IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v178y2019i1d10.1007_s11127-018-0608-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The elimination paradox: apportionment in the Democratic Party

Author

Listed:
  • Michael A. Jones

    (Mathematical Reviews)

  • David McCune

    (William Jewell College)

  • Jennifer Wilson

    (Eugene Lang College, The New School)

Abstract

To award delegates in their presidential primary elections, the US Democratic Party uses Hamilton’s method of apportionment after eliminating any candidates (and their votes) that receive less than 15% of the total votes cast. We illustrate how a remaining candidate may have his or her delegate total decline as a result of other candidates being eliminated; this leads to a new elimination paradox. We relate that paradox to the new states, no show, and population paradoxes and show that divisor methods are not susceptible to the elimination paradox. We conclude with instances in which the elimination paradox may occur in other contexts, including parliamentary systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael A. Jones & David McCune & Jennifer Wilson, 2019. "The elimination paradox: apportionment in the Democratic Party," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 53-65, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:178:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-018-0608-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-018-0608-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-018-0608-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-018-0608-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barnett,William A. & Moulin,Hervé & Salles,Maurice & Schofield,Norman J. (ed.), 1995. "Social Choice, Welfare, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521443401.
    2. Moulin, Herve, 1988. "Condorcet's principle implies the no show paradox," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 53-64, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jones, Michael A. & McCune, David & Wilson, Jennifer M., 2020. "New quota-based apportionment methods: The allocation of delegates in the Republican Presidential Primary," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 122-137.
    2. David McCune, 2023. "The Many Apportionment Paradoxes of the 2020 Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucuses," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 55-63, March.
    3. Balázs R Sziklai & Károly Héberger, 2020. "Apportionment and districting by Sum of Ranking Differences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-20, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bochet, Olivier & Gordon, Sidartha, 2012. "Priorities in the location of multiple public facilities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 52-67.
    2. Dirk Van de gaer & Michel Martinez & Erik Schokkaert, 1998. "Measuring Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces9810, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    3. Stefan Ambec & Yann Kervinio, 2016. "Cooperative decision-making for the provision of a locally undesirable facility," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 119-155, January.
    4. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Consumer preferences and demand systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 210-224, December.
    5. Kranich, Laurence, 1997. "Equalizing opportunities through public education when innate abilities are unobservable," UC3M Working papers. Economics 7216, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    6. De Donder, Philippe & Le Breton, Michel & Truchon, Michel, 2000. "Choosing from a weighted tournament1," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 85-109, July.
    7. Effrosyni Diamantoudi, 2003. "Equilibrium binding agreements under diverse behavioral assumptions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(2), pages 431-446, September.
    8. Núñez, Matías & Sanver, M. Remzi, 2017. "Revisiting the connection between the no-show paradox and monotonicity," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 9-17.
    9. Boniface Mbih & Issofa Moyouwou & Jérémy Picot, 2008. "Pareto violations of parliamentary voting systems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(2), pages 331-358, February.
    10. Bernard Monjardet & Jean-Pierre Barthélemy & Olivier Hudry & Bruno Leclerc, 2009. "Metric and latticial medians," Post-Print halshs-00408174, HAL.
    11. Bruno Leclerc & Bernard Monjardet, 2010. "Aggregation and residuation," Post-Print halshs-00504982, HAL.
    12. Dominique Lepelley & Fabrice Valognes, 1999. "On the Kim and Roush Voting Procedure," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 109-123, March.
    13. James J. Heckman & Apostolos Serletis, "undated". "Introduction to Internally Consistent Modeling, Aggregation, Inference, and Policy," Working Papers 2014-73, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 29 Sep 2014.
    14. Ngo Long & Vincent Martinet, 2018. "Combining rights and welfarism: a new approach to intertemporal evaluation of social alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 35-64, January.
    15. Ehlers, Lars & Klaus, Bettina, 2016. "Object allocation via deferred-acceptance: Strategy-proofness and comparative statics," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 128-146.
    16. Hiroki Saitoh, 2022. "Characterization of tie-breaking plurality rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(1), pages 139-173, July.
    17. Dan S. Felsenthal & Hannu Nurmi, 2016. "Two types of participation failure under nine voting methods in variable electorates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 115-135, July.
    18. Joaquin Perez, 1995. "Incidence of no-show paradoxes in Condorcet choice functions," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 19(1), pages 139-154, January.
    19. Stensholt, Eivind, 2019. "MMP-elections and the assembly size," Discussion Papers 2019/15, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    20. Schokkaert, Erik & Van de gaer, Dirk & Vandenbroucke, Frank & Luttens, Roland Iwan, 2004. "Responsibility sensitive egalitarianism and optimal linear income taxation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 151-182, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:178:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-018-0608-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.