Analysis: “Is game theory the key to success in the Republican presidential debate? “
Game theory aims to respond to scenarios where one person’s choice is not just dependent on how they arrived at that specific decision. It also takes into account what kind of choices others around them are making. An example of game theory in regards to politics is deciding whether to take a very direct or mild platform on women’s reproductive rights, gun control, or immigration law reform. However, in regards to political elections in a broader sense, game theory could potentially be the underlying secret to coming out successful in comparison to the other candidates.
In the past few months, the Republican Party has gained incredible media attention. This surge in attention can definitely be attributed to the number of candidates who joined the race in such a short span of time. There are currently about sixteen “serious contenders” (“Who is Running for President?”) who have managed to get their names picked up by conservative media outlets. With such a huge GOP selection pool, they all must strategically play up their platforms to garner the most support, whether this is through taking up an extremist stance to garner strong rooted party support, stay neutral to get support from the undecided or moderate Republicans voters, or stand clear on pertinent issues in current day society and avoid controversial GOP issues. How can one stand out? Well, perhaps, master game theory and develop a dominant strategy.
Taking a quick step back, it is important to first understand how the candidacy bid process works. Before the general election, there is a series of steps hopeful presidential candidates must take if they want to ultimately get their party’s bid for the ballot. Depending on the state, caucuses and primaries are used to pick delegates who will represent party nominations. In caucuses, delegates are picked to represent that given state during the national convention for a certain party (and if they wish to, they can express support for a candidate of their choosing prior to convention). Primaries can be open or closed depending on the state (meaning, during open primaries the voter does not have to be registered to the party for which he or she wants to vote for, while during closed primaries the voter must be registered to the party of the candidate he or she would like to vote for). Primaries use ballots where voters can vote for the candidate they support. Delegates decide which candidate will get the bid. The Democratic Party uses a “proportional method”, meaning that if two Democratic candidates are running and there are ten delegates total in a given state and Candidate 1 gets 20% support and Candidate 2 gets 80% support, Candidate 1 will get two delegates and Candidate 2 will get the other 8 delegates. The Republican Party, in turn, allows candidates in some states to get all of the delegates if they win delegate majority where the “majority winner” could easily sweep away the votes in certain states (“Government 101: United States Presidential Primary”).
Gaining support from the public is the number one challenge for Republicans. You cannot focus on the game if you are not a player. Since there are so many candidates running, Republican presidential debates could potentially highly skew public opinions based on the candidates’ performances. As mentioned in the article, we can model the GOP debates after game theory ideology. Games require three main components: players, strategies, and payoffs. The players in this election debate game are all of the profiled candidates, and the strategies are how they will present themselves to the public based on who they identify as their voter target audience. The payoff is how well their favorability poll ratings change and whether their voter “target audiences” are met. If two candidates could meet the audience approval of their target audiences, perhaps they could co-exist within a Nash or mixed equilibrium.
However, it is interesting how the article mentions that if Trump takes an aggressive stance, he might influence the other candidates to act more moderate so that the portion of the public who dislikes GOP extremism but still identifies as Republican will have a candidate to get behind. However, this all relies on the idea that Donald Trump will follow the silent rules of the debate. Otherwise, if he conducts unimaginable actions time and time again and continues to garner extremist GOP support, he might secure a dominant strategy and could make it harder for a Nash Equilibrium where another candidate could get a fighting chance to run against Trump for the bid. If Trump continues to find incentives to deviate from the normality of debate tactics, such as by not simply taking “typical” stances and collectively answering moderator questions without personal outbursts, he will continue to secure his dominant strategy hold over the other candidates. As mentioned in the article, his unpredictable statements make it extremely difficult for other candidates to come up with best response strategies because the probability of hearing an absurd statement is fairly high (just assuming — since no values like p and q have been calculated). Game theory relies on seeing how others respond, not just one individual’s choice. However, by deviating from the rules of the debates and making completely unpredictable comments, the other candidates have a lesser likelihood of being prepared and being able to stick to their debate outlines or drafted arguments because they could be unsure as to what kind of stance or rebuttal they should make in short, unprepared notice. Regardless, Trump has been reaping the payoff benefits thus far with his dominant extremist approach (“Is game theory the key to success in the Republican presidential debate?”).
**Side note opinion (added 3 days after publishing blog post): Interesting – Scott Walker, as of Sept 21, 2015 has dropped out of the race. He was also seen as a candidate with extreme opinions, like Donald Trump (both sided on many similar issues). However, he was not gaining enough favorability. This could be accounted for a lack of “outbursts” to cater to the media’s attention, thus supporting the idea that Donald Trump had a “dominant strategy” in the debate, leading to this “loss for Walker.” Walker did not cater his target audience and thus did not benefit in payoff (“Scott Walker drops out of 2016 presidential race”).
Source: (article used)
“Is game theory the key to success in the Republican presidential debate?”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/05/game-theory-republican-presidential-debate
Additional links: (mainly for facts / clarifications):
“Who is Running for President?”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/2016-presidential-candidates.html
“Government 101: United States Presidential Primary”
https://votesmart.org/education/presidential-primary#.Vfy6LOuNpUQ
“Scott Walker drops out of 2016 presidential race”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/politics/scott-walker-drops-out-2016-election/ *** added this to my original post from Sept 18 because felt it was interesting and relevant!!!