the "duopoly" will fix everything.
There is a certain comfort in the stability with our Coke/Pepsi duopoly in
the United States. You're clearly correct that voters can handle more than
two parties (given the multitude of parties in Norway as an example), and I
think that it sucks that the top two here in the United States are so
safe. It bothers me that we actually DO have more choices than Coke and
Pepsi, and that so many people almost immediately understand that metaphor
for "duopoly". I wish that our collective IQ could be applied to more than
beverage shopping (and more generally, that alternatives to "Republican"
and "Democrat" in the United States had greater brand recognition than
"Coke" or "Pepsi")
More inline...
On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 6:34 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_elmet@t-online.de> wrote:
One way I tend to think of it is that in a two-party system, the two
parties contain factions that, in a multiparty system, would be separate
parties. Thus, in a two-party system, first the factions negotiate and
then people vote; whereas in a multiparty system, the people vote and
then the factions negotiate.
That sounds nice. I'd be surprised if there weren't intraparty factions
as well, though. I have to believe the eight (or so) major parties in your
country have at least a little semi-structured infighting. Intraparty
factions almost certainly still have to be a thing, even when there are
more choices when one leaves a particular party.
It seems to me that if there is a possibility for the relative strengths
of factions to be decided by the people rather than by party insiders,
we should take it. [...] Now, this has to be balanced against the burden
of being familiar with more parties. If there were a thousand parties,
there would be a big problem because nobody would care to read a
thousand party programs.
I also think that this is a problem for historians and for the electorate
being able to learn from history. Having such a swirling soup of parties
makes it difficult for newcomers and outsiders to understand how local
politics work. I suppose it's not any worse than trying to understand what
happened to the Rockerfeller Republicans in the United States, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
But at least in this country, the voters don't seem to have a problem
dealing with eight parties.[1] While brand recognition is important,
there doesn't seem to be a significant penalty to having eight rather
than two.
[1] 8.36 parties by
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election.
It's interesting to me that you chose "eight" as the number of parties in
Norway when you used the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election as a
reference. By my count, there were ten parties that received seats in the
"Storting" (a.k.a. "the supreme legislature of Norway" according to
Wikipedia) in 2021. It would seem based on a cursory glance at the 2021
results that the parties can be classified large/medium/small:
- The "Labour", "Conservative", "Centre", and "Progress" parties --
these are the four big parties in Norway, and an overwhelming majority of
Norwegians at least partially align with one of these parties. It would
seem impossible to really understand the 2021 election without
understanding these four.
- The "Socialist Left", "Red", and "Liberal" parties are the
medium-sized parties that earn a modest number of seats. I'm guessing that
each of them must really rely on alliances with at least one of the larger
parties to get anything done.
- The "Green", "Christian Democratic", and "Patient Focus" parties are
the boutique parties that appeal to a very narrow slice of the population.
As I look back over the past 40 years of elections, my taxonomy above
breaks down, since it's based on a single election. Labour, Progress,
Conservative, Socialist Left, Centre, Christian Democratic, and Liberal
seem to be the only seven that have a substantial history. Green, Red, and
Patient Focus seem like weird little newcomers, but I guess the Red party
is seemingly on the rise, no? Also, does the modern Liberal party have
anything in common with Mowinckel's Liberal party of the 1930s (arguably
the Liberal party's heyday)?
Interestingly, the "Christian Democratic" seems to have fallen
precipitously from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s (under Bondevik's
leadership). This Wikipedia article seems to confirm my speculation about
intraparty infighting being a thing, even with a lot of parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
That would also be true of the Liberal party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
...though I suppose the answer to intraparty strife is to FORM A NEW PARTY
(or two)!!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party(Norway)
I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at "8.36 parties", which seems
awfully precise given the fluctuation of seat-earning parties in Norway.
There are definitely caveats worth mentioning: it's harder to have a
negotiation phase if the president is directly elected, since there's no
parliament where this discussion can happen. And we don't vote on minor
positions like city coroner, either. But it's still possible for
presidential systems to be multi-party, and to my knowledge, these do
not have primaries.
I suspect voters in the United States are way too fond of micromanaging
their leadership to allow for taking away voting for city coroner or to
vote for a party, and let the party leaders negotiate who gets to be
president or prime minister or grand poobah or whatever. I didn't fully
realize just how recent primary elections were anywhere in the world until
the 20th century, and that the first time primary elections mattered for
the U.S. presidency as in 1912:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
While I'll concede that there are multi-party democracies that haven't
found a need for primaries, and I'll concede that the brief history of
primary elections here in the United States and elsewhere has been messy, I
still think it's a good idea for high-stakes elections. For high-stakes
positions, it seems wise (to me) to allow the general public two big stages
of consideration: the primary process and the general election process.
Though many aspects of the current mechanisms we use are awful, I think
having two elections rather than one gives us enough time to collectively
think through the decisions we make. For high-stakes elections, this seems
worth it.
Rob
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
On 2023-12-19 06:58, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Hi Kristofer,
Good to hear some non-American perspective. The United States'
two-party democracy leads us to think that fixing the "duopoly" will fix
everything. There is a certain comfort in the stability with our
Coke/Pepsi duopoly in the United States. You're clearly correct that
voters can handle more than two parties (given the multitude of parties
in Norway as an example), and I think that it sucks that the top two
here in the United States are so safe. It bothers me that we actually
DO have more choices than Coke and Pepsi, and that so many people almost
immediately understand that metaphor for "duopoly". I wish that our
collective IQ could be applied to more than beverage shopping (and more
generally, that alternatives to "Republican" and "Democrat" in the
United States had greater brand recognition than "Coke" or "Pepsi")
More inline...
On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 6:34 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km_elmet@t-online.de mailto:km_elmet@t-online.de> wrote:
One way I tend to think of it is that in a two-party system, the two
parties contain factions that, in a multiparty system, would be
separate parties. Thus, in a two-party system, first the factions negotiate
and then people vote; whereas in a multiparty system, the people vote and
then the factions negotiate.
That sounds nice. I'd be surprised if there weren't intraparty factions
as well, though. I have to believe the eight (or so) major parties in
your country have at least a little semi-structured infighting.
Intraparty factions almost certainly still have to be a thing, even when
there are more choices when one leaves a particular party.
Yes. There is definitely a spread of positions within parties, and
moreso in the parties that have greater support, such as the
Conservatives and (particularly) Labor.
A more accurate way of putting it would be that larger parties need to
accommodate a wider range of opinions to stay coherent. Thus you're more
likely to find significant differences within large parties than smaller
ones, although the picture is complicated a little by more ideologically
based smaller parties whose members may have strong opinions about just
what variant of its ideology is the right one.
You probably can't expose every subtle nuance in a party system without
having an unreasonable number of parties, but going from two to many
helps a lot and gives the voters more of a say about which political
positions deserve power.
It seems to me that if there is a possibility for the relative
strengths
of factions to be decided by the people rather than by party insiders,
we should take it. [...] Now, this has to be balanced against the
burden of being familiar with more parties. If there were a thousand
parties, there would be a big problem because nobody would care to
read a thousand party programs.
I also think that this is a problem for historians and for the
electorate being able to learn from history. Having such a swirling
soup of parties makes it difficult for newcomers and outsiders to
understand how local politics work. I suppose it's not any worse than
trying to understand what happened to the Rockerfeller Republicans in
the United States, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
Yes, though historians would have the benefit of being able to focus
more thoroughly on their fields. Ordinary voters usually wouldn't
dedicate so much time to finding out the intricate details of their parties.
I suppose what I'm saying is: if it's too hard for the historians, it's
too hard for the voters. The historians may cover more time, but the
voters have less of their own time to spend.
In more closed systems, the historians would anyway try to find out
what's going on inside the few parties that exist. (The logical extreme
of this is probably something like China watchers who try to infer the
dynamics of the CPC based on what is revealed to the public.)
But at least in this country, the voters don't seem to have a problem
dealing with eight parties.[1] While brand recognition is important,
there doesn't seem to be a significant penalty to having eight rather
than two.
[1] 8.36 parties by
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure>
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election>.
It's interesting to me that you chose "eight" as the number of parties
in Norway when you used the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election as a
reference.
In a multiparty system, some parties may be much larger than others. The
effective number of parties measure tries to answer the question of how
many parties exist in terms of "if they were all equally sized, how many
would there be?". Since some parties have considerably less support than
others, the ENPP figure will be lower than the number of actual parties,
but I thought it would be a more appropriate comparison to a two-party
system, since the two parties already are equally sized.
By my count, there were ten parties that received seats in
the "Storting" (a.k.a. "the supreme legislature of Norway" according to
Wikipedia) in 2021. It would seem based on a cursory glance at the 2021
results that the parties can be classified large/medium/small:
- The "Labour", "Conservative", "Centre", and "Progress" parties --
these are the four big parties in Norway, and an overwhelming
majority of Norwegians at least partially align with one of these
parties. It would seem impossible to really understand the 2021
election without understanding these four. - The "Socialist Left", "Red", and "Liberal" parties are the
medium-sized parties that earn a modest number of seats. I'm
guessing that each of them must really rely on alliances with at
least one of the larger parties to get anything done. - The "Green", "Christian Democratic", and "Patient Focus" parties are
the boutique parties that appeal to a very narrow slice of the
population.
As I look back over the past 40 years of elections, my taxonomy above
breaks down, since it's based on a single election. Labour, Progress,
Conservative, Socialist Left, Centre, Christian Democratic, and Liberal
seem to be the only seven that have a substantial history. Green, Red,
and Patient Focus seem like weird little newcomers, but I guess the Red
party is seemingly on the rise, no? Also, does the modern Liberal party
have anything in common with Mowinckel's Liberal party of the 1930s
(arguably the Liberal party's heyday)?
Your estimate is roughly correct for the last election. I would say
Progress is not in the big parties bloc, but that's partly due to its
history. Without going too much into detail:
The beginning of parliamentary rule was first nonpartisan, but quickly
the Conservative and Liberal parties formed, broadly representing the
right and left wing, although the right/conservative was more in terms
of e.g. allowing the monarch wider powers, and there was not yet an
organized labor movement.
As history went on, more parties came into existence. This in part
explains the Liberal party's decline: it started off as the big-tent
everything from center to the left party, but its domain was encroached
upon by the other parties establishing themselves. E.g. Labor coming
into existence as a result of organized workers' struggle. (If the US
had become multi-party in the late 1800-early 1900s, perhaps Debs'
Socialist Party would similarly have encroached on the Democratic Party?
I know too little about US history to say, but it would be a roughly
analogous development. The Norwegian Labor Party was pretty radical in
its earlier days too.)
The Centre party and Christian Democrats cater to particular groups:
farmers and Christians respectively. The very south and some of the west
of Norway has a considerable higher density of practicing Christians, so
these are the CDP's strongholds. The Centre party is very pragmatic and
focuses on increased agricultural subsidies, devolution/increased power
to the municipalities, etc. Earlier the Centre party aligned itself with
the right-of-center bloc ("non-socialist bloc"), but it's now aligned
with the socialist one, trying to be, as the name implies, centrist in
economic matters and otherwise retain its pragmatic nature. This can be
seen in municipal elections: in one municipality, they may give support
to Progress, and in another, to Labor.
The post-2005 coalescing of parties into more durable blocs left the
Christian Democrats with a serious dilemma. As it holds both
conservative and liberal Christians, there was a big debate on what
parties they should align with, or if they should be unaligned and give
confidence to any bloc on a case by case basis. They first tried to move
in a liberal direction, but lost support, and some of the most
conservative Christians tried to form their own party (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_(Norwegian_political_party)
), but the attempt fizzled.
Then, as a result of continual whittling, and the wings being evenly
matcehd yet unable to find a compormise, there was a party vote in 2019.
The margin was very narrow but the party decided to follow the
right-of-center coalition. However, this led a considerable fraction of
the more liberal voters to go vote for somebody else.
In short, their problems were partly due to the decreasing influence of
religion in Norway and partly due to two wings or factions or equal
power having too different ideas of what the party should become.
Progress, Socialist Left, and Red are more recent.
Progress started as a right-wing close to libertarian economic party,
hence the original name "Anders Lange's Party for strong reduction of
taxes, duties and public interventions". Its leader from 1978 to 2006,
Carl I. Hagen, oriented it more in a general right-wing
conservative/populist direction: opposing immigration, focusing on
national identity and so on. So whereas the Conservative party is more a
business owners' party, Progress more seeks the support of people who
think immigration and open borders have gone too far. I guess a very
rough comparison would be something like: what if the Libertarian party
joined with tea partiers and southern conservatives and then later
moderated itself to gain wider support.
Socialist Left is to the left of Labor and basically started as the
party for socialist voters who didn't approve of or wanted to be
associated with the USSR. It currently enjoys the support of public
employees in particular, and is in favor of extended public services.
Red is further to the left, and its origins is as an umbrella group for
a number of communist organizations to propose candidates.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Electoral_Alliance) It is no longer
revolutionary, but has specialized itself as a party supporting the
concerns of the poor and otherwise less well off, particularly in
economic matters. As Labor has migrated rightwards (starting with New
Labour/New Public Management type policies in the 2000s; and moreso
lately with acceptance of more market-based/neoliberal EU systems), this
has opened up more space for the Socialist Left and Red parties. Some
voters consider Labor to have become less principled lately,
particularly under the latest PM, which has also pushed more voters to
either Centre and Conservative (to the right) or Socialist Left and Red
(to the left).
The Green party is another example of the increasing support of
environmentalist parties in Europe in general; and Patient Focus is a
single-issue party. In a non-party list system, Irene Ojala might have
been an independent.
(Since Norway is such a large country and the very North is sparsely
populated, there have been decisions to build hospitals further South
rather than closer to the few people who live in the very North. This
led to very long travel times for some, who then strongly objected to
the decision. The party was formed to advocate for the expansion of
medical services in the North.)
Interestingly, the "Christian Democratic" seems to have fallen
precipitously from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s (under Bondevik's
leadership). This Wikipedia article seems to confirm my speculation
about intraparty infighting being a thing, even with a lot of parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
That would also be true of the Liberal party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
...though I suppose the answer to intraparty strife is to FORM A NEW
PARTY (or two)!!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,_1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway)
This shows another way to deal with factions: In the early days of the
Progress Party, Carl I. Hagen kicked the libertarian wing out of the
party to reorient the party in its social conservative/populist
direction. There have since been a number of attempts to try to create
something either "like Progress but not Progress" or more libertarian;
none of these have really succeeded.
I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at "8.36 parties", which seems
awfully precise given the fluctuation of seat-earning parties in Norway.
You have a point: this is like the statistics joke "I've measured the
distance to your house to be 13.8752 miles +/- 10 miles". I just ran the
numbers through the effective number of parties calculation, and my
inclusion of decimals might have given an impression of more precision
than what's really there.
It would be interesting to see the change over time.
There are definitely caveats worth mentioning: it's harder to have a
negotiation phase if the president is directly elected, since
there's no
parliament where this discussion can happen. And we don't vote on minor
positions like city coroner, either. But it's still possible for
presidential systems to be multi-party, and to my knowledge, these do
not have primaries.
I suspect voters in the United States are way too fond of micromanaging
their leadership to allow for taking away voting for city coroner or to
vote for a party, and let the party leaders negotiate who gets to be
president or prime minister or grand poobah or whatever. I didn't fully
realize just how recent primary elections were anywhere in the world
until the 20th century, and that the first time primary elections
mattered for the U.S. presidency as in 1912:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
While I'll concede that there are multi-party democracies that haven't
found a need for primaries, and I'll concede that the brief history of
primary elections here in the United States and elsewhere has been
messy, I still think it's a good idea for high-stakes elections. For
high-stakes positions, it seems wise (to me) to allow the general public
two big stages of consideration: the primary process and the general
election process. Though many aspects of the current mechanisms we use
are awful, I think having two elections rather than one gives us enough
time to collectively think through the decisions we make. For
high-stakes elections, this seems worth it.
I wonder, could this partially be due to FPTP and IRV's first preference
support? Suppose you have a method that's vulnerable to center squeeze.
You would want to do multiple elections so that you can get unusually
strong wings out of the way and focus on something that everybody likes.
But if you have a method that is better at finding the median voter
preference, then the presence of wing candidates with strong but limited
support don't mess with things as much.
If so, we should see less of a need for multiple steps with approval or
Condorcet than with FPTP or IRV -- although in a sense IRV already
simulates multiple steps. Someone (I don't remember who) called IRV
"Instant Primary" for this reason.
Then there's another perspective: that having multiple rounds let people
think between the rounds, and let the candidates readjust their
arguments, debate etc around what the people are showing to be important.
Consider that IRV countries have two party rule whereas delayed
countries usually don't, even though top-two seems to be much worse in
terms of crtierion compliance than IRV. Perhaps this dynamic process
(that the voters can change their minds as the field thins) helps
sustain multiple viable choices.
But if that's true, I would probably prefer an actual runoff to closed
primaries, because it would be better for both rounds to poll everybody
(hence have a greater chance of finding the actual median voter
position) than do medians of medians, which could potentially lead to
their own kind of center squeeze.
-km
The UK also has a FPTP duopoly. That's,where it comes from. Other
parties have regional profile, the SNP (going thru a rough patch) even
the Lib Dems are reviving a bit in Cornwall, where they were quite
strong. The UK is electorally a near duopoly in Westminster. The reform
movement is more like a conform movement. Basically, it says: Widen your
horizons to see the other big player, besides FPTP, namely Party Lists.
For half a century, these reform, or conform, campaigns have reckoned to
be against FPTP. That is false. They merely want to accommodate FPTP
with Party Lists, to wit an Additional Member System (Mixed Member
Proportional).
It has been said of the big two systems, that the duopoly form their
coalitions, as "Broad churches", before the election, and Party Lists
form their coalitions after the election. What both have in common is an
illiterate non-transferable vote, preventing the electorate from forming
the coalition. A transferable vote gives the individual representation
of the people (not necessarily just the representation of the parties)
that can transcend party, and even go so far as to elect a government of
national unity, from the best talents in all the parties, and
Independents. (Even before they had more than 30 Independents, Ireland
had more Independent MPs than the rest of Europe combined. Perhaps more
important, STV extends independence from their bosses within parties.)
Regards,
Richard Lung.
On 20/12/2023 14:11, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 2023-12-19 06:58, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Hi Kristofer,
Good to hear some non-American perspective. The United States'
two-party democracy leads us to think that fixing the "duopoly" will
fix everything. There is a certain comfort in the stability with our
Coke/Pepsi duopoly in the United States. You're clearly correct that
voters can handle more than two parties (given the multitude of
parties in Norway as an example), and I think that it sucks that the
top two here in the United States are so safe. It bothers me that we
actually DO have more choices than Coke and Pepsi, and that so many
people almost immediately understand that metaphor for "duopoly". I
wish that our collective IQ could be applied to more than beverage
shopping (and more generally, that alternatives to "Republican" and
"Democrat" in the United States had greater brand recognition than
"Coke" or "Pepsi")
More inline...
On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 6:34 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km_elmet@t-online.de mailto:km_elmet@t-online.de> wrote:
One way I tend to think of it is that in a two-party system, the two
parties contain factions that, in a multiparty system, would be
separate parties. Thus, in a two-party system, first the factions
negotiate
and then people vote; whereas in a multiparty system, the people
vote and
then the factions negotiate.
That sounds nice. I'd be surprised if there weren't intraparty
factions as well, though. I have to believe the eight (or so) major
parties in your country have at least a little semi-structured
infighting. Intraparty factions almost certainly still have to be a
thing, even when there are more choices when one leaves a particular
party.
Yes. There is definitely a spread of positions within parties, and
moreso in the parties that have greater support, such as the
Conservatives and (particularly) Labor.
A more accurate way of putting it would be that larger parties need to
accommodate a wider range of opinions to stay coherent. Thus you're
more likely to find significant differences within large parties than
smaller ones, although the picture is complicated a little by more
ideologically based smaller parties whose members may have strong
opinions about just what variant of its ideology is the right one.
You probably can't expose every subtle nuance in a party system
without having an unreasonable number of parties, but going from two
to many helps a lot and gives the voters more of a say about which
political positions deserve power.
It seems to me that if there is a possibility for the relative
strengths
of factions to be decided by the people rather than by party insiders,
we should take it. [...] Now, this has to be balanced against the
burden of being familiar with more parties. If there were a thousand
parties, there would be a big problem because nobody would care to
read a thousand party programs.
I also think that this is a problem for historians and for the
electorate being able to learn from history. Having such a swirling
soup of parties makes it difficult for newcomers and outsiders to
understand how local politics work. I suppose it's not any worse
than trying to understand what happened to the Rockerfeller
Republicans in the United States, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
Yes, though historians would have the benefit of being able to focus
more thoroughly on their fields. Ordinary voters usually wouldn't
dedicate so much time to finding out the intricate details of their
parties.
I suppose what I'm saying is: if it's too hard for the historians,
it's too hard for the voters. The historians may cover more time, but
the voters have less of their own time to spend.
In more closed systems, the historians would anyway try to find out
what's going on inside the few parties that exist. (The logical
extreme of this is probably something like China watchers who try to
infer the dynamics of the CPC based on what is revealed to the public.)
But at least in this country, the voters don't seem to have a
problem
dealing with eight parties.[1] While brand recognition is important,
there doesn't seem to be a significant penalty to having eight
rather
than two.
[1] 8.36 parties by
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Norwegian_parliamentary_election.
It's interesting to me that you chose "eight" as the number of
parties in Norway when you used the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary
election as a reference.
In a multiparty system, some parties may be much larger than others.
The effective number of parties measure tries to answer the question
of how many parties exist in terms of "if they were all equally sized,
how many would there be?". Since some parties have considerably less
support than others, the ENPP figure will be lower than the number of
actual parties, but I thought it would be a more appropriate
comparison to a two-party system, since the two parties already are
equally sized.
By my count, there were ten parties that received seats in the
"Storting" (a.k.a. "the supreme legislature of Norway" according to
Wikipedia) in 2021. It would seem based on a cursory glance at the
2021 results that the parties can be classified large/medium/small:
* The "Labour", "Conservative", "Centre", and "Progress" parties --
these are the four big parties in Norway, and an overwhelming
majority of Norwegians at least partially align with one of these
parties. It would seem impossible to really understand the 2021
election without understanding these four.
* The "Socialist Left", "Red", and "Liberal" parties are the
medium-sized parties that earn a modest number of seats. I'm
guessing that each of them must really rely on alliances with at
least one of the larger parties to get anything done.
* The "Green", "Christian Democratic", and "Patient Focus" parties are
the boutique parties that appeal to a very narrow slice of the
population.
As I look back over the past 40 years of elections, my taxonomy above
breaks down, since it's based on a single election. Labour, Progress,
Conservative, Socialist Left, Centre, Christian Democratic, and
Liberal seem to be the only seven that have a substantial history.
Green, Red, and Patient Focus seem like weird little newcomers, but I
guess the Red party is seemingly on the rise, no? Also, does the
modern Liberal party have anything in common with Mowinckel's Liberal
party of the 1930s (arguably the Liberal party's heyday)?
Your estimate is roughly correct for the last election. I would say
Progress is not in the big parties bloc, but that's partly due to its
history. Without going too much into detail:
The beginning of parliamentary rule was first nonpartisan, but quickly
the Conservative and Liberal parties formed, broadly representing the
right and left wing, although the right/conservative was more in terms
of e.g. allowing the monarch wider powers, and there was not yet an
organized labor movement.
As history went on, more parties came into existence. This in part
explains the Liberal party's decline: it started off as the big-tent
everything from center to the left party, but its domain was
encroached upon by the other parties establishing themselves. E.g.
Labor coming into existence as a result of organized workers'
struggle. (If the US had become multi-party in the late 1800-early
1900s, perhaps Debs' Socialist Party would similarly have encroached
on the Democratic Party? I know too little about US history to say,
but it would be a roughly analogous development. The Norwegian Labor
Party was pretty radical in its earlier days too.)
The Centre party and Christian Democrats cater to particular groups:
farmers and Christians respectively. The very south and some of the
west of Norway has a considerable higher density of practicing
Christians, so these are the CDP's strongholds. The Centre party is
very pragmatic and focuses on increased agricultural subsidies,
devolution/increased power to the municipalities, etc. Earlier the
Centre party aligned itself with the right-of-center bloc
("non-socialist bloc"), but it's now aligned with the socialist one,
trying to be, as the name implies, centrist in economic matters and
otherwise retain its pragmatic nature. This can be seen in municipal
elections: in one municipality, they may give support to Progress, and
in another, to Labor.
The post-2005 coalescing of parties into more durable blocs left the
Christian Democrats with a serious dilemma. As it holds both
conservative and liberal Christians, there was a big debate on what
parties they should align with, or if they should be unaligned and
give confidence to any bloc on a case by case basis. They first tried
to move in a liberal direction, but lost support, and some of the most
conservative Christians tried to form their own party (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_(Norwegian_political_party)
), but the attempt fizzled.
Then, as a result of continual whittling, and the wings being evenly
matcehd yet unable to find a compormise, there was a party vote in
2019. The margin was very narrow but the party decided to follow the
right-of-center coalition. However, this led a considerable fraction
of the more liberal voters to go vote for somebody else.
In short, their problems were partly due to the decreasing influence
of religion in Norway and partly due to two wings or factions or equal
power having too different ideas of what the party should become.
Progress, Socialist Left, and Red are more recent.
Progress started as a right-wing close to libertarian economic party,
hence the original name "Anders Lange's Party for strong reduction of
taxes, duties and public interventions". Its leader from 1978 to 2006,
Carl I. Hagen, oriented it more in a general right-wing
conservative/populist direction: opposing immigration, focusing on
national identity and so on. So whereas the Conservative party is more
a business owners' party, Progress more seeks the support of people
who think immigration and open borders have gone too far. I guess a
very rough comparison would be something like: what if the Libertarian
party joined with tea partiers and southern conservatives and then
later moderated itself to gain wider support.
Socialist Left is to the left of Labor and basically started as the
party for socialist voters who didn't approve of or wanted to be
associated with the USSR. It currently enjoys the support of public
employees in particular, and is in favor of extended public services.
Red is further to the left, and its origins is as an umbrella group
for a number of communist organizations to propose candidates.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Electoral_Alliance) It is no longer
revolutionary, but has specialized itself as a party supporting the
concerns of the poor and otherwise less well off, particularly in
economic matters. As Labor has migrated rightwards (starting with New
Labour/New Public Management type policies in the 2000s; and moreso
lately with acceptance of more market-based/neoliberal EU systems),
this has opened up more space for the Socialist Left and Red parties.
Some voters consider Labor to have become less principled lately,
particularly under the latest PM, which has also pushed more voters to
either Centre and Conservative (to the right) or Socialist Left and
Red (to the left).
The Green party is another example of the increasing support of
environmentalist parties in Europe in general; and Patient Focus is a
single-issue party. In a non-party list system, Irene Ojala might have
been an independent.
(Since Norway is such a large country and the very North is sparsely
populated, there have been decisions to build hospitals further South
rather than closer to the few people who live in the very North. This
led to very long travel times for some, who then strongly objected to
the decision. The party was formed to advocate for the expansion of
medical services in the North.)
Interestingly, the "Christian Democratic" seems to have fallen
precipitously from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s (under
Bondevik's leadership). This Wikipedia article seems to confirm my
speculation about intraparty infighting being a thing, even with a
lot of parties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Party_(Norway)
That would also be true of the Liberal party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(Norway)
...though I suppose the answer to intraparty strife is to FORM A NEW
PARTY (or two)!!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway,_1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party(Norway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Norway)
This shows another way to deal with factions: In the early days of the
Progress Party, Carl I. Hagen kicked the libertarian wing out of the
party to reorient the party in its social conservative/populist
direction. There have since been a number of attempts to try to create
something either "like Progress but not Progress" or more libertarian;
none of these have really succeeded.
I'm not entirely clear how you arrived at "8.36 parties", which seems
awfully precise given the fluctuation of seat-earning parties in Norway.
You have a point: this is like the statistics joke "I've measured the
distance to your house to be 13.8752 miles +/- 10 miles". I just ran
the numbers through the effective number of parties calculation, and
my inclusion of decimals might have given an impression of more
precision than what's really there.
It would be interesting to see the change over time.
There are definitely caveats worth mentioning: it's harder to have a
negotiation phase if the president is directly elected, since
there's no
parliament where this discussion can happen. And we don't vote on
minor
positions like city coroner, either. But it's still possible for
presidential systems to be multi-party, and to my knowledge,
these do
not have primaries.
I suspect voters in the United States are way too fond of
micromanaging their leadership to allow for taking away voting for
city coroner or to vote for a party, and let the party leaders
negotiate who gets to be president or prime minister or grand poobah
or whatever. I didn't fully realize just how recent primary
elections were anywhere in the world until the 20th century, and that
the first time primary elections mattered for the U.S. presidency as
in 1912:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Republican_National_Convention
While I'll concede that there are multi-party democracies that
haven't found a need for primaries, and I'll concede that the brief
history of primary elections here in the United States and elsewhere
has been messy, I still think it's a good idea for high-stakes
elections. For high-stakes positions, it seems wise (to me) to allow
the general public two big stages of consideration: the primary
process and the general election process. Though many aspects of the
current mechanisms we use are awful, I think having two elections
rather than one gives us enough time to collectively think through
the decisions we make. For high-stakes elections, this seems worth it.
I wonder, could this partially be due to FPTP and IRV's first
preference support? Suppose you have a method that's vulnerable to
center squeeze. You would want to do multiple elections so that you
can get unusually strong wings out of the way and focus on something
that everybody likes. But if you have a method that is better at
finding the median voter preference, then the presence of wing
candidates with strong but limited support don't mess with things as
much.
If so, we should see less of a need for multiple steps with approval
or Condorcet than with FPTP or IRV -- although in a sense IRV already
simulates multiple steps. Someone (I don't remember who) called IRV
"Instant Primary" for this reason.
Then there's another perspective: that having multiple rounds let
people think between the rounds, and let the candidates readjust their
arguments, debate etc around what the people are showing to be important.
Consider that IRV countries have two party rule whereas delayed
countries usually don't, even though top-two seems to be much worse in
terms of crtierion compliance than IRV. Perhaps this dynamic process
(that the voters can change their minds as the field thins) helps
sustain multiple viable choices.
But if that's true, I would probably prefer an actual runoff to closed
primaries, because it would be better for both rounds to poll
everybody (hence have a greater chance of finding the actual median
voter position) than do medians of medians, which could potentially
lead to their own kind of center squeeze.
-km
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