Against majoritarianism

Bullingdon Boy is well ahead in the opinion polls. This alone, says Danny Finkelstein, "will make people more likely to vote Conservative, reassured by the presence of others." There is, he says, a bit of  majoritarianism in all of us, illogical as this is.
He's right that it's illogical. There are at least 5 reasons why, in this case:
1. As Danny says, we should go with the wisdom of crowds only if each member exercises independent judgment. But if others are in the majority only because they are following the crowd, we don't get the wisdom of crowds, but mere herding. Timur Kuran says (eg this pdf) this preference falsification can explain the persistence and sudden collapse of support for tyrannical governments; people support the government because they believe others do, and revolutions can be triggered by the realization that others don't.
2. For crowds to be wise, the biases of  individuals must offset each other.  But even if there's no preference falsification, this might not be case here. Perhaps people are responding to the same media reports about Cameron and Brown. If so, their beliefs are correlated.
3. We should go along with the majority if we have no superior information to the contrary. But in this case, I do have superior information in one regard - I know myself. And I'd feel uncomfortable being in a majority, being conformist or even voting Stupid Party; it's not what people like me do.
4. Majorities can be self-selecting. In his defence of majoritarianism, Hal says he defers to "the collective wisdom of the entire human race." This is the right way to put it. Any smaller unit could well be a biased sample. In an Afghan village, the majority of people might be fanatical Islamists. But it doesn't follow that I should be one if I were in the village.
This argues against supporting Cameron - the collective wisdom of the entire human race doesn't give a toss about him.
5. Hal's right to identify overconfidence as a universal bias. But it doesn't follow that  going with the majority is the only corrective. Another corrective is merely to hold our opinions lightly - ironically - and to recognize that we might be wrong.
Above all, this means not imposing those views upon others. And this means there's a big leap between being inclined to support Cameron because others do, and actually voting for him.

Comments

[Katherine]

If everyone followed the majority, wouldn't that also mean that nothing ever changed? A very conservative result for the world.

[Andy Cooke]

Just a point about number 4:
"This argues against supporting Cameron - the collective wisdom of the entire human race doesn't give a toss about him."

This point argues against supporting anyone and anything, surely? Insert name of choice instead of Cameron:
"Blair"
"Campbell"
"Citizen's Basic Income"
...

[jameshigham]

Now Chris, you're against managerialism, i.e. the tendency of one man at the top to dominate and now you're against majoritianism or whatever, i.e. the democratic voice. Where exactly are you, sir?

[Mark Wadsworth]

Ultimately, the people are always right.

Quite simply because people judge themselves by their own standards. If politicians and the like stopped obfuscating and gave people clear choices, we would nearly always choose the right thing, and if in hindsight it's wrong, so what?, the people are more likely than politicians to admit to this and go on another tack (e.g. troops out of Iraq).

[Chris Bertram]

Not wanting to quibble unduly, but it is extremely improbable that a *majority* will ever vote for Mr Cameron.