Political experiment, take 2

[triadruid]

Thanks to input from lysana and others, I have revamped the Condorcet voting poll I posted a few days ago. As before, feel free to cross-post this to your own journal or appropriate communities to increase the sample size; despite being self-selected, I hope it will be useful to show any flaws in the Condorcet voting system. I am particularly interested in how unusual voting patterns such as ties and partial ballots affect the total result.

The Condorcet method is a system that utilizes preferential ranking, rather than a single choice. The aim is to eliminate "strategic voting" or "lesser of two evils" voting, as well as provide a meaningful way to support third-party candidates. The winner of a Condorcet election is that person who wins all pairwise matchups, i.e. Anderson vs. Baker, Baker vs. Connor, Connor vs. Anderson, etc. This poll is designed to test that theory, when it comes to the 2004 Presidential election. *All candidates on a statistically meaningful number of state ballots (i.e. they would actually have a chance of winning, based on the 2000 election returns) have been included; as much as I'd like to include the right to vote for Marilyn Chambers, she is running-mate (pun fully intended) on only a handful of ballots). There was one exception to the inclusions: The Socialist Workers Party selected a slate of candidates who are ineligible to hold the offices they are running for (one is a naturalized citizen, the other is too young). The other major Socialist Party was included, however, as were the Greens. Ralph Nader has been classified as (primarily) an Independent, despite using Reform Party ballot access in some states.

The candidates are listed in alphabetical order by party; this seemed the fairest option. You may rank candidates as ties if you wish, or refuse to rank certain candidates at all (thereby assigning them a rank of '8', effectively). If you choose one and only one candidate, your vote will have exactly the same effect as the current single-choice system; I don't want to discourage this, as I am curious as to what effect it will have. At the conclusion of the poll (sometime before November 1st) I will tabulate the results of the pairings and the eventual winner.

::edit:: Results of the quiz (I've left a link up in case you want to run your own analysis) can now be found here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/triadruid/84347.html

Comments

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

How do you mean? You don't think tie ranks should be allowed, or you don't think *anyone* will do so?

[naruvonwilkins.livejournal.com]

I think we'd need to have an eventuality for them, but when you're talking about groups in the millions (or, for local races, sometimes tens of thousands), I think it'll rarely, if ever, happen.

I must not be being clear

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

I'm speaking of an *individual* voting to score Party A as their first choice, then Party B or Party C as their next choice, then the rest on down the line. Not the aggregate totals; I agree that those are statistically unlikely to show up as a tie.

Re: I must not be being clear

[naruvonwilkins.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see.

I recognize that people might want to do that - but they don't have that choice now. Would that choice be important to a lot of people? It seems that picking one party over another is the entire basis for our system. :)

Re: I must not be being clear

[christtrekker.livejournal.com]

It's important to me. I find I get to a certain point of "odiousness" in a candidate where I can't really say one is better than another any longer. I'll tie them all for last. And other times I may not be fully informed on several candidates beyond a vague feeling. I might tie them somewhere in the middle of my range. And theoretically we could bypass the primary system. There might be two candidates I'd be equally happy with, so I'd tie them for first. These situations could very well happen.

Re: I must not be being clear

[naruvonwilkins.livejournal.com]

Also, tying for last is easy - just don't rank them.

Re: I must not be being clear

[naruvonwilkins.livejournal.com]

My first response on that line didn't go through.

I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of the primaries.

What do you do now if there are two candidates you're equally happy with?

Re: I must not be being clear

[christtrekker.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to eliminate primaries, just saying that in theory you probably could. Having just one candidate from a party is less confusing to voters, since party affiliation is a useful summary of a candidate's views.

Now, I haven't seen a time when there are two candidates I'm equally happy with. The primary system weeds out "dupes". When I vote in primaries though...those can be some tough decisions. At that level I suppose I vote for whomever can represent his views more effectively, since he still has to "sell" himself in the general election.

Re: I must not be being clear

[naruvonwilkins.livejournal.com]

*nod* That's what I do. I liked Dean and Kucinich in the Democratic primaries, and McCain in the last Republican primaries.