This is a very inetertesting article about the effects of the third place runners in an election on the two leading candidates. Front runners are often focus on each other-which I think can greatly be seen currently-rather than on the third place candidates, who have a huge influence on our decisions (known as the decoy effect).
"What the decoy effect basically shows is that when people cannot decide between two front-runners, they use the third candidate as a sort of measuring stick. If one front-runner looks much better than the third candidate, people gravitate toward that front-runner. Third candidates, in other words, can make a complicated decision feel simple."
I find this to be a very intriguing idea. This suggests that a third place runner could potentially boost votes for a front-runner that closely resembles him/her rather than taking votes away. Since there definately are leading contenders in both parties, it will be interesting to see how this theory eventually plays out.
This is a class blog for the students of POLSCI 426: Congressional Politics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
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2 comments:
Because the article provided an explicit example of how the decoy effect might apply to the Democratic primary, I will now provide an explicit example of how the decoy effect might apply to the Republican primary. With Tommy Thompson’s trumpeting himself as “the real conservative” of the numerous GOP hopefuls, any GOP candidate who successfully portrays himself as more conservative than Thompson on a particular policy dimension will likely win some additional vote share in the GOP primary. In particular, Sam Brownback can tout how he has always been pro-life and anti-gay marriage, issues that Thompson has not enacted aggressive policies for or against, especially the gay marriage issue, except when he had to choose between signing or vetoing abortion legislation as WI Governor. Brownback can then come across to the Christian Coalition as the best crusader for their interests by virtue of being more conservative on those salient issues than the apparently all-around most conservative candidate.
Ross Perot did for Bill Clinton what Ralph Nader did for George Bush. Divide one half of the voters so the other guy wins. However I hope that decoys keep running and enough voters have the brains to vote for them so we can finally rid ourselves of this two party system that is failing America.
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