Tit for Tat- Trump’s Strategy
The upcoming presidential election has brought with it a storm of controversy. With the candidates often using personal attacks against each other, each has been forced to adopt a strategy for the political arena. Donald Trump describes himself as a “counter-puncher”, according to the Rolling Stones article “What Game Theory Tells Us About Donald Trump”. This article showcases Trump’s apparent default strategy. In short, Trump is nice to people who are nice to him and attacks people who aren’t. The article compared Trump to a computer that won a competition. Each computer was programmed to play the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The computer that won, called Tit for Tat, was programmed to be “nice” if the opponent was nice the last time and be “mean” if the opponent was mean in the previous game. By using this adaptive strategy, Tit for Tat was able to in a way react to its opponents, therefore giving itself the optimal payoffs. Does this mean that Trump’s “counter-punching” strategy is likely to carry him through to victory as well?
The answer is, no, probably not. While that strategy may work well for the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the presidential election is an entirely different game. Each candidate has not two, but infinitely many strategies, and while we may often imagine the election as having only two players, there are in fact more. While most of the players have almost no chance of winning the game, they can influence the outcome. In addition, this game has many outside effects that are not within the player’s control, like media and other political figures. The article points out that Hillary Clinton could use the fact that Trump never deviates from his strategy to her advantage. By poking and prodding Trump through the correct conduits, she may be able to manipulate him in order to damage his image. In other words, Clinton may be able to use the features of this extremely complex game in order to gain an advantage over Trump, whose strategy is only effective in a very simplified version of the game he is actually playing.
Reference: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/what-game-theory-tells-us-about-donald-trump-20160511