[EM] IRV vs Plurality

[Juho]

I think all majority oriented methods are quite similar from  
campaigning point of view. Different methods may impact campaigning  
somewhat but I don't any very clear differences between IRV and  
Condorcet. The campaigning traditions of different countries are  
probably much more important in determining the spirit of campaigning.  
See some further observations below.

All serious candidates need to impress >50% of the voters. One must  
thus get support also outside one's own party. A right wing candidate  
must appeal also to left wing oriented or centrist voters, especially  
those that are relatively close to the right wing in opinions. This  
means that one may attack the extreme left, their opinions and values,  
but one must not hurt the opinions of the more moderate voters. It is  
another matter to attack individual candidates. One could attack also  
nearby candidates personally (their personal history etc.). Also in  
this case it is however typically wiser to let someone else do the  
attacks on behalf of the candidate and let the candidate be "more  
diplomatic". Especially in multiparty counties ability to co-operate  
is an important property. In two-party systems co-operation is not as  
critical (although a benefit there too). One could thus roughly say  
that every serious candidate should appeal try to appeal at least to  
60% of the voters (probably more than that in multiparty countries).  
This means that their opinions will be quite rounded, without any  
edges that would hurt their potential voters, and also trying to give  
all the impression that this candidate is especially good for them  
(may mean different messages to different audiences). All this applies  
to all majority oriented methods.

It is possible that Condorcet elects someone with no first preference  
support. This is however a very special case (could maybe happen in  
theory in a country with fighting groups and one compromise candidate  
that is not part of any of the groups). In practice there can be no  
campaigns that would aim at getting second preference votes only. It  
is difficult to make a difference between fighting for first vs.  
second preferences. All candidates try to present themselves as first  
preference candidate to as many voters as they can. And as described  
in the previous paragraph they must also aim at being the second  
preference of many more voters (including supporters of the non- 
serious candidates).

The Burlington/Montroll case is a typical example where IRV would have  
required Montroll to have more first preference support to win the  
election. How does that impact campaigning? One key point is that  
Montroll should have made it known to the Wright supporters that there  
is a risk that Kiss will be elected if Wright supporters will not rank  
him first. This means that instead of trying to attract more first  
preference support he would try to make IRV more centrist oriented by  
encouraging strategic voting. And as discussed above it makes sense  
also to IRV candidates not to try to position themselves and  
representatives of their first preference supporters only but to  
collect also second preferences from other groupings.

This means that in both methods all the serious candidates need thus  
both first and second preference support (as good as they can get) and  
they can not concentrate on core support in the style of digging  
trenches around their core support. It is not wise for a candidate to  
take strict position in any controversial question (in either system)  
unless one is certain that sufficient majority of the voters is not  
offended because of that decision. Candidates may indeed benefit of  
giving only answers that seem to offer good things and no harm to all  
voters that are listening. Candidates should maybe not "fly below the  
radar" (can't get even second preferences that way) but should appear  
as flying above the radar but in some soft form that pleases all. That  
means nothing negative but still some or lots of positive messages.


The definition of the core support requirement is not clear to me.  
That is not a generic property that all single-winner elections would  
need. There may be different requirements in different elections. E.g.  
USA that is a two-party system and has single-party governments may  
have some specific needs. Is it enough to be able to rule in  
Washington and nominate all the required new officials alone (=> 5%  
support would be enough) or are we talking about e.g. 40% support of  
such voters that do not have any more preferred (serious?) favourites?  
Is preference X>Y>... still core support to Y if Y is a major  
candidate and X is just a minor one? It should also be clear if we are  
talking about maintaining the two-party system or if the intention is  
to allow also other parties to get meaningful positions and/or to take  
steps towards a multiparty system. For a pure two-party system basic  
plurality could be the method of choice (plurality guarantees strong  
core support to each party/government).

If we have a clear definition of the core support requirement then we  
could also see how other methods like Condorcet can meet or can be  
modified to meet this requirement. IRV offers us one way to implement  
it (not very accurate due to the impact of the sequential elimination  
process). In Condorcet one could use e.g. an approval cutoff and some  
agreed level of required support (if that technique would meet the  
requirements).


I hope I covered most of the points. My basic viewpoint is anyway that  
all majority oriented methods are quite similar from campaigning point  
of view, and that with a clear definition of core support we could  
better see how well different methods can meet those requirements.

Juho



On Jan 13, 2010, at 4:30 PM, Terry Bouricius wrote:

> Juho,
>
> That was a good summary of IRV and Condorcet dynamics, and how their
> different weaknesses might be perceived by a citizenry.  I would  
> like to
> add one more to your list. Different voting systems provide different
> incentives for candidate behavior and campaigns and thus voter
> information.
>
> It has been argued that IRV tends to reduce negative campaigning, or  
> makes
> campaigns overly bland (depending on your stance), because in  
> addition to
> seeking first choices, candidates want to reach out to the  
> supporters of
> other candidates. However, with Condorcet rules, it is possible for a
> candidate to win in a crowded field while receiving no first choices  
> at
> all. There haven't been any real-world high-stakes elections to know  
> for
> certain what effect this might have, but it would seem reasonable to
> expect candidates to avoid taking stands on controversial issues.
> Candidates would have an incentive to campaign just using a vacant  
> theme
> of "I promise to listen to YOU."
>
> IRV seems to strike a reasonable balance between appealing for a  
> strong
> core of supporters (the only requirement  in a plurality election with
> many candidates) and also developing broad appeal as an alternate  
> choice.
> Condorcet tips towards the broad appeal alone. Condorcet would seem to
> encourage candidates to simply avoid alienating anybody, with little  
> need
> to develop strong core support.
>
> Thus, I wonder if Condorcet would "dumb down" campaigns to the point  
> that
> voters would have even less information to evaluate candidates by.
>
> A candidate who flew below the radar, such that no voters had any  
> negative
> opinions of the person, just might win, even if finishing in last  
> place in
> terms of first choices. I suspect the voters wouldn't be happy, even
> though that was the logical result of their ballots.
>
> Terry Bouricius
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Juho" <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
> To: "EM Methods" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 4:49 AM
> Subject: Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality
>
>
> On Jan 13, 2010, at 9:14 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>> it still is a curiosity to me how, historically, some leaders and
>> proponents of election reform thunked up the idea to have a ranked-
>> order ballot and then took that good idea and married it to the IRV
>> protocol.  with the 200 year old Condorcet idea in existence, why
>> would they do that?
>
> 1) The basic idea of IRV is in some sense natural. It is like a street
> fight. The weakest players are regularly kicked out and they must give
> up. I'm not saying that this would lead to good results but at least
> this game is understandable to most people. Condorcet on the other
> hand is more like a mathematical equation, and the details of the most
> complex Condorcet variants may be too much for most voters. Here I'm
> not saying that each voter (and not even each legislator) should
> understand all the details of their voting system. The basic Condorcet
> winner rule is however a simple enough principle to be explained to
> all. But it may be that IRV is easier to market (to the legislators
> and voters) from this point of view.
>
> 2) IRV is easier to count manually. Condorcet gets quite tedious to
> count manually when the number of candidates and voters goes up. One
> can use some tricks and shortcuts to speed up manual Condorcet
> counting but IRV probably still beats it from this point of view.
> Manual counting was the only way to count for a long time. Nowadays we
> have computers and Condorcet tabulation should thus be no problem at
> all (at least in places where computers are available). But this is
> one reason why IRV has taken an early lead.
>
> 3) Large parties are typically in a key role when electoral reforms
> are made. Election method experts within those parties may well have
> found out that IRV tends to favour large parties. In addition to
> trying to improve the society the best way they can, political parties
> and people within them also tend to think that they are the ones who
> are right and therefore the society would benefit of just them being
> in power and getting more votes and more seats. The parties and their
> representatives may also have other more selfish drivers behind their
> interest to grab as large share of the power as possible :-). IRV thus
> seems to maintain the power of the current strongest players better
> than Condorcet does, and that may mean some bias towards IRV.
>
> 4) The problems of different election methods may appear only later. A
> superficial understanding of IRV reveals first its positive features.
> Like in Burlington the negative features may be understood only after
> something negative happens in real elections. This applies also to
> Condorcet. On that side one may however live in the hope that the
> problems are rare enough and not easy to take advantage of so that
> sincere voting and good results would be dominant. The point is that
> IRV may be taken into use first (see other points above and below)
> without understanding what problems might emerge later. And once it
> has been taken into use it may well stay in use for a long time
> (electoral reforms are not made every year, people have already gotten
> used to the method, having to change the method could be seen by the
> society/legislators as a failure/embarrassment, and people/parties who
> were elected based on those rules and are strong in that system may be
> reluctant to change the rules).
>
> 5) Both IRV and Condorcet have some weak spots that can be attacked.
> As you point out the weak spots of IRV may well be worse than those of
> Condorcet methods (for most typical use cases in politics). Different
> problems may have different weight in different political
> environments. For example in countries with strong two-party tradition
> and single party government some Condorcet properties like the
> possibility of electing candidates that do not have strong first
> preference support in the ballots may work against it (both in the
> case that one does not want the system to change and in the case that
> one wants to renew the system). Also strategic voting and fraud
> related problems (like later no harm, burial, precinct counting) may
> be seen in different light in different societies, e.g. in countries
> where strategic voting is the norm vs. in ones where sincere voting is
> the norm. One may thus have/develop points of view where Condorcet
> looks worse than IRV (I guess it could also be worse for some uses in
> some societies from some points of view).
>
> Juho
>
>
> P.S. One more reason is that Condorcet promoters seem to be lazier
> that IRV promoters :-). Condorcet has made some progress in the
> academic circles but not yet in politics.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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