Political Information Cascade

(http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30F1FFF3E540C708EDDAA0894DF404482)

The Presidential political race is almost upon us as most notably in the news democratic contenders begin to set their platform agendas. Before either party can rally behind their presidential candidate, the party members through the presidential primary must elect a candidate. The ‘Primary’ as it is known has two phases. First, party members from each state will vote in their state’s primary election. Later in the year after every state has voted, a general convention is held where the states vote again and the candidate who emerges victorious wins the party’s nomination for the presidency. While the general convention may seem like the more important part, the race is normally decided long before the general convention is held. In fact, the most important part are the votes of the first couple states because their outcome creates an information cascade that reasonably predicts the outcome of later voting states. That is why the news makes such a big deal about the outcome of early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.

However, this schedule is about to change. Over the last couple of months, many powerful states like New York, Texas, and California have moved up their presidential primaries so that they can become the most important battleground states for presidential hopefuls. Since their votes count for so much, candidates will have to focus winning those states instead of the initial small fries. One March 23rd, The New York Times published an article entitled To increase Florida’s Influence, Lawmakers may set a January Date for Presidential Primary. The article is about how Florida wants to move their primary ahead of all the other “megastates” so that they can become the most crucial state for candidates to win since they will start the information cascade. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia says, “It’s the smartest move I have seen…they [Florida] are the only ones that has figured out that if they go first, they could be the megastate to tip all megastates, and Florida could decide the nomination.” In essence, this is a fight to see who will be the first state to trigger the information cascade on arguably the most powerful level and decide the nominees for the 2008 presidential election.