In a democracy, Bayrou would have won. Application of the Borda Fixed Point method to the 2007 French presidential elections

Colignatus, Thomas (2007): In a democracy, Bayrou would have won. Application of the Borda Fixed Point method to the 2007 French presidential elections. Unpublished.

Abstract

Democratic nations are advised to have parliaments select the chief executive by the Borda Fixed Point method. The current practice of having direct popular elections using systems that have originated in history is inoptimal and actually quite undemocratic since winners are selected who don’t reflect the national sentiment. The paper gives the example of the 2007 French presidential elections. Under the currently and historically grown system of run-off plurality Sarkozy got elected while the more democratic method of Borda Fixed Point would have generated Bayrou. The example uses reasonable assumptions on underlying micro preferences. The parliamentary vote that followed the presidential vote and that annihilated Bayrou increased the paradox but not the principles involved.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Additional Information: The June 27 version (1) also shows outcomes of other voting mechanisms, (2) suggests an explanation why Bayrou was annihilated in the subsequent parliamentary elections (which is paradoxical as well).
• Institution: Thomas Cool Consultancy & Econometrics
• Language: English
• Keywords: voting theory; voting systems; elections; public choice; political economy; run-off plurality; Borda Fixed Point; democracy
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations; A - General Economics and Teaching > A2 - Economics Education and Teaching of Economics; H - Public Economics > H0 - General

References

Thomas Colignatus is the preferred name of Thomas Cool in science.

EWP references are to the Economics Working Papers Archive at the Washington University at St. Louis: http://econwpa.wustl.edu. See also http://www.dataweb.nl/~cool.

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