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Would the Borda Count Have Avoided the Civil War?

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  • Alexander Tabarrok
  • Lee Spector

Abstract

The election of 1860 was one of the most important and contentious elections in US history. It was also one of the most interesting. Four candidates from three different parties battled for the presidency and all four received a significant number of votes. We ask whether Lincoln's victory was sound, or was it due to a fluke in the electoral system? Did a Lincoln win plausibly represent the will of the voters or would a different voting system have represented their preferences more accurately? Would the outcome have been the same had one or more of the candidates dropped out of the race? These and other questions are answered using new graphical techniques which let us assess voter preferences more accurately. Using these techniques, we are able to show, in a single figure, the outcome of every positional voting system, as well as all possible approval voting outcomes. By comparing the outcome under plurality rule to the outcomes which would have occurred under other voting systems, we conclude that Stephen Douglas, not Lincoln, was plausibly the candidate who best represented the preferences of the voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Tabarrok & Lee Spector, 1999. "Would the Borda Count Have Avoided the Civil War?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(2), pages 261-288, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:11:y:1999:i:2:p:261-288
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692899011002006
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Robert J. Weber, 1995. "Approval Voting," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 39-49, Winter.
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    4. Donald Saari & Jill Newenhizen, 1988. "The problem of indeterminacy in approval, multiple, and truncated voting systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 101-120, November.
    5. Steven Brams & Peter Fishburn & Samuel Merrill, 1988. "The responsiveness of approval voting: Comments on Saari and Van Newenhizen," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 121-131, November.
    6. Donald Saari & Jill Newenhizen, 1988. "Is approval voting an ‘unmitigated evil’?: A response to Brams, Fishburn, and Merrill," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 133-147, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Grofman, Bernard & Feld, Scott L. & Fraenkel, Jon, 2017. "Finding the Threshold of Exclusion for all single seat and multi-seat scoring rules: Illustrated by results for the Borda and Dowdall rules," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 52-56.
    2. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2018. "Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-35.
    3. Iain McLean, 2015. "The strange history of social choice, and the contribution of the Public Choice Society to its fifth revival," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 153-165, April.
    4. Kurz, Sascha & Mayer, Alexander & Napel, Stefan, 2020. "Weighted committee games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(3), pages 972-979.
    5. Takahiro Suzuki & Masahide Horita, 2023. "A Society Can Always Decide How to Decide: A Proof," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 987-1023, October.
    6. Hillinger, Claude, 2004. "On the Possibility of Democracy and Rational Collective Choice," Discussion Papers in Economics 429, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    7. Kurz, Sascha & Mayer, Alexander & Napel, Stefan, 2021. "Influence in weighted committees," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).

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