Seems the scale is unhelpful to the process. Yah. The Almanac of American Politics charts congresscritters along three axes (economic/social/international or some such), which I think gives a clearer picture. It's not perfect, but any system is going to involve a loss of information. The trick is to lose less-important information.
I note with some interest that in "open field" elections with multiple candidates from many factions, the "moderate" candidate like Schwarznegger or Zell Miller can acheive an absolute majority, while in two-party elections it seems the winner, between two extreme partisens, is luck to get a pluralilty.
That can happen, yes, but on the other hand, in, say, a three-person race, a "moderate" who would defeat either of the flanking candidates one-on-one may have so much support gnawed off on each side as to wind up last. (I've seen a careful analysis of a race for House Majority Leader in the early '80s in which exactly this happened.) Plurality voting with a runoff if no one achieves 50% is especially susceptible to this; straight plurality voting, sans runoff, is slightly (but only slightly) less so.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: Bent
Date: 2004-06-09 01:49 pm (UTC)Yah. The Almanac of American Politics charts congresscritters along three axes (economic/social/international or some such), which I think gives a clearer picture. It's not perfect, but any system is going to involve a loss of information. The trick is to lose less-important information.
I note with some interest that in "open field" elections with multiple candidates from many factions, the "moderate" candidate like Schwarznegger or Zell Miller can acheive an absolute majority, while in two-party elections it seems the winner, between two extreme partisens, is luck to get a pluralilty.
That can happen, yes, but on the other hand, in, say, a three-person race, a "moderate" who would defeat either of the flanking candidates one-on-one may have so much support gnawed off on each side as to wind up last. (I've seen a careful analysis of a race for House Majority Leader in the early '80s in which exactly this happened.) Plurality voting with a runoff if no one achieves 50% is especially susceptible to this; straight plurality voting, sans runoff, is slightly (but only slightly) less so.