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Game Theory and the Republicans.

According to current media, the event that is commanding a lot of public eye today is the 2016 presidential election . The most entertaining part of this event is the Republican party who currently has 15 different candidates running  for the party nod. As celebrity personality Bill Maher stated on multiple occasions “the clown car is filling up.” While the number is down since the party reached as many as 20 candidates at one point, its easy to draw parallels on how game theory is present in this race.

It is well known at this point that the man driving the clown car is Donald trump. He is easily ahead in most polls now and his current pace ensures that this won’t change for some time. As the author of the article (link at the bottom) Game Theory and Politics, old strategies that were used against Trump parallel what Game Theory predicts using the context of Mario Kart. While one person is in the lead in Mario Kart, the main objective of the collective is to take away the lead using any means possible. The best strategy is usually waiting for someone to get the blue shell, a item that targets the person in first and takes them down momentarily allowing other to gain ground. In the case of the Republican’s clown car, they are trying to take control from Donald Trump. The initial strategy mirrored Mario Kart, attack the person in the lead collectively. However, this strategy doesn’t work when one person in the lead is far and away in the lead. Even with multiple blue shells being thrown at Donald Trump the ground being made up is not significant or even non-existent.

Since this strategy was not working there is a response that game theory also predicts. Trump doesn’t have the majority (standing at 40 percent in the highest polls) the next strategy is to take valuable percentage from other weaker candidates. In the recent debate this is what also started to emerge. While candidates still attacked Trump, the focus shifted to now attack each other with a similar intensity. Moving forward it will be interesting to see what new strategies will arise from this ever changing game.

http://utahpolicy.com/index.php/features/today-at-utah-policy/7006-game-theory-and-politics-what-mario-kart-can-teach-us-about-2016

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