 Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primariesEuropean Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 55, issue C, 29-35 Abstract: The organization of US presidential elections makes them potentially vulnerable to the “voting paradoxes” identified by social choice theorists but rarely documented in real-world elections. Using polling data from the 2016 Republican presidential primaries we identify two possible cases: Early in the pre-primary (2015) a cyclical majority may have existed in Republican voters’ preferences between Bush, Cruz and Walker. Furthermore, later polling data (January-March 2016) suggests that while Trump (who achieved less than 50% of the total Republican primary vote) was the Plurality Winner, he could have been beaten in pairwise contests by at least one other candidate and may have been the Condorcet Loser. The cases confirm the empirical relevance of the theoretical voting paradoxes and the importance of voting procedures. Keywords: D71; D72; Social choice; Condorcet paradox; Borda Paradox; US presidential election 2016; Jeb Bush; Chris Christie; Ted Cruz; John Kasich; Marco Rubio; Donald Trump; Scott Walker; Voting system (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:55:y:2018:i:c:p:29-35 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2017.10.003 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier |
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