Game Theory in U.S. Politics (U.S. Election)
This U.S. election between democratic nominee, Hilary Clinton, and republican nominee, Donald Trump, was a one for the history books. Although Hilary Clinton won the majority of the popular vote, it was Donald Trump who won the Electoral College, ultimately winning the election. However, before the election results, Game theory has given us interesting insights into perhaps the most divided and interesting election campaign in recent years. Many critics stated that there has never been an election campaign quite like this presidential election: one in which the supporters of both side have been more certain with passion on what is right and wrong.
And so, it is very interesting to see this election and use the ideas of game theory in analyzing the process of votes and strategies of political parties in depth. Take for example. Imagine if election voters distributed uniformly across the spectrum from ultra-left to ultra- right. Both parties want to have right positioning so that they could be closer to the voter’s ideology. So let’s imagine one party starting from any position left of the center of the uniformly distributed spectrum of ideology. Then it is in the best interest of the second party to position just slightly right of party 1 to maximize its voter attraction. Then Party 1 would again try to be slightly right of party 2 and this game will be player out until they are situated in the center and have the split votes. Thus, we can see this game and positioning to be the Nash Equilibrium of US politics. The parties are conducting a combination of strategies to best reply to the decision and choices of the other player. Although this election and the strategies involved by the candidates were not exactly like the game, it is still very interesting and relevant in it that they use game theory to attract the most voters as possible.
Reference: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/a1rlBGMghqYcnuLjelTVLJ/The-US-elections-the-games-politicians-play.html