Here's James G.'s and Curt's prediction, if we were to hold a national runoff between a CW chosen by Condorcet, and the winner by IRV:
Say the candidates are Nader, Kerry, and Bush. Say Kerry is the CW (just an assumption to illustrate the prediction). Most people on EM prefer Nader to Kerry, and Kerry to Bush.
And say that Kerry, in the report of the IRV count, has the fewest 1st place votes, in the 1st IRV round, even though he's the CW.
Now, according to James G. & Curt, you will say, "What's this? I'm shocked that Kerry isn't a big favorite, with an enthusiastic broad base who consider him favorite! Bush has people who consider him favorite, and so, though Bush has been doing a lot of horrendous things, Kerry's lack of enthusiastic favorite support is much worse, and so I'm going to vote for Bush in the runoff."
Ridiculous? Yes.
Everyone I've spoken to about it says that they only vote for the Democrats as a lesser-evil, and that they must hold their nose in order to do so. That isn't what we call enthusiastic support for a favorite. But those same people vote for the Democrat anyway, because they'd much rather elect him than the Republican. That's common knowledge. They don't vote for Kerry because they think that he has a broad base of enthusiastic support as a big favorite.
Mike Ossipoff
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