Re: Nader the Condorcet Winner in 2000

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

of course, the main parties won't change the current electoral system as long as they both think they gain from it (and there's no serious pressure on them to change). So don't expect Condorcet's criterion to apply in practice. 
Jim D. 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx] 
	Sent: Sat 3/27/2004 11:17 AM 
	To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [PEN-L] Nader the Condorcet Winner in 2000
	
	

	The virtue of the Condorcet method is its ability to eliminate the
	pressure on voters to vote to defeat the least desirable candidate
	rather than reveal their true preferences, by allowing voters to rank
	the candidates (like Instant Runoff Voting) and by refusing to
	eliminate the candidate with the least first choices (unlike Instant
	Runoff Voting).
	
	That Ralph Nader turned out to be the Condorcet Winner in 2000 shows
	how unusual the 2000 election was, according to Bruce C. Burden:
	
	*****   Two common methods are majority and plurality rule.  Majority
	rule would have failed in 2000 because no candidate won 50% of the
	popular vote.  And plurality rule would have elected Gore as he
	clearly won the popular vote.  And neither majority nor plurality
	rule is more natural than or superior to more complicated methods. .
	. . [T]he Founders chose to create the Electoral College to choose
	presidents. Bush won the 2000 election because he won a majority of
	electoral votes, after a serious of legal battles in Florida held him
	over the 270 required for victory.  One might wonder whether this
	rather unique method of election selected the same winner that other
	aggregation schemes might or whether Bush's victory was idiosyncratic
	to the particular set of institutions and events that put him into
	office.
	
	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.  That is, the Electoral College victor
	also would have won using Condorcet's standard of beating each of the
	other candidates in head-to-head comparisons.  Using their approach,
	I have verified that Clinton was easily the Condorcet winner in 1996
	as well.
	
	It is reassuring that different voting schemes -- simple plurality
	rule, the Electoral College, the Condorcet criterion, and perhaps
	even approval voting -- all select the same candidate in each of the
	last four elections with significant minor parties (Brams and
	Fishburn 1983; Brams and Merrill 1994; Kiewiet 1979).  Indeed, it is
	remarkable that every presidential election for which adequate survey
	data exist seems to have chosen the Condorcet winner, regardless of
	minor party showings.  This is satisfying in part because no voting
	method is ideal and the Condorcet method appears to be one of the
	most stringent as a Condorcet winner does not even exist in many
	settings.
	
	The 2000 election is not so tidy.  Not only did George W. Bush not
	take the popular vote, but the data clearly show that he was not the
	Condorcet winner either.  This is apparently the first time in the
	survey era that this has happened.  Moreover, it is quite possible
	that the winner of the popular vote -- Al Gore -- was also not the
	Condorcet winner.  Examining the pre-election rankings, Nader beats
	Buchanan (659-240), Gore (527-500), and Bush (562-491), thus making
	him the Condorcet winner.3  Nearly every other method makes Gore the
	winner.  Running through the list of voting methods that are commonly
	discussed in textbooks on the subject (e.g., Shepsle and Bonchek
	1997), Gore wins whether using a plurality runoff, sequential runoff,
	Borda count, or approval voting.4  The 2000 election thus represents
	a highly unusual event in modern U.S. politics as the Electoral
	College and ensuing legal battles surrounding Florida are perhaps the
	only method that would result in George W. Bush's election.
	
	("Minor Parties in the 2000 Presidential Election," 2-3,
	<http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/burdosu.pdf>)
	*****
	
	The main points of Burden's essay is (1) that George W. Bush could
	_not_ have won the election by _any_ voting method -- he won only
	because of the Supreme Court's intervention and Al Gore's
	acquiescence to it; (2) "Bush not only lost the popular vote but was
	nearly the Condocet _loser _in head-to-head pairings with each of
	other candidates" (Burden, 10); (3) _before 2000_, all actual
	presidential election winners were also Condorcet winners (i.e.,
	candidates with broad appeal, preferable to the other major and minor
	party candidates from the points of view of many of the voters who
	did not make them their first choices) in the elections for which
	adequate survey data are available, but _in 2000_ neither Gore nor
	Bush was the Condorcet winner, an exceptional outcome in modern US
	history; and (4) Nader turned out to be the Condorcet winner,
	_despite_ the fact that Nader (unlike Ross Perot) was not a centrist
	candidate who attracted centrist voters who prefer compromise
	candidates and that actual "Nader voters were more liberal,
	pro-choice, and educated than other voters on average" and chose
	Nader over Gore because they were "discontent with the economy"
	(Burden, 1-2, 14) -- "For a voter who is undecided between Gore and
	Nader, viewing the current economy as 'poor' rather than 'excellent'
	increases his probability of picking Nader from .50 to .79, a change
	of nearly 30 percentage points" (Burden, 13).
	
	Comparison of actual votes and true preferences is important, as it
	suggests a potential Green Party strategy:
	
	*****   Table 1 demonstrates this by comparing respondents' candidate
	rankings along with their vote choice and turnout decisions.  The
	data show that nearly all of those who rated Buchanan or Nader as
	their most preferred candidates voted for someone else.  Among
	voters, over 90% of people who rated Buchanan or Nader highest did
	not vote for them. . . .
	
	Table 1: Candidate Rankings, Vote Choice, and Abstention
	
	           Highest Ranked Candidate
	           Bush  Gore  Nader  Buchanan
	Presi-
	dential
	Vote
	Choice
	
	Bush      93.7   6.2  37.6    46.3
	Gore       5.8  93.5  52.0    43.9
	Nader       .5    .3   9.4     3.5
	Buchanan     0     0     0     3.5
	Other        0     0   1.0     2.7
	Abstain   20.0  25.9  48.1    39.8
	
	Notes: Ranking based on pre-election feeling thermometers as the
	post-election thermometers do not include Buchanan.  NES sample
	weight used. Ties are omitted.
	
	(Burden, 3-4)   *****
	
	The Green Party should think about what is to be done to motivate
	those who prefer Nader to actually get to the ballot boxes and vote
	for him, rather than think about what to say to win back those who
	actually voted for Nader but now regret their vote -- a tiny
	minority: "[A]pparently not many Nader voters regret their decisions.
	Only 1 in 10 Nader voters say they wish they could change their vote
	after knowing how close the election was" (Burden, 4).
	--
	Yoshie
	
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