The Determination of the Optimum Position on a Ballot Paper
G. J. G. Upton and
D. Brook
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 1975, vol. 24, issue 3, 279-287
Abstract:
It is known that the position of a candidate's name on a ballot paper affects his chances of success. In multi‐seat elections it is possible to eliminate the effect of party differences by considering the party groups separately. If the ordered within‐party outcome is expressed as a permutation of the positions on the ballot paper, then, because certain positions are favoured by the voter, the probabilities of these permutations are not all equal. In this paper, a model is described, which allocates probabilities to the various permutations. The model is applied to two independent sets of results from recent elections. It is found that certain apparent anomalies in these results are explained by the model, and that, contrary to general expectation, for the elections studied, it is the second position on the ballot paper which is most favoured.
Date: 1975
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2307/2347088
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssc:v:24:y:1975:i:3:p:279-287
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-9876
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C is currently edited by R. Chandler and P. W. F. Smith
More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().