[EM] Fwd: H. Ross Perot was a condorcet winner??

[Jameson Quinn]

I do not know if Perot was a Condorcet winner at the time of the election in
'92. I consider it possible but unlikely (perhaps 20% probable). I do
suspect that, before dropping out of the race, he was probably a CW among
eventual-voters' preferences (I'd say 90% probable).

But what I do know is that people have used the Perot argument, justified or
unjustified, against both Condorcet and Approval. I also suspect that that
argument has traction with the right audience, either politicians or voters
with enough of an anti-populist bent to be naturally turned off by Perot.
Such people are a fair fraction of voters and, I'd guess, a majority of
politicians.

The argument doesn't really work against Range. But then, the old silly "99%
favorite loses" argument is really hard to fight against. You know and I
know that, if a majority loses in Range, it's probably the correct result.
But you lose half of everyone when your opponent first makes that argument,
and half of the ones who are left by the time you've dotted the i's on your
defensive-sounding and complicated counterargument.

Those blurbs represent caricatured versions of the arguments I'd actually
make. I put them in quotes because I wanted the freedom to skip the caveats
I'd normally add. In real life, I think that a cartoon version of Perot, a
folksy centrist who doesn't actually know what he's doing (not sure if the
real Perot was like that, I'm just recounting the stereotype), in an
electorate that's so polarized that he wins just by virtue of not being the
other party, is a minor but real danger for a Condorcet system. I'd hesitate
to use such an argument, but if the person I was talking to gave some
indication that they already thought like that, I would NOT hesitate to turn
that idea in favor of whatever I was pitching (be it SODA, MJ, or Range, or
even C//A).

JQ

ps. I, too, would be interested if anyone had any vaguely pairwise data on
historic US presidential elections, including '92.

2011/6/28 Warren Smith <warren.wds at gmail.com>

> Is there actual evidence for that claim?
>
> I can tell you there is evidence against Perot being an approval,
> range voting, or
> (of course) plurality voting winner in either 1992 or 1996.   I'd be
> interested if
> anybody has rank-order-ballot style polling data, or anything like
> that, to confirm/deny
> Perot being a CW.
>
> http://rangevoting.org/RangePolls.html
>
> --
> Warren D. Smith
> http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
> "endorse" as 1st step)
> and
> math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html
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