Last weekend, the Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite multiple sexual assault allegations against him. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who occasionally crosses party lines, announced her decision to vote yes on Friday afternoon. Minutes later, Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia up for reelection, announced that he would also be voting yes on the confirmation. If they had both voted no, Kavanaugh would not have been confirmed. However, if one of them had voted no and the other had voted yes, Kavanaugh would have still been confirmed with Mike Pence breaking the tie. Their similarly-timed decisions to vote yes seemed like the "inefficient" resolution to a prisoner’s dilemma in which both parties chose their dominant strategies, resulting in the dominant-strategy equilibrium but a Pareto-inefficient outcome.
Let's assume that most Democrats wanted Collins and Manchin to vote no, while most Republicans wanted them to vote yes. If Collins had joined her Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski in voting no but Manchin had voted yes, Kavanaugh would have still been confirmed, yet Collins would have lost support from Republicans while Manchin would have benefited from being the deciding yes vote. Similarly, if Manchin had voted no while Collins had voted yes, Kavanaugh would have still been confirmed, with Manchin suffering electorally in his red state and Collins gaining support from Maine Republicans by being the deciding yes vote. Collins and Manchin thus pursued their dominant strategies of voting yes, likely leading to some positive electoral outcomes for both of them, although less positive than in the former two scenarios of being the deciding yes vote. Once Manchin knew that Collins was voting yes, his best choice from the remaining options was to also vote yes, rather than voting no and suffering electorally for Kavanaugh to still be confirmed.
However, I believe that both Collins and Manchin voting no might have been the more "efficient" outcome for their respective electoral interests. First, Collins has been a senator of Maine for over 20 years now. Although many of her supporters favored Kavanaugh, most of her state did not. Furthermore, the Maine People's Alliance had raised $1.8 million to fund Collins' future Democratic opponent if she voted yes (and gained $1 million more just after she announced her decision). Therefore, although Collins consolidated Republican support by voting yes, I believe that she had less to lose ($2.8 million to her opponent less, to be exact) by cooperatively voting no. Although Manchin's situation was different as a Democrat, he also might have benefited more by cooperatively voting no than by cooperatively voting yes. While West Virginia is a largely Republican state, West Virginians tend to support Manchin as their former governor and a strong proponent of healthcare. Manchin also had a 12-point lead in his Senate race going into the vote. While he would have lost some of this lead by voting no, I believe that cooperatively voting no might have been less detrimental than voting no alone, and in fact more "efficient" than cooperatively voting yes. Manchin also had more to lose by voting yes, less so from his constituents than from his party. In defecting from the Democratic party on this key vote, Manchin risked losing DNC funding and Democratic leadership positions within the Senate, as well as increased his chances of facing a Democratic primary opponent in his next election, a primary he would likely lose as a moderate Democrat. In my opinion, while the Republican support they would have galvanized by being the deciding yes vote would have counteracted the consequences of voting yes I just explained, collectively voting yes (resulting in the aforementioned consequences and less energized Republican support) was less efficient than collectively voting no.
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