[EM] Condorcet How?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:04 AM 4/12/2010, Juho wrote:
>The end
>result is also very unstable if B and C are about equally strong since
>then both could claim to be the leading candidate within the left wing
>and both recommend truncation (=> A may win). Some supporters of both
>of them may truncate for any of the reasons (attack, defence, revenge).

Factions in an election are quite likely to follow the public 
recommendations of their candidate. Nader claimed that Gore and Bush 
were Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Did his supporters follow that idea 
to its conclusion?

One point should be made clear: any candidate who recommends that 
voters not vote sincerely is probably shooting himself or herself in 
the foot. It isn't a winning strategy, generally, it really looks bad 
(even if the strategy makes some sense.)

So if B is, say, leading C, but these candidates are really close in 
preference for the set of B,C supporters, if B attacks C, B will 
quite likely reduce his or her own support. There will be C 
supporters who don't like that!

I believe I just showed that WV, if it elects B in the scenario 
given, and assuming that the votes are sincere, is low-performing. I 
don't know if the scenario was reasonably possible, and, indeed, it 
wasn't realistic.

I don't think we want to reform voting to use systems that produce 
poor results if people vote sincerely!

It is enough that a system does not reward preference reversal, and 
approval/range systems don't do that. They do reward suppressing 
minor preferences, while expressing major ones.