Example with contrary half preference votes

[Steve Eppley]

Lucien S wrote:
>     I am trying to understand the "least-beaten" concept and I do
>not understand why Clinton would win rather than Dole, with or
>without half preferences. 
-snip-

It looks in your matrices like you're measuring the size of a
pair-defeat by the margin of defeat (votes for pair-winner minus
votes for pair-loser).

But in Mike O's definition of Condorcet, the size of a pair-defeat
is measured simply by the votes for the pair-winner (i.e., the number 
of voters who prefer the pair-winner over the pai-loser).  

This amount is the number of voters who would be unhappy if the
pair-loser beat the pair-winner in a 2-candidate election; the
Condorcet method tries to minimize the number of unhappy voters. 

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)