Abstract
Different voting paradoxes identified by social choice theorists have rarely been documented in real-world elections. The collected data from the opinion polls in the 2017 Iranian presidential election provides substantial empirical evidence indicating that during the electoral campaigns, strong Borda paradox (the Condorcet loser wins plurality.) and weak Borda paradox (An alternative that is not the Condorcet winner wins plurality.) have occurred. At the same time, there was no evidence of a Condorcet paradox, i.e., a cycle among the top three candidates. The results support the empirical relevance of theoretical paradoxes in social choice and a call for the importance of voting procedures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A reformist candidate and vice president of Rouhani whose candidacy was meant to advance Rouhani’s campaign, and eventually withdrew in favor of Rouhani.
An Independent candidate who was former vice president and minister of heavy industries in the early 1980s who finished tenth in Iran’s 2001 presidential election.
A conservative candidate, French-educated engineer, and minister of culture in the mid-90s who has been absent from Iranian politics for the last two decades.
The IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) is an Iranian media corporation that holds the monopoly of domestic radio and television services in Iran. It has a polling center not only for its own programs but also for other socio-political issues (https://www.irib.ir/).
The ISPA (Iranian Students Polling Agency is affiliated with the Academic Center for Education, Culture, and Research (ACECR), an Iranian public, non-governmental higher education institution (http://ispa.ir/Default/Index/en).
IPPO Group (International Perspectives for Public Opinion LLC) is a privately held company based in Washington DC that offers not only analytical and consulting services, and researches in social, political and cultural fields but also consulting services in designing online social research tools. It utilizes quantitative methods to conduct social surveys such as polling, need assessment, attitude research, KAP surveys, and market research (http://ippogroup.com/).
FP (Fardaye Pars) is a non-governmental polling agency. Fardaye Pars means Persian’s tomorrow (http://www.fardayepars.org/).
Farsi native speaking interviewers conducted the interviews during daylight hours, local time. They were trained—both for general skills of phone polling and for the specific needs of this survey. The interviewers were selected post training after passing an interviewing skills exam.
The sampling methodology was a two-stage proportional sampling. The data were weighted based on the last available National Iranian Census (2011) with gender, age group and place of residence (urban/rural) as weighting variables. The results of each interview were assessed twice by the interviewer and the supervising team—concerning respondent’s trust in the interviewer and the interviewer’s assessment of the respondents’ honesty. Those respondents who had received very low scores for trust and honesty have been removed from the random sample.
“Opinion Poll Results: Rouhani 1st, Raisi 3rd”. Deutsche Welle (in Persian). 24 April 2017. Retrieved 24 April 2017. (Alef report in Persian)
The Race: Poll Results”, The Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA), The Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), 18 May 2017, retrieved 22 May 2017—via The Iran Primer
The Race: Poll Results”, The Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA), The Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), 18 May 2017, retrieved 22 May 2017—via The Iran Primer
Assuming the maximum variation, the results of this survey can be generalized to the whole of the 18 years and older Iranians (who reside in Iran) with a margin of error of \(\pm 2.99\) to \(\pm 3.91\) for the 95% confidence interval (based on the responses to questions).
There are always people who do not wish to disclose their vote possibly due to the level of political anxiety and fear. There is the possibility that the respondents are fearful of disclosing their final decision due to the rising level of political agitation, and as such, they are not willing to reveal their vote. Moreover, the common phenomenon of spoiled ballots in Iranian elections is to vote for names that are not on the ballots, including names of celebrities, dissidents, politicians who are not running, etc.
Assuming maximum variation, the results of this survey can be generalized to the whole of the 18 years old and older Iranian (resident in Iran) with a margin of error of \(\pm 2.82\) to \(\pm 3.75\) for the 95% confidence interval (based on responses to questions).
For instance, the results of May 14th poll (http://ippogroup.com/poll9/) show that, among those who chose Ghalibaf as their first best candidate and decided about their second choice, about 30% would vote for Rouhani while around 45% would vote for Raisi.
Alef report in Persian (in Persian). 11 May 2017: http://old.alef.ir/vdcirua53t1ay32.cbct.html?47txt
“Latest ISPA Poll: Rouhani Still Leading”. The Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) (in Persian). 16 May 2017. Retrieved 17 May 2017—via Shafaqna.
References
Arrow KJ (1963) Social choice and individual values, 2nd edn. Yale University Press, New Haven
Gehrlein WV (2006) Condorcet’s paradox. Springer, Berlin
Gehrlein WV, Lepelley D (2011) Voting paradoxes and group coherence. Springer, Berlin
Jones B, Radcliff B, Taber CS, Timpone RJ (1995) Condorcet winners and the paradox of voting: probability calculations for weak preference orders. Am Polit Sci Rev 89(1):137–144
Kaminski MM (2015) Empirical examples of voting paradoxes. In: Heckelman JC, Miller NR (eds) Handbook of social choice and voting, vol 4. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 367–387
Kuran T (1997) Private truths, public lies: the social consequences of preference falsification, Reprint edn. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Kurrild-Klitgaard P (2001) An empirical example of the condorcet paradox of voting in a large electorate. Public Choice 107(1–2):135–145
Kurrild-Klitgaar P (2008) Voting paradoxes under proportional representation: evidence from eight Danish elections. Scand Polit Stud 31(3):242–267
Kurrild-Klitgaard P (2014) Empirical social choice: an introduction. Public Choice 158(3–4):297–310
Kurrild-Klitgaard P (2017) Trump, Condorcet and Borda: voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. Eur J Politic Econ 55:29–35
Lagerspetz E (1993) Social choice in the real world. Scand Politic Stud 16(1):1–22
Lagerspetz E (1997) Social choice in the real world II: cyclical preferences and strategic voting in the finnish presidential elections. Scand Polit Stud 20(1):53–67
Mackie G (2003) Democracy defended. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Van Deemen A (2014) On the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox. Public Choice 158(3–4):311–330
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Majid Heydari Charvadeh, the reviewers and editor of the journal for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Feizi, M., Ramezanian, R. & Malek Sadati, S. Borda paradox in the 2017 Iranian presidential election: empirical evidence from opinion polls. Econ Gov 21, 101–113 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00233-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-019-00233-3