« Garifuna fish soup | Main | Is there a "marriage premium" for gay men? »
Primaries
The voting weights implied by the estimated model demonstrate that early voters have up to 20 times the influence of late voters in the selection of candidates, demonstrating a significant departure from the ideal of "one person, one vote."
Here is the paper, I cannot find non-gated versions. If we were aiming for efficiency, and the saving of time, rather than democratic equity, in which state should the first primary or caucus be held?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 1, 2007 at 01:32 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
why not have them in every state on the same day?
Posted by: jftiv at Dec 1, 2007 1:41:21 PM
The reason we use inefficient states is because it allows fringe candidates to gain ground without spending a lot of money. Several presidents have gotten elected this way (Bill Clinton, for example). The problem with this is that no candidate should have to "Gain Ground" because it should be simple enough for a voter in any region to decide on which candidate he/she supports. That isn't the case, mainly because Americans are obscenely ignorant to anything going on in the world.
The only way to change this is through changing education, and raising a generation that actually cares about its civic duty; thus I would award the primary weight to those states which have the best-educated populations (and best education systems); these states are Mass., NY, NJ, Conn., RI, etc. They'd sort through the nonsense far more quickly because as a mass population they're more aware of politics and less swayed by media favorites.
For what it's worth, the general election has no equity either. While it's nowhere near the 20x multiplier of New Hampshire's voters, a voter in Wyoming has 3x the voting influence of a voter in California in the general election.
Factor in that Wyoming is 97% white vs. California's 45% and this becomes even more troubling.
Posted by: tim at Dec 1, 2007 1:46:13 PM
If we're aiming for efficiency and ignoring democratic equity, why are we bothering with an election?
Posted by: King Rat at Dec 1, 2007 2:19:23 PM
If either party were sane they would have the large battleground states -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan -- go first, instead of chipmunks like Iowa or New Hampshire, or foregone conclusions like South Carolina.
Posted by: Mark at Dec 1, 2007 3:02:50 PM
Very interesting paper. Didn't know that the effects were this large. Will
have to read the paper though.
King rat's comments are interesting but Tyler's question still stands.Tim
makes a really interesting suggestion. I think it is quite practical as
well. I will add as a second best solution that states should vote in
order of population size so that these effects are minimized.
The high quality of comments on blogs like these always surprises me.Maybe
the blogoshpere does have a future.
Posted by: sa at Dec 1, 2007 3:04:56 PM
I'm not fancy enough to read the entire paper, but at the very least the abstract omits something very important.
While our current primary system is inequitable to voters, it promotes equity among candidates. In order to compete in a primary that was held in every state on the same day, a candidate would need a gargantuan advertising budget. The current system allows candidates with fewer resources to more fairly compete with the big guys, because they can target their budgets on much smaller populations, and wins among those smaller populations translate into positive press that reaches voters in later states.
Posted by: Brandon Adams at Dec 1, 2007 3:29:23 PM
DC?
Posted by: Andy at Dec 1, 2007 3:53:04 PM
By the law of large numbers, a random selection of a few thousand voters is nearly as a good as a national primary for determining who is a viable candidate. Efficiency has little to do with it. The nomination process is a much a part of the campaign for the general election as what comes after.
Posted by: Cyrus at Dec 1, 2007 3:57:40 PM
By the law of large numbers, a random selection of a few thousand voters is nearly as a good as a national primary for determining who is a viable candidate. Efficiency has little to do with it. The nomination process is a much a part of the campaign for the general election as what comes after.
Posted by: Cyrus at Dec 1, 2007 3:58:57 PM
When did "one person one vote" become an ideal? I am pretty sure the Founders didn't use such disgusting concepts.
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Dec 1, 2007 5:34:58 PM
A few things:
Are we assuming all money spent by candidates is an inefficiency? Just the losing ones? just the ones with nothing interesting to say (I'm looking at you, Joe Biden)?
So which do you think is more efficient, the few big candidates spending gobs of cash in CA or Texas, or more candidates spending less cash in a smaller state like NH or SC? I'm inclined to think it's more efficient to go with a big state and (effectively) have a high monetary barrier to entry.
And awareness and support built up in January can transfer to November, so have the primary where you'll be campaigning in the general election. Plus, it's in each party's best interest to select the candidate who can win the 'marginal' states in Novemeber.
So if you're going for one state, go with Florida. I'm also sure all the news crews and campaign staff will appreciate Miami in December when contrasted with Manchester in January.
(and yes, I'm repeating Mark, but doing it with more words.)
Posted by: Patrick at Dec 1, 2007 6:28:27 PM
a random selection of a few thousand voters is nearly as a good as a national primary
But we're not talking about a random selection of a few thousand voters. NH and IA voters are very far from a random sample of the nation. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you and you're suggesting that we should randomly select a few thousand voters
nationwide to do our primary. In that case, the problem is obviously that those voters are going to be horribly ill-informed compared to the media-saturated voters of the early primary states as they exist today.
But maybe you could randomly select a sufficiently large number and then find a way to make them more informed before they voted.
Posted by: bbartlog at Dec 1, 2007 9:47:05 PM
I wish the two major parties would just go about selecting a candidate in a backroom of their national conventions like the old days.
This extended campaigning by way of "primaries" is simply another method of blocking out third party presidential candidates.
Posted by: Xmas at Dec 2, 2007 1:42:28 AM
Well, first thing is you could use what we call 'whipping' - some good old fashioned party discipline. Let the party big-wigs decide - they're better informed and have better incentives to make a good choice, and if they're poorly informed or blinded by ideology/religious faith, they'll lose.
Incidental benefits include a reduction in pork-belly politics generally, and ameliorating the harms from the awful gerrymandering you have.
Posted by: Dangermouse at Dec 2, 2007 5:03:59 AM
Most efficient would be to pick a random set of counties, weighted to match national demographics. The airfare to reach a random sample of individual voters is too high, and, when a candidate addresses an individual instead of a crowd, it is too easy for candidates to make contradictory promises.
Posted by: DK at Dec 2, 2007 9:53:03 AM
http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Brian_Knight/primaries6.pdf
is a non-gated version
Posted by: bccheah at Dec 2, 2007 11:04:18 AM
What do we mean by "efficiency" in choosing candidates? Do we mean "candidates that would represent what voters generally desire in a set of candidates"? Or "a candidate that represents what voters *of that party* desires? Because if we mean the first, then we pick a battleground state (Ohio, actually. It is the most average state in the union in many respects.), and they'll pick one set. But if we mean the latter, each party picks a different state to do the vote (in which case we'd need to know more about what each set of party voters in each state wants), based upon the average views of each party.
That said, can I put a word in for the value of inefficiency of choosing candidates? Primaries should take a while; we want candidates to beat each other up, views to crystalize, dirty laundry to be aired. If larger states go sooner, we can have a winner very quickly, and then we have the less-tested candidates in the general.
Posted by: jared at Dec 2, 2007 11:13:01 AM
NH and IA voters are very far from a random sample of the nation.
And Iowa caucus attenders are far from a random sample of Iowa general election voters. The caucuses discourage the terminally shy, those who don't understand the more complex process, and those whose schedule doesn't allow them that much time in the evening.
I say this as an Iowa resident, I can see a lot of value in having a couple of small states go first, but there is absolutely no reason it has to be Iowa and New Hampshire every time.
Posted by: Allan Beatty at Dec 2, 2007 11:38:57 AM
In terms of representing the "average voter", Iowa is particularly problematic. Notice how not a single Republican candidate stood by free market principles (which their party is supposed to embrace) when asked about farm subsidies during the CNN/YouTube debate. If there's a value to having small 'gatekeeper' states, they exact a very, very high price for it both from America and from the world (see: global food shortages, agri subsidies as barrier to trade deals).
Posted by: Daniel Merritt at Dec 2, 2007 2:33:44 PM
What is voter education? Is there a point where we have diminishing marginal returns the amount of education a voter has? It is overall education or education via mainstream news sources or candidate specific education? How would education be rated?
I think the "voter education" method is complete crap for determining when a state should go in the primaries. I'm not sure what else would make a good criteria, but education isnt the answer.
I like the idea of using randomized counties (pre-determined so candidates know where to campaign) throughout the country all on the same day.
Posted by: Niederriter at Dec 2, 2007 5:00:06 PM
Going back to the original question, if you are talking about the efficiency of the campaigning process, then the ideal state is one that is geographically compact (so candidates don't have to spend a lot of time travelling within the state), easy to reach (since most candidates will be from other states), and has a relatively high population density (ability to reach the most voters reached per campaign swing). Alternatively, you could pick a state that is physically larger, but where the population is heavily concentrated in one or two cities (the expectation being that the candidates could ignore the unpopulated areas). On those criteria, I would suggest a first primary in Rhode Island or Connecticut, with the second in Nevada or Arizona.
Posted by: Richard at Dec 2, 2007 5:26:24 PM
Where to hold them first? Anywhere but here in Iowa. Please, oh please, make it stop...
Posted by: Joe Kristan at Dec 2, 2007 6:39:16 PM
When there was no incumbent President from their party, 42% of the time the eventual Democrat nominee lost IA or NH. For Republicans it was 50%. What's a better percentage?
If a state always picked the eventual nominee, people would say it has too much power. If it never picked the nominee, they'd say it is irrelevant. (Candidates would likely agree and avoid the state.) By this measure, I'd say the states are doing their job. They're testing the candidates, the race is relevant, but not so much that other states are unimportant.
Also, what about experience, culture and institutional knowledge? Are other citizens going to get excited in August (Ames straw poll) about an election in January? What if the state government screws up (Florida)? IA and NH voters get far more 1 on 1 time with candidates. They can judge this year's candidates against previous years. Changing states would sacrifice this knowledge.
Posted by: 8 at Dec 3, 2007 12:54:24 PM
I just read an article that said that Senator Obama wrote an essay when he was five. Also, he killed his first bear when he was three. He also invented the internet.
Posted by: jorod at Dec 4, 2007 3:52:03 PM
If we're trying to save time, that mostly means keeping people away from the polls (and choosing a reasonably good candidate that doesn't make horrible decisions that waste peoples' time). Since most of the time and money wasted is in the general election, choose either a very conservative or very liberal small state--Idaho, SC, Hawaii, or Vermont. The dems of the conservative state will choose a centrist, while the republicans will choose a lunatic. Similarly, in the liberal state, the dems will choose a lunatic whilst the republicans will choose a centrist. The general election outcome will be certain from the start, so people will not waste their time voting (in either case, the lunatic will lose). And we will have a centrist result.
Posted by: at Dec 10, 2007 1:18:13 PM
