Mat comments on The Two-Party Swindle - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 January 2008 08:38AM

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Comment author: DanielLC 12 December 2011 07:57:45PM 2 points [-]

That seems unlikely. They get their base to vote for them no matter what. They have to worry about the edge cases. I suppose it's possible that they're trying to get their base to vote, as opposed to not voting.

I don't pay that much to politics, but I would suspect that, if the circumstances point to a Democrat winning, for instance, the Republicans will try to move more towards the middle ground so they still have a chance.

It's not really catering to the enemy. It's just the middle ground. And that's only if you're talking about the effect of voting for one of the main parties. I very much doubt that Republicans would call Libertarians the enemy, for example.

Comment author: Mat 06 November 2012 08:31:50AM *  1 point [-]

They have to worry about the edge because they get their base vote no matter what

that's true... but it is still a fact that

they would rather appeal to their base than cater to "the enemy".

I think because in this way they charge up their base voters, which are then more willing to do some work for them, such as proselyte around, sharing on facebook, talking only about the good things of their party and the bad things of the opposite one, and that kind of stuff. In this way they can easily catch the edge voters who see the distinction between voters and politicians, because the proselytes come from other voters "just like me" and not from politicians.