Dilution! The worst word in the political vocabularly

It appears to be a benign word, “dilution,” the watering down or the process of reducing the concentration or similar.

In the world of politics, it means the “kiss of death.” Dilution means that if there are many candidates for a seat, it becomes very, very difficult to receive the majority of the votes. It’s also especially difficult for a challenger to get anywhere as there are so many candidates.

By “kiss of death,” it means that your dollar costs of running increases very quickly. Why? Because you have to win two races before you can even get to the real election, the one in November.

This explains why you have the primary runoff when there are many candidates. The top two contenders in the primary have a second primary, called the runoff, to see which one wins the majority. Few people bother to vote in that type of election. These voters are the ones that actually elect a candidate to office. Why” Because the voting districts have been geographically created to usually heavily favor either the Republicans or Democrats. That means if you win the Republican runoff in a Republican district, you win.

It also means that the exhausted winner moves to the next and final round, the General Election in November.

If there isn’t an opposing party candidate the election is always won at the primary. If there is an opposing candidate on the ballot (excluding write-in candidates), a lot more money has to be spent to put up a decent fight. As I wrote, even though districts are heavily biased one way or the other, once in a while there is a hiccup and the “wrong” party wins. So the fight continues.

If you’re been through the primaries and won, you have probably exhausted your campaign contributions and have to start again.

The problem is similar to a long boxing match. It’s the strategy that will win the match, not some flailing around in the first round or two.

The other problem, never mentioned but a dilution factor, is that if there is an official write-in candidate it’s likely that his own party will disavow knowledge and support! Why? Because it will split the votes with the listed party candidate and the write-in candidate. As elections are winner takes all, the other side will have a much better chance of winning. That’s a hiccup factor.

It’s the same with the national debate of having a third party. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want that. It just dilutes the votes, and ruins the odds for their candidates. That’s bad for business.

Vote for Allan Levene for Congress.