Comments on: Politicians Never “Lie”

By: The Signal: Politicians never ‘lie’ | bluhost.koolserve.net

The Signal: Politicians never ‘lie’ | bluhost.koolserve.net — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:56:59 +0000

[…] The post is adapted from a version that first appeared on the blog Messy Matters. […]

By: dreeves

dreeves — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:51:10 +0000

@Arthur, wow, great point about the practical implications of that puzzle. I first thought of it during the 2000 US presidential elections.

@Andy, nice generalization! I guess with n candidates you can win with as little as 1/n^2 of the popular vote.

@Arthur again, nice job nailing the puzzle, without even spoiling it. :)

Handy decoder now that the cat is out of the bag: http://rot13.com/

Which reminds me of my old Messy Matters post on “rot13 for numbers”:
/sealedbids

By: Arthur B.

Arthur B. — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:35:50 +0000

This percolation dynamic is very strong in France with legislative elections. The FN for example, a populist right wing party* doesn’t hold a single seat in the parliament despite getting 5~10% of the popular vote depending on the years.
Obviously they lobby for seats to be allocated based on the popular vote.

* this comment is by no means meant to express any sympathy

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:53:15 +0000

Answer to the riddle: 75%

In order to win the general election, a politician must get at least 50% of electoral votes. The way to win the election by getting the least votes, therefore, is to win 50% of the votes in states which represent 50% of the population, and zero votes in the other states. This gives a grand total of 25% of the popular vote.

Interestingly, if we allow three politicians then it is possible for one of them to win the general election with only 11% of the popular vote!

By: Arthur B.

Arthur B. — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:03:05 +0000

I think the main issue is that the lying is irrelevant to most people. Politics isn’t about policy. If it were, voters would be horrified to find the candidate they supported break all of their campaign promises or be caught lying. Why aren’t they? I don’t think lack of reporting is to blame, all of these lies are exposed.

A competing hypothesis is that people vote and support candidates for the same reason they support the Yankees or the Mets. The Yankees and the Mets do not stand for anything particularly different. They do pretty much the same thing and yet people seem passionate about “their” team.

A sport fan cheering as about as much chance of impacting the outcome of a game as a voter. Why should any single voter care about policy when they cannot even hope to begin to influence it? It then doesn’t matter who lies, who break campaign promises. The election isn’t about picking a candidate, it’s about cheering for a group one affiliates with, the blue or the greens ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots )

By: Arthur B.

Arthur B. — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:21:10 +0000

ROT13 encoded…
friragl svir creprag