Originally Posted by Benson

Indeed, I don't think collusion is necessary in a rigid 2-party system (which plurality tends towaraw) to explain the surface problems we have.

With two parties, each starting at some position in an n-dimensional voter space, they both have a 'base' consisting of voters in their lobe of a hyperboloid (of two sheets) with focii at the two positions; those are the voters closer by a certain amount to that party, and so voting for it out of practical necessity.

Voters outside the hyperboloid are up for grabs, with probabilities of going each way proportional to relative closeness. But they might be swayed by rhetoric, and certainly by moving your platform closer to the center. If the distribution of voters is uneven, you'll try to shift to bring dense areas behind you at the expense of sparse areas.

Eventually, you wind up in a local equilibrium with the parties as close as they can get while insuring that voters can still distinguish them.

Now there's complexities not covered yet, such as multiple candidates (P & VP, plus other less significant ones), and the need to avoid irrational behavior (staying home or voting third party) from the base, but these seem to fit in nicely with this collusion-free model.

Originally Posted by Benson

Maybe it's not intended to, but you know what a can of worms you just opened...

Originally Posted by Benson

Not entirely; it also goes back to when the states were, you know, states. It provided representation to states as well as citizens by including Senators in the EC apportionment.

Originally Posted by GeraldKo

OK, first off, yes I am going to vote for one of the major parties, although my heart is not entirely in it. (I'm skipping specifying which just to keep out of flame wars.) With the way campaigns are funded, "collusion" isn't necessary -- both sides need huge campaign war chests, and those are provided by big money. A candidate can't even get to the primaries without being something of a whore. Both major parties are fundamentally corporate-owned. (Heck, we no longer allow for forgiveness of debts in bankruptcy, even when the bankruptcy is caused by medical bills, and we don't have national health care; but today we've announced a rescue for the speculative banking industry on the order of $500 billion or more.)

I think the United States desperately needs third parties, but the system is rigged so they can't get a toehold. The solution, which, of course, the two corporate parties will block, would begin with "Instant-Runoff Voting" -- that would allow a person to vote his/her conscience without fear they were "wasting" their vote. Eventually, conscience could win out. But for that to happen, we literally need a Constitutional amendment, since the Supreme Court keeps ruling that any worthwhile limitation on how much money can be spent on an election is a violation of the guarantee of Freedom of Speech. (You can have as much speech as you can pay for!) The result is a war of TV ads that say nothing, cost a fortune, determine the election, and are funded by big money.

Originally Posted by Benson

Finally, I think you overrate the effectiveness of ads. Is it a colossal waste of money and a drain on the economy? Yes. Does it really change election outcomes? I don't think substantially.