The Unexpected Behavior of Plurality Rule

When voters’ preferences on candidates are mutually coherent, in the sense that they are at all close to being perfectly single-peaked, perfectly single-troughed, or perfectly polarized, there is a large probability that a Condorcet Winner exists in elections with a small number of candidates. Given this fact, the study develops representations for Condorcet Efficiency of plurality rule as a function of the proximity of voters’ preferences on candidates to being perfectly single-peaked, perfectly single-troughed or perfectly polarized. We find that the widely used plurality rule has Condorcet Efficiency values that behave in very different ways under each of these three models of mutual coherence.

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