If you’re trying to compute an expected utility, I don’t think this is the right way to compute the probability. The probability to compute is the probability that your vote will decide the election, which I expect to be very small where I live (California) but might be large enough in swing states to make it worthwhile to vote there. Someone posted a nice paper computing this probability for several states based on Nate Silver’s election data that I can’t find. (A very important point here is that the amount of political leverage you have is not linear in the number of people whose votes you affect: the change in the probability of deciding the election is highly nonlinear as you get closer to the boundary where the outcome changes.)
Nevertheless, I still think that a strategy optimized for actually making a difference in politics looks very different from the strategy most people adopt.
The probability to compute is the probability that your vote will decide the election
I think this should be the probability of your decision procedure deciding the election. If many people are using similar decision procedures, the decision they follow commands their combined votes, and correspondingly the probability that the decision matters goes up when there are more similarly-deciding people. From this point of view, the voters in an election are not individuals, but decision procedures, each of which has a certain number of votes, and each decision procedure can decide whether it’s useful to cast its many votes. A decision procedure that is followed by many people, but thinks that it only commands one vote is mistaken on this point of fact, and so will make suboptimal decisions.
A good example of this is how certain very simplistic decision procedures, like “single issue voters”, can have influence far above and beyond their numbers. If 5% of the population will always vote based on one specific issue, and that is both known and understood by politicians, then even if they are in the minority, they have a major amount of influence over that one issue, because that decision procedure is so significant. Examples: gun lobbies, labor groups, abortion, ect.
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.
If you’re trying to compute an expected utility, I don’t think this is the right way to compute the probability. The probability to compute is the probability that your vote will decide the election, which I expect to be very small where I live (California) but might be large enough in swing states to make it worthwhile to vote there. Someone posted a nice paper computing this probability for several states based on Nate Silver’s election data that I can’t find. (A very important point here is that the amount of political leverage you have is not linear in the number of people whose votes you affect: the change in the probability of deciding the election is highly nonlinear as you get closer to the boundary where the outcome changes.)
Nevertheless, I still think that a strategy optimized for actually making a difference in politics looks very different from the strategy most people adopt.
I think this should be the probability of your decision procedure deciding the election. If many people are using similar decision procedures, the decision they follow commands their combined votes, and correspondingly the probability that the decision matters goes up when there are more similarly-deciding people. From this point of view, the voters in an election are not individuals, but decision procedures, each of which has a certain number of votes, and each decision procedure can decide whether it’s useful to cast its many votes. A decision procedure that is followed by many people, but thinks that it only commands one vote is mistaken on this point of fact, and so will make suboptimal decisions.
Good point.
A good example of this is how certain very simplistic decision procedures, like “single issue voters”, can have influence far above and beyond their numbers. If 5% of the population will always vote based on one specific issue, and that is both known and understood by politicians, then even if they are in the minority, they have a major amount of influence over that one issue, because that decision procedure is so significant. Examples: gun lobbies, labor groups, abortion, ect.
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.