Narrowing the field in elections: The Next-Two rule

Steven Brams () and D Marc Kilgour
Additional contact information
D Marc Kilgour: Department of Mathematics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2012, vol. 24, issue 4, 507-525

Abstract: We suggest a new approach to narrowing the field in elections, based on the ‘deservingness’ of candidates to be contenders in a runoff, or to be declared one of several winners. Instead of specifying some minimum percentage (e.g., 50) that the leading candidate must surpass to avoid a runoff (usually between the top two candidates), we propose that the number of contenders depends on the distribution of votes among all candidates. Divisor methods of apportionment proposed by Jefferson and Webster, among others, provide measures of deservingness, but they can prescribe a runoff even when one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. We propose a new measure of derservingness, called the Next-Two rule, which compares the performance of candidates to the two that immediately follow them. It identifies as contenders candidates who are bunched together near the top. We apply the Next-Two rule to several empirical examples.

Keywords: apportionment methods; contenders in elections; runoff elections; short lists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629811429993 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Narrowing the field in elections: the next-two rule (2011)
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:sae:jothpo:v:24:y:2012:i:4:p:507-525

DOI: 10.1177/0951629811429993

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().