[EM] percentage support

[James Green-Armytage]

James replying to Curt...

>Plurality actually serves two 
>purposes.  It is a bad way to select a winner, but it is also a way to 
>track percentage support over a period of time, and by determining 
>proportional support when it's relevant.

	You don't seem to have defined "support". What does it mean to support a
candidate?
>
>Democratic primaries are an example.  The proportion of votes a 
>candidate receives determines how many delegates they receive.  But 
>even if that particular decision structure is done away with, there are 
>plenty of other reasons to track proportional support - polling, for 
>instance.

	"Polling", as a reason, seems rather broad. Can you be more specific?
>
>And this is something that Condorcet methods cannot do.  You cannot 
>derive, from a Condorcet ballot collection, how much percentage support 
>each candidate got.  You can't give each candidate a share of 100% in a 
>way that all candidates would agree on.  If you can, I'd love to know 
>how.

	Well, the most obvious way to me is to find the share of first choice
votes for each candidate. I'm still not quite sure what we would use this
for, though.
>
>Is this an already identified criteria?  The ability to determine 
>percentage support?  The Siffert Criteria?  :-)  If so, Condorcet fails 
>it; at least, I haven't seen a technique that would allow it to pass 
>it.  

	I don't think that you have defined the criterion very precisely.

>What voting methods can convincingly a) identify the total 
>available support (in terms of that vote method) for all candidates, 
>and b) determine what percentage of that support each candidate 
>received ?

	I don't understand what you mean by (a). 

my best,
James