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That Ralph Nader turned out to be the Condorcet Winner in 2000 shows
how unusual the 2000 election was, according to Bruce C. Burden:
One of the most stringent methods of selecting a candidate was
proposed by the Marquis de Condorcet more than 200 years ago. The
Condorcet criterion is a desirable method of choosing among multiple
candidates because it sets the threshold of victory high. Condorcet
argued that a winning alternative ought to be capable of defeating
all other alternative in head-to-head comparisons. That is, A should
be the victor only if she beats both B and C in paired situations. .
. .
National Election Study data from 2000 make it possible to conduct a
crude analysis of strategic voting. I follow a long line of research
that uses rankings of the candidates on the traditional "feeling
thermometers" as estimates of the relative ordinal utilities each
person has for each candidate. Thermometers are reasonable proxies
for respondents' utilities for the candidates and predict the vote
well (Abramson et al. 1992, 1995, 2000; Brams and Fishburn 1983;
Brams and Merrill 1994; Kiewiet 1979; Ordeshook and Zeng 1997;
Palfrey and Poole 1987; Weisberg and Grofman 1981). Abramson and
colleagues (1995) show that the winners of the popular and electoral
vote in three notable third party elections -- 1968, 1980, and 1992
-- were all Condorcet winners.
("Minor Parties in the 2000 Presidential Election," 2-3,
<http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/burdosu.pdf>)
Yoshie
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first half of condorcet's 1785 essay discusses what today is called
'arrow's paradox', second half discusses paired election idea...
condorcet's idea was all but unknown prior to duncan black's work at
mid-20th century (coincident to that of kenneth arrow), see his book
_theory of committees and elections_..., black suggested that he was
doing 'pure theorizing about politics'...
interesting that both arrow & black go against generally negative grain
of most public/rational/social choice thinking about
democracy/majoritarianism...
arrow wished that his conclusion would have been that majority voting
could have been shown to produce set of wholly consistent choices, black
held that majority principle should be adopted if one exists/can be
found...
black/condorect offers some social/rational/public choice theorists
(bernard grofman, scot feld, h. p. young, among others) a sense of
optimism re. collective judgments, they can argue that forming sound
collective judgment depends upon individual voter competence & voting
rules architecture (of course, reliance upon impersonal vote-counting
mechanisms departs greatly from people interacting & discussing with one
another)...
studies such as burden's stem from william riker's postulation that
teddy roosevelt would have been condorcet winner in 1912 prez election
(woodrow wilson was plurality winner, incumbent william howard taft was
third candidate)...
use of 'feeling thermometers' - do you feel hot or cold about candidate
A, 100 = hottest, 0 = coldest - problematic as almost all responses glob
around 25, 50, 75...
abramson (paul) and colleagues (who must be john aldrich & david rohde
as three have been doing election studies entitled _change and
continuity_ for some time) concluded that gore would have been 2000
condorect winner, i've seen a couple of other studies concluding same...
michael hoover
