You’re of course right that even the best voting method doesn’t solve the “semi-evolved house-ape” problem. But I’d argue that the perverse incentives of FPTP give an outcome substantially worse than that. Neither Bush nor Trump (nor, probably, Clinton) would have won with a better voting method; and I’d argue that even the options would be better.
(Re 2016: I’ve done an “MRP” analysis of high-quality cardinal-rated polling data on the eve of the 2016 election. This uses hierarchical logistic regression, which I was able to control for gender, age, income, race, education, region, state, as well as the two largest interactions between those 7 variables. My own preferences very much aside, I can say with high confidence that Bernie would have won if there had been a last-minute change to an improved voting method with 9 candidates. If the entire campaign had been run under those conditions, I can’t of course say what would have happened.)
You’re of course right that even the best voting method doesn’t solve the “semi-evolved house-ape” problem. But I’d argue that the perverse incentives of FPTP give an outcome substantially worse than that. Neither Bush nor Trump (nor, probably, Clinton) would have won with a better voting method; and I’d argue that even the options would be better.
(Re 2016: I’ve done an “MRP” analysis of high-quality cardinal-rated polling data on the eve of the 2016 election. This uses hierarchical logistic regression, which I was able to control for gender, age, income, race, education, region, state, as well as the two largest interactions between those 7 variables. My own preferences very much aside, I can say with high confidence that Bernie would have won if there had been a last-minute change to an improved voting method with 9 candidates. If the entire campaign had been run under those conditions, I can’t of course say what would have happened.)