Information Cascades in Elections
Don’t waste your vote! It’s election season in America and debate rages about the merits of the two major party candidates. Choosing to vote for a third party candidate can be seen as a waste; after all, it’s not like they have any chance of winning. But why is that? It is in fact a fine example of an information cascade. In an information cascade, the actions of a small group of people who perform an action will cause a ripple effect that affects later choices of others. After a while these cascades can become so powerful that the actions of a few people cannot change their effects. One of the hallmarks of the information cascade is that while everyone can see others’ choices, they do not get to see why everyone is making those choices.
How does that relate to the election? In an election, everyone wants to see their candidate win, or at least have a change of winning. Everyone theoretically has access to the choices others are going to make in polling numbers. Polls give raw data of the amounts of people who plan to vote for each candidate, but they do not show the reasons why each voter made the decision. Earlier in this election, third party candidates were polling at around 2% nationally, based on Rasmussen Reports on October 11, 2012. Now as the election is drawing to a close, third party candidates are polling at 1% nationally, based on Rasmussen Reports on November 1, 2012. While this change does not appear staggering at first, it represents a 50% loss of support for third parties in less than a month. One could make the assumption that some people who would support a third party candidate have chosen to give their votes to someone who has a change of winning. But why does a third party candidate not have a change of winning? Because people see that others don’t support them and they then choose to vote for someone more likely to win. As such this is a textbook example of an information cascade and a very hard situation to escape, but with the concerted efforts of a large enough group of people, the cascade can be put to an end.
All poll results were retrieved from http://www.politico.com/p/2012-election/polls/president/national/national-12-president-general-election-216/