According the a Columbia professor of sociology, writing in Slate, John Kerry's all but certain nomination is merely more proof of a 1950s sociology experiment in social decision-making. He calls it "hindsight bias" but you know it better as the bandwagon effect. The same effect that produced a lot of Duke fans in 1991 has also manifested itself in polls in which more people claim to have voted for Bush than actually did in 2000. Now, according to the professor, it has also led a lot of Democrats to crown Kerry, even though they don't know him well or even like him.
For example, when New Yorkers go to vote next Tuesday, they cannot help but be influenced by Kerry's victories in Wisconsin last week. Surely those Wisconsinites knew something, and if so many of them voted for Kerry, then he must be a decent candidate. But the voters in Wisconsin were just as influenced by the decisions of voters from the previous round of primaries, who were in turn influenced by the round before theirs, and so on. Before any given primary, if all previous votes have resulted in an even split among candidates, then the prospect for independent thinking still exists. But as the sequence of primaries progresses, the likelihood of successive even splits rapidly diminishes, and one candidate inevitably starts to look like a winner. At that moment, the cascade starts, and all subsequent votes then become exercises in rubber stamping.That's one reason Terry McAuliffe front-loaded the primary season. If there are enough wins by a candidate in February, the bandwagon should be at full throttle by March. That's what's happened. And Democrats are going to make the "irrational" choice and select Kerry "because he can win", even though he is the person who the Republicans prefer to run against -- and John Edwards is getting crushed by that bandwagon.
