[EM] real-world Condorcet election

[Alex Small]

The Free State Project, a libertarian group trying to relocate 20,000
activists to one state (I am not a member, I hasten to add) held its
election.  They used Condorcet, apparently with winning votes (although it
didn't matter since there was a CW).  New Hampshire won, beating out the 9
other candidate states.

The election data is posted at www.freestateproject.com.  They list every
single ballot, with all identifying information removed except for gender
and state.  This way people can do analyses to see which candidate states
were most popular where, whether there was a gender difference, etc.

And, since all 2393 ballots (roughly 46% voter turnout) are listed, you
can see who would win with other methods.  I haven't analyzed any of it
yet, but it was stated in their press release that NH got a plurality of
first-place votes in every region except one western region (no surprise,
since Wyoming defeated all states except NH in pairwise contests) so it
seems quite likely that NH would have also won with IRV, and possibly even
plurality.  It's anybody's guess as to who would have won with Borda
(shall we roll some dice?).

Other interesting feature:  Apparently the pairwise results yielded a
transitive ranking of all 10 states.  There weren't even cycles among some
of the less popular losers.  Remove the CW, redo the pairwise results, and
there's a new CW.  All the way to the end.

Anyway, here's a real data set for us to have fun with.  Donald can check
to see if IRV would have selected NH, any Saari disciples out there can
argue that <insert state here> should have won, and those who enjoy that
sort of thing can try to deduce who would win with Approval.



Alex