I don’t think your political influence is primarily dependent on the probability that your one, single vote will decide the election. It’s a much more nebulous thing that that in reality; it’s how you show up in polls, how politicians think their positions may affect your vote, how likely your demographic is to vote in the first place and how that affects politician’s priorities, how well you are able to articulate your position, how many resources a political party feels they need to devote to your district instead of some other district, ect. For example, even if it didn’t change any elections at all, I think that we would be funding college in a very different way if a higher percentage of college students voted.
Nevertheless, I still think that a strategy optimized for actually making a difference in politics looks very different from the strategy most people adopt.
Probably true. The strategy most people adopt looks more to me like “let me try to spend the minimal amount of time necessary in order to get enough information to let me feel confident in deciding who to vote for”. Much less payoff then a deliberate strategy to maximize making a difference, but much less cost involved as well. There’s also a general attitude among a lot of people that, at a rule, doing at least that is your responsibility as a citizen, and I think that is probably correct.
I don’t think your political influence is primarily dependent on the probability that your one, single vote will decide the election. It’s a much more nebulous thing that that in reality; it’s how you show up in polls, how politicians think their positions may affect your vote, how likely your demographic is to vote in the first place and how that affects politician’s priorities, how well you are able to articulate your position, how many resources a political party feels they need to devote to your district instead of some other district, ect. For example, even if it didn’t change any elections at all, I think that we would be funding college in a very different way if a higher percentage of college students voted.
Probably true. The strategy most people adopt looks more to me like “let me try to spend the minimal amount of time necessary in order to get enough information to let me feel confident in deciding who to vote for”. Much less payoff then a deliberate strategy to maximize making a difference, but much less cost involved as well. There’s also a general attitude among a lot of people that, at a rule, doing at least that is your responsibility as a citizen, and I think that is probably correct.