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Modeling the Outcomes of Vote-Casting in Actual Elections

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Electoral Systems

Part of the book series: Studies in Choice and Welfare ((WELFARE))

Abstract

How often do events of interest to voting theorists occur in actual elections? For example, what is the probability of observing a voting cycle – an outcome in which no candidate beats all other candidates in pairwise comparison by majority rule? When there is a candidate who beats all others in such pairwise comparisons – a Condorcet winner – what is the probability that a voting method chooses this candidate?What is the probability that voters have an incentive to vote strategically – that is, cast their votes in ways that do not reflect their true preferences? Voting theorists have analyzed these questions in great detail, using a variety of statistical models that describe different distributions of candidate rankings.

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Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to an anonymous referee, who read our paper with unusual care and pointed out several errors and omissions, as well as to Dan Felsenthal and Moshé Machover for their patience and persistence during the editing process. All remaining errors are ours.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    T. Nicolaus Tideman

  2. Department of Economics, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 13902, USA

    Florenz Plassmann

Authors
  1. T. Nicolaus Tideman
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  2. Florenz Plassmann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Florenz Plassmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel

    Dan S. Felsenthal

  2. , Department of Philosophy, King's College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom

    Moshé Machover

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Tideman, T.N., Plassmann, F. (2012). Modeling the Outcomes of Vote-Casting in Actual Elections. In: Felsenthal, D., Machover, M. (eds) Electoral Systems. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20441-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20441-8_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20440-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20441-8

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