The cyclical social choice of primary vs. general election candidates: A note on the US 2016 presidential election

Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter (2016): The cyclical social choice of primary vs. general election candidates: A note on the US 2016 presidential election.

Abstract

The manner in which US presidential elections are organized make them ripe for empirical manifestations of the “voting paradoxes” identified by social choice theorists. This note illustrates the general point with polling data involving the two leading Democrats and the three leading Republicans at the beginning of the 2016 presidential primaries, suggesting that all five candidates may be alternatives in one or more cyclical majorities, i.e., where no candidate cannot be beaten by at least one other candidate.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Social choice; Condorcet paradox; Borda paradox; US presidential election 2016; Hillary Clinton; Bernard Sanders; Donald Trump; Ted Cruz; Marco Rubio.
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice ; Clubs ; Committees ; Associations; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

References

Brams, S. J., Kilgour, D. M., & Zwicker, W. S. (1998). The paradox of multiple elections. Social Choice and Welfare 15, 211-236.

Gehrlein, W. V. (2006). Condorcet's paradox. Berlin: Springer.

Gehrlein, W. V. & Lepelley, D. (2011). Voting paradoxes and group coherence. Berlin: Springer.

Kurrild-Klitgaard, P. (2013). Election inversions, coalitions and proportional representation: Examples of voting paradoxes in Danish government formations. Scandinavian Political Studies 36(2), 121-136.

Kurrild-Klitgaard, P. (2014). Empirical social choice: An introduction. Public Choice 158(3-4), 297-310.

Nurmi, H. (1999). Voting paradoxes and how to deal with them. Berlin: Springer.

Riker, W. H. (1982). Liberalism against populism: A confrontation between the theory of democracy and the theory of social choice. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

Riker, W. H. (1986). The art of political manipulation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Van Deemen, A. M. A. (2014). On the empirical relevance of Condorcet's paradox. Public Choice 158(3), 311-330.