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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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And is that not the world we live in? In the existing system, with primaries, the electorate all decide which among their party is the most popular, and then the chosen candidates of those parties go against each other. In the delegation system the electorate all choose their favorite candidates, and then candidates within each party pool their votes together towards the most popular one. It's the same steps just in different orders, and the forces towards and away from extremism seem pretty much the same to me. In the world where it's D/mR/tR = 45/35/25, the moderate would have won the Primary in the current system and become the Republican party candidate instead of Trump.

There are small technical differences, such that you can come up with very niche scenarios where the outcome will differ. But I think the general pattern of having two monolithic parties with extreme candidates are the same in both systems for the same reasons, and in almost every circumstance they will lead to identical incentives and outcomes.

Trump in the 2016 primaries won because the establishment candidates failed to coalesce around an opposition candidate and he sucked all the oxygen out of the room. If all the other candidates got to delegate their primary votes Trump would never have been elected. although the whole thing looks different if you run it from the beginning.