"The staggered system of primaries does just that."
It actually causes the devaluation of the votes of later primaries. Due to the difference in concerns of different geographic areas, you would have a shitty sample based on the current line-up.
"Your optimization challenge is to identify the winner with high confidence while conducting the fewest number of tests."
If that were the case, you wouldn't even do primaries and you'd just rely on the surveys, which arguably have better sampling (primaries are biases toward the vocal minority due to the low turn outs and not necessarily the overall voter pool).
> It actually causes the devaluation of the votes of later primaries.
Does it really though? California votes blue. Doesn't matter which Dem candidate - they will win California. Because California votes blue regardless of candidate, California has self-selected itself out of the primary system.
> If that were the case, you wouldn't even do primaries and you'd just rely on the surveys
You certainly could do that. But voting is necessary to receive the consent of the populace.
It actually causes the devaluation of the votes of later primaries. Due to the difference in concerns of different geographic areas, you would have a shitty sample based on the current line-up.
"Your optimization challenge is to identify the winner with high confidence while conducting the fewest number of tests."
If that were the case, you wouldn't even do primaries and you'd just rely on the surveys, which arguably have better sampling (primaries are biases toward the vocal minority due to the low turn outs and not necessarily the overall voter pool).