[EM] WHICH VOTING SYSTEM(S) DO REAL VOTERS WANT - FINALLY, CLEAR EVIDENCE EMERGES!

[Warren D Smith]

Academics just conducted another study in 3 French towns (exit poll)
of several score voting schemes & approval voting in 2012 presidential
election.  All produced the same winner as the official winner,
Hollande.

I'm using the following paper by them (in French):
   http://RangeVoting.org/France1220.pdf

Anyhow, they appended a QUESTIONNAIRE to the approximately 2340 voters who
participated in this voting study, getting 80-95% response rates to
these additional questions.

QUESTION 1 asked which type of voting they prefer. Apparently this
question was conducted using 4-choice plurality voting (sigh).  1958
answered.
The 4 choices were:
I. Les  deux regles	("the two rules??" does this mean the present
2-round system?
Or does it mean "I want both approval and score voting"?)  27.53%

II.Vote par approbation  ("approval voting") 29.47%

III.Vote par note ("score voting") 32.84%  WINNER!!

IV.Aucune	des deux ("neither of them")  10.11%

Can any French-speaker explain what the hell that was all about?
This question wording seems extremely poor.
Elsewhere in same paper the official system was described as
"Vote uninominal a deux tours (officiel)."
Fortunately, we can dodge all that since question 2 works excellently.

QUESTION 2a asked for which kinds of elections approval voting system
should be used (or not).  4 subquestions:

Elections presidentielles:  61%.
Elections	legislatives:     57%.
Elections	municipales:    61%.
Associations:                  52%.

QUESTION 2b asked for which kinds of elections score voting system
should be used (or not).  same 4 subquestions:

Elections presidentielles:  62%.
Elections	legislatives:     55%.
Elections	municipales:    66%.
Associations:                  51%.

Superb.  Majority wants them for everything, and 61% is
equivalent to the largest ever USA presidential "landslides."
This to me is the first really convincing evidence the populace WANT
approval and range voting.

Meanwhile there also is convincing poll evidence from UK, Australia,
and BC Canada
that voters do NOT want IRV (instant runoff, full rank ordering) if
choice is between IRV & plain plurality voting.
AUSTRALIA October 2010 nationwide professional telephone poll (NewsPoll
http://www.rangevoting.org/AustraliaNewsPollVoteStudy.pdf ) 1202
random Australian adults: found that they prefer plain-plurality
voting versus the preferential (instant runoff) system they presently
use to elect their House. If forced to choose one, they'd choose to
abandon IRV – the poll's result was 57% to 37% (with 5% don't
know/refuse).
UK: 5 May 2011 binding referendum asking voters to decide whether the
UK should switch from plurality to IRV voting, resulting in a massive
landslide victory (68% to 32% of the 19.3 million votes) for "stay
with plurality."
British Columbia Canada 12 May 2009:  "switch to IRV" (from plain
plurality) got only 39.09% of the 1.65 million votes in referendum.

And I just posted landslide poll evidence voters do NOT want "majority
judgment" with 7-point verbal scale, if choosing between it and
present 2-round plurality plus 2nd round runoff system:
FRANCE April 2011:
   http:/rangevoting.org/Sondageopinionway.pdf
At the end of this poll of 1000, the pollees were asked WHICH voting method
they preferred:
1. Traditional (plurality plus 2nd round runoff):  63%
2. MJ (median-based with verbal 7-point scale):  36%
3. Other/don't know:   1%

Now returning to the academic study in the 3 towns, they trialed
DIFFERENT score voting systems in the 3 towns:

TOWN...........TYPE OF SCORE VOTING TRIALED
Louvigny...............{-1, 0, +1}
St.Etienne.............{0, 1, 2}
Strasbourg............{0, 1, 2, ..., 19, 20}

And the result of question 2b was that there was CLEARLY MORE SUPPORT for
{-1,0,+1} and {0,1,2} than for {0,1,2,...,19,20}  but in contrast
question 2a got about the same support rates in all 3 towns.

CONCLUSION:
Voters want:

Avg-based score voting (unspecified numerical scale) > Approval voting
> 2-round plurality > MJ with 7-point verbal scale

and

plain plurality voting > IRV

and

Avg-based score voting with 3-point numerical scale (don't care if
{-1,0,+1} or {0,1,2}) > Avg-based score voting with 21-point numerical
scale.



-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)