Tim Worstall

Ignorant Voters

Marcel Berlins is quite correct here when he points out that vast numbers of opinion polls are meaningless: so biased in their questions as to be designed to make the PR point desired.

However, there’s a further implication of the ignorance of those polled, that they are so easily swayed by the language employed. There’s no evidence at all that they know any more or consider more carefully when voting upon the same issues.

Which leaves us with Bryan Caplan’s point: less should be dealt with by way of politics and more by markets, where people are better informed: because the results impact them so directly.

In

10 responses

  1. IanCroydon Avatar
    IanCroydon

    Voting is a bit of scam when you include political parties anyway, people usually vote for their “team”, not issues, and there is no guarentee the “team” person you vote for will actually support the party issues you support, in other words, you are being conned for your vote.
    That’s why opinion polls are worthless, because the end result is worthless too.
    Voting needs to be non-partisan.

    Reply
  2. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Granted there are good reasons for being skeptical and therefore cautious about public opinion polling but I doubt the mainstream political parties will give up on polling to inform decisions about strategy and tactics. Besides, what of the other applications of polls such as market research and academic research?
    The first book that I read which challenged the received wisdom of a simple linear left wing-right wing spectrum in politics – Hans Eysenck: The Psychology of Politics (1954) – relied on polling to demonstrate there was at least another separate, distinguishable (orthogonal) dimension in addition to the left-right divide. How else can we locate on a political spectrum fascism and nazism which bundle authoritarian and repressive politics with economic policies widely espoused by European socialist parties?
    Hence this discussion of what Libertarianism entails – the direct opposite of fascism on the dimensions of both repressive politics and economic control:
    http://www.archaeology.co.uk/others/thinktank/liberty/libertar.htm
    Of course, none of this diminishes Bryan Caplan’s argument.

    Reply
  3. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    This is something I have been thinking about a little bit. I wonder if a rather clever economist (or economists) somewhere could run an interactive cost benefit analysis of manifesto policy prior to the next election. One would plug one’s income into a model (not in the footballer’s wife sense) and out would pop the net benefits of voting one way or another.
    It would take a bit of work, but if there was a poster which said:
    Average income: Labour -£500, Tories +20, well I might consider changing sides.

    Reply
  4. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    Sadly, attempts to assess the net benefits of voting for each of the mainstream political parties wouldn’t be worth the effort. Famously, the Labour Party manifesto for the 2001 election famously stated:
    “We will not introduce ‘top-up’ fees and have legislated to prevent them.”
    http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/e01/man/lab/ENG1.pdf
    So much for promises and so much for legislation. This is the Timeline on the introduction of top-up fees:
    http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/tuitionfees/story/0,,1118543,00.html

    Reply
  5. johnnybonk Avatar
    johnnybonk

    Politics is indeed more about tribe than policies, but non-partisan politics does not make sense as we are perforce of the realities of the world that made us both deeply tribal of our natures and inherently self serving. So we end up with a working class who read the Sun but vote Labour and they are probably correct to recognise that Labour are on “their” side, even though Labour is prone to leftie nonsense that does everybody no good at all.
    Opinion polls are of course just that and must be only be interpreted with great skill and integrity, primary of which would be that what people do and what they say will do are not the same.
    Last time we were asked to actually act on Europe (1975 referendum) we voted two to one to remain in Europe, and it would be a very brave (or foolish) Euronihilist who put money on a different result if we were give the actual choice again today.
    Tim: what is a Euron, I still cannot figure it out?

    Reply
  6. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “non-partisan politics does not make sense as we are perforce of the realities of the world that made us both deeply tribal of our natures and inherently self serving”
    Well . . it’s worth remembering that in the 2005 election – which had the second lowest turnout of any general election in Britain since 1918 – more of the electorate didn’t vote than the number who voted for Labour candidates.
    Besides that, various academic estimates put the percentage of floating voters who change the party they vote for between elections at somewhere around 20 per cent of the electorate. At various elections, I’ve voted Conservative, Labour, Liberal or Social-Democrat so I’m manifestly unclear about which tribe I belong to.
    The trouble with most theories of personal behaviour predicated on the assumption that people invariably act in self-serving ways is that it’s very difficult to predict with any confidence what people will believe their best course of action to be so as to maximise their personal interests. Over what time horizon? If personal behaviour en masse is so predictable, how come so many companies spend so much on market research to investigate personal preferences before launching new peoducts and sevices.
    Will people seek to mitigate anticipated harmful spillover effects impacting on their personal welfare by negotiation with prospective offending parties as Coase (of the University of Chicago) supposed and, if so, how effectively:
    http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/CoaseJLE1960.pdf
    Will they be able to assess the likelihood of harmful spillover effects occurring (eg the present floods) and be able to formulate and apply rational negotiating strategies to avert the worst? If so, why does government need to intervene?
    Some doubtless believed Tony Blair when said in a keynote speech to the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999:
    “If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.”
    http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp
    Some may even have voted Labour accordingly at the 2001 election believing the UN to be the best custodian of world peace and security available in an imperfect world. If so, they will have been exceedingly disappointed when a Labour government embarked on a war against Iraq on 20 March 2003 without UN approval. Most informed observers believe that we are now a good deal less secure than we were as a consequence.
    Did Labour voters act rationally at the 2001 election or were they just misled?

    Reply
  7. Anthony North Avatar
    Anthony North

    Voting nowadays is increasingly seen to be tribal. I think that’s because non-tribal people are so fed up of tribal voting that they don’t bother to vote.
    Hope that makes sense.

    Reply
  8. Roger Thornhill Avatar
    Roger Thornhill

    We are rapidly moving towards a Tyranny of the Masses.
    A small State and plurality of provision allows hyperdemocracy – people vote with their wallets and feet.
    Of course politicians and Socialists don’t like that as it interferes with their grab for Power and Control. As more of the economy is forced to pass through their sticky fingers and more is subjected to their dirty fingernails, the more money and power will rub off on the way.

    Reply
  9. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “We are rapidly moving towards a Tyranny of the Masses.”
    The political elites in Britain were worried about that in the 19th century which is why Parliament phased in franchise reform by incremental steps – in 1832, 1867 and 1884 – rather than in one big rush. The franchise was not finally extended to include all adult women in Britain until 1928 – and in France, not until after WW2.
    A few years back when the notion of electronic voting first took flight, I asked online why we couldn’t also have public criminal trials on TV with the whole electorate comprising the jury and online voting at the completion of trials for conviction and sentencing or acquittal.
    Even the most enthusiastic and committed advocates of electronic democracy (very sensibly) balked at that one.

    Reply
  10. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    It’s perhaps worth recalling Edmund Burke’s famous speech on 3 November 1774 to the electors of Bristol about the responsibilities of a Member of Parliament:
    “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”
    http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html

    Reply

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