I think this piece about the center-squeeze effect might address your concern about other voting systems leading to greater prominence of extreme candidates. In short, both plurality and ranked-choice voting tend to eliminate centrist candidates early, as many voters may like a centrist candidate but prefer to vote for a more extreme candidate, either because (in RCV) they like the extreme candidate more or (in FPTP) the centrist candidate is not viable. Approval voting gives an advantage to candidates that aren’t everyone’s favorite but are acceptable to voters in all parts of the spectrum.
(TBH I’m pretty undecided between voting systems, but I’ve long held that plurality voting is a bad system. Nowadays I’m sympathetic to approval and quadratic voting.)
Coming back to this thread now having thought about it more. Speaking from my personal experience as an American citizen, I think the spoiler effect lowers voters’ confidence in the electoral system, especially that of idealistic, young voters.
I was a Bernie supporter in 2016. I wasn’t excited about Hillary being the Democratic nominee, but because I understood the incentive structure created by FPTP, I chose to support Hillary in the general election because I really hated Trump. But, there was a substantial number of Bernie supporters who defected from the Democratic base after Bernie lost. Mainstream Democrats seemed to be shaming them into voting for Hillary, on the grounds that:
if you vote for Jill Stein (the Green candidate) instead of Hillary, Trump will win.
if you vote for Gary Johnson (the Libertarian candidate) instead of Hillary, Trump will win.
if you write in Bernie, Trump will win.
if you don’t vote, Trump will win.
This has been called vote-shaming, and I think it makes American political culture a lot more toxic because it pits ideologically similar people (like center-left and far-left progressives) against each other. Many people don’t vote at all, both because of voter suppression, and because they don’t feel represented by the major candidates. Eligible non-voters in 2016 were also more likely to be younger, less educated, less affluent, and non-White (source), which suggests that the system is not representing these groups as well as it could be. It is a problem that citizens of the world’s oldest continuously running democracy feel disempowered—it means that the government is not as responsive to citizens’ interests as it should be. Vote-shaming puts the blame on individuals for not voting, instead of the system for causing vote-splitting.
Just so you all don’t think that this only happens on the left: I have a friend who didn’t really like either major candidate. He leans conservative and strikes me as someone who might have preferred the Libertarian Party or Bernie Sanders. Despite not liking Trump that much, he voted for Trump in the 2016 general, because he thought Hillary was worse.
Some statistics:
In 2016, just 54.8% of the voting-age population (VAP) voted in the presidential election; 59.2% of the voting-eligible population (VEP) voted.
In 2020, this increased to 62% of the VAP and 66.7% of the VEP. (source)
I think that increasing voter turnout would make the government more responsive to citizens’ interests, and I think changing the voting system we use would help with this because it would help citizens feel more empowered to vote.
Note: I’m not saying that vote-splitting, or even problems with the voting mechanism in general, is the only issue with the U.S. electoral system. I think there could be other problems introduced by a new voting system such as approval voting—practical problems that degrade the political system similarly to the way that I think vote-splitting does (since we know that no voting system is theoretically perfect).
Yeah I mean this is a pretty testable hypothesis and I’m tempted to actually test it. My guess is that the level of vote splitting that electoral system has won’t have an effect and that that whether not voting is compulsory, number of young people, level of education and level of trust will explain most of the variation in rich democracies.
I think this piece about the center-squeeze effect might address your concern about other voting systems leading to greater prominence of extreme candidates. In short, both plurality and ranked-choice voting tend to eliminate centrist candidates early, as many voters may like a centrist candidate but prefer to vote for a more extreme candidate, either because (in RCV) they like the extreme candidate more or (in FPTP) the centrist candidate is not viable. Approval voting gives an advantage to candidates that aren’t everyone’s favorite but are acceptable to voters in all parts of the spectrum.
(TBH I’m pretty undecided between voting systems, but I’ve long held that plurality voting is a bad system. Nowadays I’m sympathetic to approval and quadratic voting.)
Coming back to this thread now having thought about it more. Speaking from my personal experience as an American citizen, I think the spoiler effect lowers voters’ confidence in the electoral system, especially that of idealistic, young voters.
I was a Bernie supporter in 2016. I wasn’t excited about Hillary being the Democratic nominee, but because I understood the incentive structure created by FPTP, I chose to support Hillary in the general election because I really hated Trump. But, there was a substantial number of Bernie supporters who defected from the Democratic base after Bernie lost. Mainstream Democrats seemed to be shaming them into voting for Hillary, on the grounds that:
if you vote for Jill Stein (the Green candidate) instead of Hillary, Trump will win.
if you vote for Gary Johnson (the Libertarian candidate) instead of Hillary, Trump will win.
if you write in Bernie, Trump will win.
if you don’t vote, Trump will win.
This has been called vote-shaming, and I think it makes American political culture a lot more toxic because it pits ideologically similar people (like center-left and far-left progressives) against each other. Many people don’t vote at all, both because of voter suppression, and because they don’t feel represented by the major candidates. Eligible non-voters in 2016 were also more likely to be younger, less educated, less affluent, and non-White (source), which suggests that the system is not representing these groups as well as it could be. It is a problem that citizens of the world’s oldest continuously running democracy feel disempowered—it means that the government is not as responsive to citizens’ interests as it should be. Vote-shaming puts the blame on individuals for not voting, instead of the system for causing vote-splitting.
Just so you all don’t think that this only happens on the left: I have a friend who didn’t really like either major candidate. He leans conservative and strikes me as someone who might have preferred the Libertarian Party or Bernie Sanders. Despite not liking Trump that much, he voted for Trump in the 2016 general, because he thought Hillary was worse.
Some statistics:
In 2016, just 54.8% of the voting-age population (VAP) voted in the presidential election; 59.2% of the voting-eligible population (VEP) voted.
In 2020, this increased to 62% of the VAP and 66.7% of the VEP. (source)
I think that increasing voter turnout would make the government more responsive to citizens’ interests, and I think changing the voting system we use would help with this because it would help citizens feel more empowered to vote.
Note: I’m not saying that vote-splitting, or even problems with the voting mechanism in general, is the only issue with the U.S. electoral system. I think there could be other problems introduced by a new voting system such as approval voting—practical problems that degrade the political system similarly to the way that I think vote-splitting does (since we know that no voting system is theoretically perfect).
Yeah I mean this is a pretty testable hypothesis and I’m tempted to actually test it. My guess is that the level of vote splitting that electoral system has won’t have an effect and that that whether not voting is compulsory, number of young people, level of education and level of trust will explain most of the variation in rich democracies.