The Washington Post of April 2 carried an article titled, “The Decoy Effect, or How to Win an Election.” The article quotes Scott Highhouse, who has studied the “decoy effect” at Bowling Green State University, saying “Research on the decoy effect suggests that Nader’s presence (in 2000), rather than taking votes away, probably increased the share of votes for the candidate he most resembled.”
Thanks to Taegan Goddard for pointing out the article, which can be seen here.
Thx guys, once again, the ‘experts’ with alphabet soup behind their name[s] FINALLY confirm what every day ‘slubs’ knew all along!
Next, Hillary Rodam Clinton is not the anti War candidate which she portrays! The the near Ivy League undergrad stand out, Ivy League legal scholar and former resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue did ‘not have a clue’ on what millions of John Six Packs and Jane Does have known [IN DETAIL] about the Gulf Occupation for years!
Dems and GOP: smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors!
This is very useful information. I have long held an intuitive opinion that Ross Perot was a decoy candidate and the Reform Party and expendable construction.
I would like to see what social science practitioners make of political party candidate selection. I would want to see a demonstration of the choice-effectiveness on a target of two types of decoy political candidates – the intended versus the ‘unintended’ or autonomous.
What I mean is to what, if any, effect does an autonomous candidate drive a voter to another candidate compared to a candidate intentionally designed (non-autonmous) to drive that voter in a three-way set?
Or bluntly, suppose we could compare the Ross Perot campaign effects to the Ralph Nader campaign effects (data is probably irretrievable). So study the 2006- 2008 presidential campaign. Go ye and grant-seek, my brethern. I hope to hear about this before 2012!