The Decoy Effect

This Washington Post is about the "decoy effect" in campaigns. I'm not sure if I buy the theory. What do you think?

Here's a good response from a reader who thinks the article is bogus:

In marketing, we find that people compare large numbers of products in twos in order. So if you are laying out ties, you want to gradually increase the quality and price of ties. then people will keep going upwards. (a friend got a PhD in business with this as his thesis research) The correct marketing strategy is a steady but incremental progression in quality and price. In other words, the next tie is a little bit better and only a little more pricey.

But if you ever break the steady progression (either the price-performance curve goes sharply up or down) then people purchase at that point. So if you have a MUCH more expensive tie, as the next tie, people will tend to purchase the cheaper tie. OR if the next tie isn't as good (basically the same thing), then people will purchase the better tie.

But in politics, there is neither a clear price-performance metric (for voters, there clearly is for activists) nor are there clear lines of progression.