How Reilly's parents taught me about strategic behavior

Reilly and I have known each other since 1^st grade. We were in German immersion together in elementary school and always ended up in the same German classes all the way through high school. Luckily, we ended up liking each other and became good friends. We keep in touch largely via a group text with three other good friends, as we all go to different colleges. The group text is often used to complain about the current state of the world, ranging from current political affairs to the newest scandal of the Kardashian family.

Our group text was particularly active this past presidential election season. During our discussion of desirable properties of voting systems the other day in class, one texting exchange in particular stood out in my memory: when Reilly told us that her socially and economically liberal parents voted for Trump during the primaries! Much to our collective relief, it turns out there was a rationale to their seemingly nonsensical choice. Due to Virginia’s open primary structure, Nicole and Pat (Reilly’s parents’ names – after almost 14 years of friendship, you can bet we’re on a first-name basis with each other’s parents) chose to vote for Trump in the primary in hopes that he would win the Republican primary. They wanted Hillary to win the presidency, and were confident that if she were to go up against Trump, enough Republicans would be so disgusted with Trump’s behavior that they'd vote for a Democrat. They felt their vote was better spent in attempts to have Trump elected as the Republican candidate rather than toward Hillary for the Democratic candidacy. The results indicate their gut feeling was correct: Hillary won the Democratic primary with 64% of the vote with Bernie trailing at 35% of the vote. Trump barely squeaked ahead of Marco Rubio, 35-32.

Unfortunately, their attempts at strategic behavior during the past presidential election season were to no avail. Perhaps if Virginia, even the U.S. as a whole, had different and more Condorcet efficient methods of electing candidates, such strategic behavior could be minimized as the incentives to act in such a way would be lower.