Article: Is Obama The iPhone Of ‘08? by Cass R. Sunstein

Could our voting choices really be impacted at all by information cascades? The idea is scary - people obtain some information -high or low signals - about candidates, but when they see a whole bunch of people favoring one over the other, they may decide that they prefer the more popular candidate. In this manner, a group of voters who are not particularly informed are more likely to “accept” a candidate because they see the choices of their peers. While democratic ideals would protest the existence of voting information cascades, what we learned in class suggests that they aren’t simply possible - they’re likely.

The article by Sunstein describes the presidential primaries in terms of information cascades. Conveniently, the article is recent enough to be relevant, but old enough to look back on in order to compare its predictions to actual events. Aside from explaining what a cascade is and providing the reader with some new examples, the article suggests that Obama was benefited by a “yes” (”accept”) cascade this summer, and that McCain was the victim of a “no” (”reject”) cascade. This is attributed mostly to their fundraising efforts, where McCain struggled this summer, whereas for Obama, “his proven ability to fund-raise has made it easier to attract other donors.” Sunstein predicts that Obama will do well in the Democratic primaries and that McCain will eventually drop out.

Clearly, the “reject” cascade for McCain did not have the full effect that Sunstein had predicted. Cascades are often based on people trusting the information of others rather than their own, while an informed population may be less subjected to a cascade. New information and campaigning since the summer either negated or helped to reverse what Sunstein saw as a “reject” cascade. However, Obama still has massive support that could have been started, in part, by an information cascade.

As comments below this article suggest, speaking of elections in terms of information cascades seems to be trivializing them. One can only hope a voter makes a very informed decision based on information that he has gathered from many sources instead of following what others seem to be saying. However, all information cascades seem to be trivializing in this manner - as long as uninformed people exist, people will be making decisions based on what others are doing.