DailyKos has highlighted an interesting diary entry by “dreaminonempty”, discussing how the GOP’s tactic of maximizing the number of Congressional districts with majority Republican or Republican-leaning voters may work against them as the political winds have seemingly shifted.
The concept is simple: to maximize the number of districts you have an advantage in, you’re going to end up with an above-average number of those districts where you have only a small majority of votes.
However, in adopting such a strategy, there is a risk—that if the party moves away from the center, and/or if the political landscape shifts slightly, a number of centrist voters will likely shift allegiance, opening the door to those “slight majority districts” remaining “slight majority”…but for the other party.
There are some pretty charts in the post to help illustrate the point.
Those pretty charts are actually what caught my attention. Yes, that’s partly because pretty charts do tend to catch my eye…but also, it’s because I’ve drawn nearly identical charts like that before….when discussing pricing insurance.
It was my response to an analogous discussion, where the pros and cons of closely-but-not-perfectly mimicking the pricing of a much larger, successful, competitor came up. Arguably, when doing such mimicry, you’d seek to maximize the number of customers that where your price is extremely close to the competitors, and minimize the number of customers where your price would be much lower (why leave money on the table?). Such a strategy should roughly maximize your revenue.
Unfortunately, such a strategy also places you at significant risk if the competitor changes its rates. For example, if the competitor reduces rates….well, you’ll look out of the running on most of the market.
So…this leads me to wonder, some what silly-ly: Have the country’s attitudes really shifted…or are the Dems just cutting their rates? 