[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Nov 25, 2008, at 12:08 PM, Markus Schulze wrote:

> Dear Greg,
>
> you wrote (25 Nov 2008):
>
>> While complete ballot data is ideal, I think a convincing
>> case as to how a voting method might perform in a particular
>> election can sometimes be made from polling data. For example,
>> there's good exit polling data for the Senate race in Minnesota
>> that's being recounted, showing that supporters of the
>> Independence party candidate would have preferred Al Franken
>> over Norm Coleman by a 5% margin. That would have given Franken
>> at least another 20,000 votes, way more than the 215 votes he
>> trailed by pre-recount. I think that's a pretty good case that
>> IRV would have selected Franken, regardless of the results of
>> the plurality recount.
>
> Then what do you say about the opinion polls that said that
> Bayrou was a clear Condorcet winner in the 2007 French
> presidential elections (although IRV would have chosen
> Sarkozy)?:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2007#Before_first_round_of_vote

We don't actually know who IRV would have chosen, since the polling  
(and the campaign) didn't happen in the context of an IRV election.  
It's not an unreasonable conjecture that Bayrou would have gotten a  
larger percentage of first choices (some from Sarkozy and Royal) under  
IRV. Nor do we know how the smaller party votes would have transferred.