One-Winner Elections

Old voting rules splinter an interest group that has more than one candidate — greatly reducing the chance that any of those candidates can win. Newer rules organize data from ballots to find the broad interest groups.

Merits of Condorcet's Rule    

Condorcet's rule is the best way of finding the most-central candidate.  The candidate with opinions favored by the most central voter usually tops any other candidate by a clear majority (the central voter plus all voters on one side).

For example, Representative Sanders [Livingstone, Lafontaine] out ranks Clinton [Blair, Schröder] on ballots from progressive voters, so for a Condorcet win, Clinton would have to appeal to centrists and conservatives -- even though she cannot hope to be the first choice for conservative voters. 
Conservatives like Bush [Major, Kohl] out rank Clinton on conservatives' ballots, so for a Condorcet victory, Clinton must appeal to centrists and progressives.

A candidate must compete across the political spectrum -- unlike plurality winners, who need and get no votes from one side.  Every voter can rank her relative to other candidates.  So under Condorcet's rule all voters are "obtainable" and valuable.  Thus a rep elected by this rule must be concerned with helping a very broad constituency.  This motivation is essential for the swing rep(s) in an ensemble council.

If she appeals only to centrists, the moderate and fringe voters on all sides can give higher ranks, and the election, to someone whose appeal is wider.

Wide appeal and policy positions close to the median voter's make this the most appropriate candidate to moderate debates.

A group with several nominees does not splinter.  Its members may rank all of their nominees above other candidates.  Then each nominee gets all of that group's ballots when tested one against one with an outsider.

Finally, if another rule picks a different winner, the Condorcet winner ranks higher on most ballots and would win a majority, one against one.

There is usually one who can top all others.  But sometimes no one passes all of her pairwise tests.  Such ties can be broken by many rules including the Instant Runoff rule described in a page below.

Critics charge that the Condorcet rule might elect politicians whose vagueness or indecision offends nobody.  That might happen after a negative, polarizing campaign which leads some voters to rank their party's major rivals below unknown candidates. Obviously those critics are exasperated by indecision and afraid of the unknown, but so are many voters.  A democrat must assist and then give credit to the judgements of voters.

Central leaders tend to be pragmatists.  Leaders further from the center are more doctrinaire and intolerant -- with sometimes disastrous consequences.  Constructive leaders of the 21st Century will be challenged to raise tolerance of religions and cultures.

In the Korean example, progressive voters could have ranked the militarist candidate below both progressive candidates.  They were nearly tied in first-choice votes (28% to 27%).  So the Condorcet winner probably would have been the progressive preferred by the conservative voters.  That was the most central candidate.  The president would have had majority support over each rival.

(Note: If a chief executive is given the power to veto legislation, then her election should be closely related to that of the legislature.  Otherwise their disagreements may block essential government action.  A council elected by off-center rules usually matches best with an executive elected by Instant Runoff Voting.  A well-centered ensemble council matches an executive elected by Condorcet's rule.)

The down arrow links to a page about the preference ballots that let voters rank many candidates.  But before going deeper, please click the right arrow  to read an overview of multi-winner rules.  Later pages on central majorities and policies will give more stories about off-center governments.