Herman Cain for the win?

As Republican presidential candidates have been on the campaign trail in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Governor Rick Perry and businessman and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney have emerged as front-runners in quite a few polls and have lately been battling for the lead position.  In an unlikely turn of events, Herman Cain won a GOP straw poll yesterday in Florida with a convincing 37% of the 2,657 votes cast.  In his WSJ Online article today, Patrick O'Connor discussed some of the reasons why Cain may have come out ahead of his opponents who have been gaining more support and tend to be relatively more moderate than the former corporate executive (though Perry has led a considerably more conservative campaign than Romney).

The straw poll immediately followed a Thursday night GOP debate, in which Perry stood by "a Texas law he had signed making illegal immigrants eligible for in-state university tuition," which disappointed many conservatives and alienated some voters.  This is typical of the dilemma faced by candidates of having to appeal to two different audiences while trying to win a single-party primary but also taking into consideration appealing to the median voter in the general election later on.  In a two-party election, Perry's policy would still have alienated some conservatives, but it also likely would have won him some moderate votes by moving him closer ideologically to the Democratic candidate.  The primary is a balancing act where the candidates must determine how conservative (or liberal, as the case may be) they must be to win primary votes without going past the point of no return where they cannot come back close enough to the middle to compete for Downs' decisive median voter in the general election against a candidate of the other party.  Therefore, although either Perry or Romney would likely be ultimately more electable than Cain in the general election, he was able to surpass both candidates for a win this Saturday.

Florida is Sick of Sore Losers

When a political candidate fails to win his or her party’s primary election, it seems fair to assume that they will not take part in the general election – they should cede to the winner, allowing them to receive their party’s nomination. This is what any gracious loser would do, but if we know anything about politicians, we know that they are not all gracious in defeat, and they will usually do everything in their power to be able to claim victory in the general election. Sometimes this means taking a dire political risk – breaking away from political parties completely.

The Florida Senate Ethics and Elections Committee is now calling for laws that will crack down on these defections. Unofficially dubbed the “sore-loser statute”, these new regulations would attempt to prevent candidates who lose their party’s primary from switching parties and re-entering the race as independents. This move was triggered by the current Florida Governor, Charlie Crist, who is currently running for the U.S. Senate.

The committee cited Mr. Crist's change in party status as an impetus for its report. The governor, who in April was trailing Marco Rubio by more than 20 percentage points in polls in the Republican Senate primary, abandoned the GOP and announced an independent candidacy less than 24 hours before the qualification deadline.

Gov. Crist’s sudden defection allows him to be placed directly on the ballot without needing the Republican Party’s official nomination. This sort of tactic essentially allows him to be defeated, yet still have a second chance at victory. What effect could this have on the overall election? In at least one recent election, the defector proved victorious – Joe Lieberman won his Senate seat in 2006 after being defeated by Ned Lamont and re-entering the race as an independent. In this case, whether Lieberman was the true Condorcet Winner is open to debate – yes, he was defeated by Lamont, but the only voters in the Connecticut primary were Democrats, not the entire population.

By seeking to require candidates to be free of party affiliation 18 months prior to the general election if they want to be on the ballot as an independent, Florida is trying to prevent these “sore losers” from having a second chance at the ballot. Would these changes be a positive for the election, or would they only serve to eliminate potential Condorcet Winners defeated in closed primaries?