Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
My wife and I were having an interesting discussion about game theory while walking to the polling station. We both wanted to see Crockett defeated, but we didn't have a strong preference between Locke and Turner. From a strategic sense, we were wondering if it made more sense for us to double our votes for one candidate or each vote for a different one since we're not sure which of the two will be Crockett's strongest challenger (Meades was obviously out of the running as he is polling poorly and his campaign has no momentum going into election day).
So, game theorists of CP, what should our optimal voting strategy have been?
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I think if you consider both candidates to have an equal shot at winning, then it doesn't change the odds of Crockatt losing either way.
Consider candidate A to be the right choice (the one who ends up with more votes), and candidate B to be the wrong choice. You and your wife don't know if Turner or Locke are candidate A.
So if you put your votes together, there is a 50% chance of having two votes count, and a 50% chance of having no votes count. If you hedge your bets and split the vote, then there is a 100% chance of 1 vote counting. Essentially 100% of 1 vote is equivalent to 50% of 2 votes, since it is considered to be random.