[EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 87, Issue 54

[James Gilmour]

Kathy Dopp  > Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 11:23 PM
> My point is, that the two examples you gave IMO are very 
> *strong* Condorcet winners in the sense that the vast 
> majority of voters would prefer the Condorcet winner over one 
> or the other of the other two candidates which are far less 
> popularly approved.

Yes, in YOUR opinion these were both "strong" Condorcet winners.  But I made it very clear  -  which you persistently ignore  -
that it was electors with a majoritarian view of elections and partisan politicians and party members who are likely to regard the
5% first preferences Condorcet winner as "weak".  And I based that assessment on my experience of politics and elections in the UK,
with which I have been involved for 50 years.  Maybe my reading of the US and Canadian press is too selective, but I see much the
same attitudes expressed there  -  no surprise given that both share the appalling British legacy of plurality elections in
single-member districts.

 
> I think the IRV fanatics oppose centrist compromise winners 
> who are supported by a majority of voters whenever IRV would 
> elect a less popular winner. IRV proponents support a more 
> extremist winner, supported by far fewer voters as long as 
> the candidate, enough to fabricate hypothetical political 
> consequences, claiming that a majority people would oppose 
> the Condorcet winner.  Sure, of course at least a few persons 
> who had supported the 1st round plurality winner would 
> complain, but that is probably all.  I.e. IRV proponents seem 
> to be deeply emotionally attached to the method, regardless 
> of how much unhappiness the outcome would cause in how large 
> a proportion of voters by eliminating the Condorcet winner, 
> as it did in Burlington, VT.

My comments were in no way based on the views (or likely views) of any IRV fanatics.  I would certainly favour the election of
centrist compromise candidates, but I fear the election of a "weak" Condorcet winner (i.e. one with few first preferences) to a
position of real political power would immediately trigger a call to repeal the Condorcet reform and revert to the previous
plurality system.


> Burlington, VT is a real life counterexample to your 
> counterfactual, where people would have preferred the 
> Condorcet winner and so got rid of IRV.

So Burlington adopted the Condorcet system?  No, I thought not.  The failure to elect the Condorcet winner may have added some
theoretical fuel to the flames in the campaign to ditch IRV, but the real impetus came from those who wanted to go back to FPTP with
top-two run-off when the front-runner didn't achieve the artificial threshold.

James Gilmour