The probability of ties with scoring methods: Some results

Thierry Marchant

Social Choice and Welfare, 2001, vol. 18, issue 4, 709-735

Abstract: The main flaw of the Condorcet method is that a Condorcet winner does not always exist (when there is a top cycle). Moreover, in some cases, all candidates are contained in one cycle and, therefore, a society or committee using the Condorcet method risks to face a severe indeterminacy. An indeterminacy can also happen when using other methods: for example the Borda method, plurality voting or any scoring method; but the origin of the indeterminacy is completely different. It happens when all candidates are tied. We study the probability that all candidates are tied when using a scoring method. We show that it is equivalent to some random walk problems. Some analytical and numerical results show that, under the assumptions underlying our study, the probability is very small and decreases when the number of voters or candidates increases.

Date: 2001-10-08
Note: Received: 18 December 1998/Accepted: 17 March 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00355/papers/1018004/10180709.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

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:spr:sochwe:v:18:y:2001:i:4:p:709-735

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).