Why the vote is split 50-50

In the year 2000 the two candidates of the duopoly* each had an almost equal percentage of the popular vote. This has been the case with many recent elections. The reason is that the parties backing these candidates want to get them elected to the White House. To achieve this goal they avoid presenting an unpopular position on issues, even if the unpopular position is better for the country.

Unpopular position

Imagine that there are 100 issues that might matter to the electing public. Have a popular opinion poll of each one and examine the results.

If there is a clear majority on a particular issue then it would not be politically smart for you to support the unpopular position. You risk alienating the majority of voters. If the populace were given the choice between two candidates with otherwise identical positions who differ on this one viewpoint it would naturally become the spotlight of the media focus (since nothing else is different about the two). Therefore the one who supported the majority viewpoint would garner more votes.

So consider a race between the following three candidates

Which one is guaranteed to lose? The one who takes the unpopular position. Of the two remaining, who will win? The candidate with no principles.

This is because he is free to pick the most popular positions for each of the issues, whereas the candidate who has principles will very likely have something about which he disagrees with the polled public.

ambiguous position

However, the media needs some difference upon which to focus. Fortunately, there are some issues that have the country split down the middle. Candidates are free to pick one of these ambiguous positions (in order to distinguish themselves from the other candidates) without significant danger of it affecting their election chances.

so you want to pick a candidate

You are one of the parties of the political duopoly. You want to get one of your own into the white house. Are you going to choose
  1. a candidate with a strong sense of morals that cause him to take one or two unpopular positions
  2. a candidate with a strong sense of morals that cause him to take all the positions that are popular today, but might not be popular in 6 months.
  3. a candidate willing to take any position, so long as it is popular
? hmm, no brainer.

resulting behavior

If your competitor takes a popular position on an issue, you should immediately take a similar position (of course you will phrase it differently and propose a different plan, but you want to assume the same position).

If your competitor takes a position on an ambiguous issue, you should take the other side to give the media something fruitless on which to focus their commentary.

where are the people?

In deep shit. Naturally the candidates the duopoly will place before them will be vanilla, unprincipled politicians with no goal but to attain power. The people will be mesmerized by debates over controversial (meaning the opinion polls are split 50/50) topics while revolutionary ideas of the third party candidates are denied coverage.

By polling the populace ahead of time, our choice has been measured and the parties have responded. Each of them has found a candidate who embodies our choices (at least the ones on which the populace has a clear favorite) and all that's left is for us to choose between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.

glossary

duopoly
n. the combination of the Republican and Democratic parties that prevents other political parties from achieving power or influence.