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The Near-Impossibility of Swing Voting (movie spoiler alert)

Started by cordblomquist · 10 months ago

Last night I attended a preview of the new film Swing Vote, which is being released tomorrow. It revolves around one man, Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), who through a series of odd events winds up getting to re-cast a botched ballot in a tied presidential election in the state whose electora ... Continue reading »

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  • Obviously, this is a good place to make a plug for GMU Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter. Caplan discusses precisely this issue - why people vote and why they vote the way they do, given that it is not in their self-interest. Caplan contends that the gains from voting - the probability of affecting an outcome times the magnitude of that outcome - are so ridiculously low as to be easily overridden by biases such as those "warm and fuzzy" feelings you speak of.

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