Majority principle and indeterminacy in German elections

Salvatore Barbaro () and Nils D. Steiner ()
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Nils D. Steiner: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

No 2202, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: Out of the many possible voting schemes, the notoriously-used plurality rule is far from being the best. Previous research from France and the US reveals how plurality winners fall short of majority support. Therefore, eminent scholars advocate the simple-majority rule. The latter, however, faces the threat of indeterminacy due to cycling patterns. To contribute to the scarce evidence on the empirical occurrence of these phenomena, we used survey data from the 2017 German election to simulate preference orderings on district candidates. We find that violations of the majority principle are frequent. Conversely, we do not uncover any indeterminacy.

Keywords: Elections; Plurality voting; simple-majority rule; indeterminacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur and nep-pol
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https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2202.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2202

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