Election methods and political polarization

Salvatore Barbaro

Mathematical Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 135, issue C

Abstract: Political polarization poses a significant challenge to democratic societies. While much of the scholarly focus has been on the socio-demographic factors that drive polarization, this paper focuses on voting rules and their effects on the incentives for candidates to be moderate or polarizing. It addresses the question: Which voting methods most impede the success of a polarizing candidate? Through a comparative analysis of plurality voting, the Condorcet method, and Borda’s rule, we find the Borda rule to be the most effective at discouraging extreme platforms. In a generalization, we show that a scoring rule is more effective at hindering the success of polarizing candidates the more weight that it places on voters’ second preferences in the tallying process.

Keywords: Elections; Voting rules; Political polarization; Scoring rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:135:y:2025:i:c:s0165489625000320

DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2025.102417

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