both can be true at the same time: when the majority are voting for the same policies they have always been, and the parties move their positions such that they divide the votes between themselves as evenly as possible, the outcome does depend on a minority of swing voters
Taleb's examples are a variant of this, where the majority is passive instead of static
> the parties move their positions such that they divide the votes between themselves as evenly as possible
That's something I'd like to understand better... Why would they TRY to divide evenly? Where's the party that takes the majority position for each topic? It seems foolish to play for a draw or tie, so something else must be happening.
From what I've seen in my life, people are more likely conform to their party than vice versa. But I've got a very small sample size.
They're not trying to. Each side's politicians are very much trying to get a supermajority voting for them. And in local areas, the skew this produces toward one side or the other is quite clear.
It's only on a national level that the parity becomes visible.
I've never seen numbers for 2024, but I have for previous recent national elections, and the most either party has in any state is roughly 70%. So at the statewide level, that's the total skew you're looking at.
In local elections, things can be more one-sided; I imagine there are a fair number of rural counties that would have only a handful of blue voters (but out of a total of, y'know, a few thousand voters in the whole county).
You don't have to ascribe free will to the politicians; just agency. They have metrics to game, the voters don't, that's enough. For instance, Trump recently tried to get Coca-Cola to replace corn sugar with cane sugar.
It reminds me of WWI attrition tactics..
(I'm trying to analyze the data on this ATM- please tolerate 8my current read. If you've got a better way to say it don't hold back!)
You brought up a "silent minority" effect that I've to think/find out more about. Your friends that disagree with their party line usually stays out of the vote. However,that seems to make (the impact of) the actual swing voter even stronger, according to my very preliminary analysis
The idea is that there should be limits to what democratically elected officials can do when it comes to suppressing the rights of the few. It makes perfect sense. All people deserve equal rights.
If we had a fair popular vote, perhaps. As is, National US elections is disproportionately focused on appealing to 6-7 purple states opposed to who has the best platform for the country.
