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

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Nov 25, 2008, at 1:19 PM, Markus Schulze wrote:

> You wrote (25 Nov 2008):
>
>> 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.
>
> So is it feasible to use polling data to show that
> an election method would have violated some desirable
> criteria? Or is complete ballot data needed?
>
> Or are only IRV supporters allowed to use polling data
> to show the greatness of IRV, while advocates of other
> methods have to use complete ballot data?

I think we must be careful about using polling data when we're  
comparing election methods in which voters have different strategic  
motivations, and that taking sufficient care may preclude drawing firm  
conclusions.

Personally, I don't think that any available single-winner method, IRV  
not excepted, is particularly "great", though I prefer ranked-ordinal  
methods to FPTP or TTR. My mild preference for IRV over Condorcet  
methods (and stronger preference over approval and range) has to do  
with wanting to keep strategic voter considerations to a minimum. That  
ends up being a somewhat subjective and intuitive conclusion; at least  
that's how I see it.