IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v161y2014i1p1-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Frequency of monotonicity failure under Instant Runoff Voting: estimates based on a spatial model of elections

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Ornstein
  • Robert Norman

Abstract

It has long been recognized that Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) suffers from a defect known as nonmonotonicity, wherein increasing support for a candidate among a subset of voters may adversely affect that candidate’s election outcome. The expected frequency of this type of behavior, however, remains an open and important question, and limited access to detailed election data makes it difficult to resolve empirically. In this paper, we develop a spatial model of voting behavior to approach the question theoretically. We conclude that monotonicity failures in three-candidate IRV elections may be much more prevalent than widely presumed (results suggest a lower bound estimate of 15 % for competitive elections). In light of these results, those seeking to implement a fairer multi-candidate election system should be wary of adopting IRV. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Ornstein & Robert Norman, 2014. "Frequency of monotonicity failure under Instant Runoff Voting: estimates based on a spatial model of elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 1-9, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:161:y:2014:i:1:p:1-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-013-0118-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-013-0118-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-013-0118-2?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. Laver, Michael, 2005. "Policy and the Dynamics of Political Competition," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-281, May.
    2. Lepelley, Dominique & Chantreuil, Frederic & Berg, Sven, 1996. "The likelihood of monotonicity paradoxes in run-off elections," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 133-146, June.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    4. Lawrence Kenny & Babak Lotfinia, 2005. "Evidence on the importance of spatial voting models in presidential nominations and elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 439-462, June.
    5. Donald Horowitz, 2004. "The alternative vote and interethnic moderation: A reply to Fraenkel and Grofman," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 507-517, February.
    6. Jon Fraenkel & Bernard Grofman, 2004. "A Neo-Downsian Model of the Alternative Vote as a Mechanism for Mitigating Ethnic Conflict in Plural Societies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 487-506, February.
    7. Smith, John H, 1973. "Aggregation of Preferences with Variable Electorate," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(6), pages 1027-1041, November.
    8. Kollman, Ken & Miller, John H. & Page, Scott E., 1992. "Adaptive Parties in Spatial Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(4), pages 929-937, December.
    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. Ross Hyman & Deb Otis & Seamus Allen & Greg Dennis, 2023. "A Majority Rule Philosophy for Instant Runoff Voting," Papers 2308.08430, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    2. Stensholt, Eivind, 2020. "Anomalies of Instant Runoff Voting," Discussion Papers 2020/6, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    3. Umut Keskin & M. Remzi Sanver & H. Berkay Tosunlu, 2022. "Monotonicity violations under plurality with a runoff: the case of French presidential elections," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(2), pages 305-333, August.
    4. Tomas J. McIntee, 2017. "A geometric model of sensitivity of multistage elections to change," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(1), pages 89-115, June.
    5. Adam Graham-Squire & David McCune, 2022. "A Mathematical Analysis of the 2022 Alaska Special Election for US House," Papers 2209.04764, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    6. Adam Graham-Squire & David McCune, 2023. "Paradoxical Oddities in Two Multiwinner Elections from Scotland," Papers 2305.20078, arXiv.org.
    7. Stensholt, Eivind, 2019. "MMP-elections and the assembly size," Discussion Papers 2019/15, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    8. Adam Graham-Squire & David McCune, 2023. "An Examination of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, 2004-2022," Papers 2301.12075, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    9. Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), 2015. "Handbook of Social Choice and Voting," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15584.
    10. Marek M. Kaminski, 2015. "Empirical examples of voting paradoxes," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 20, pages 367-387, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Nicholas R. Miller, 2017. "Closeness matters: monotonicity failure in IRV elections with three candidates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 91-108, October.
    12. David McCune & Jennifer Wilson, 2023. "Ranked-choice voting and the spoiler effect," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(1), pages 19-50, July.
    13. David McCune & Adam Graham-Squire, 2023. "Monotonicity Anomalies in Scottish Local Government Elections," Papers 2305.17741, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    14. David McCune & Lori McCune, 2021. "The Curious Case of the 2021 Minneapolis Ward 2 City Council Election," Papers 2111.09846, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.

    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. Michael J. Ensley & Michael W. Tofias & Scott De Marchi, 2009. "District Complexity as an Advantage in Congressional Elections," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 990-1005, October.
    2. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2014. "Two-party competition with persistent policies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 64-91.
    3. Bilge Öztürk Göktuna, 2019. "A dynamic model of party membership and ideologies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 209-243, April.
    4. Kollman, Ken & Miller, John H. & Page, Scott E., 1997. "Landscape formation in a spatial voting model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 121-130, August.
    5. John Jackson, 2014. "Location, location, location: the Davis-Hinich model of electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 197-218, April.
    6. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael M., 2000. "A Behavioral Model of Turnout," Research Papers 1627, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    7. David Stadelmann & Marco Portmann & Reiner Eichenberger, 2012. "Preference Representation and the Influence of Political Parties in Majoritarian vs. Proportional Systems: An Almost Ideal Empirical Test," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-03, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    8. Kiran Tomlinson & Johan Ugander & Jon Kleinberg, 2023. "The Moderating Effect of Instant Runoff Voting," Papers 2303.09734, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    9. Michel Schilperoord & Jan Rotmans & Noam Bergman, 2008. "Modelling societal transitions with agent transformation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 283-301, December.
    10. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2013. "Quantifying parliamentary representation of constituents’ preferences with quasi-experimental data," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 170-180.
    11. Michael Ensley & Scott Marchi & Michael Munger, 2007. "Candidate uncertainty, mental models, and complexity: Some experimental results," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 231-246, July.
    12. Hatem Smaoui & Dominique Lepelley & Issofa Moyouwou, 2016. "Borda elimination rule and monotonicity paradoxes in three-candidate elections," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(3), pages 1722-1728.
    13. Emily Clough, 2008. "Still Converging? a Downsian Party System Without Polls," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(4), pages 461-476, October.
    14. Katsuya Kobayashi & Hideo Konishi, 2016. "Endogenous party structure," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 317-351, November.
    15. Bärbel M. R. Stadler, 1998. "Abstention Causes Bifurcations in Two-Party Voting Dynamics," Working Papers 98-08-072, Santa Fe Institute.
    16. Dominique Lepelley & Issofa Moyouwou & Hatem Smaoui, 2018. "Monotonicity paradoxes in three-candidate elections using scoring elimination rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 1-33, January.
    17. Lapatinas, Athanasios & Garas, Antonios, 2016. "The role of networks in firms’ multi-characteristics competition and market-share inequality," MPRA Paper 68959, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. A. J. McGann, 2002. "The Advantages of Ideological Cohesion," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(1), pages 37-70, January.
    19. Umut Keskin & M. Remzi Sanver & H. Berkay Tosunlu, 2022. "Monotonicity violations under plurality with a runoff: the case of French presidential elections," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(2), pages 305-333, August.
    20. Hans Haan, 2008. "The dynamics of functioning investigating societal transitions with partial differential equations," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 302-319, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voting theory; Instant Runoff Voting; Agent-based modeling; Monotonicity; D72;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:161:y:2014:i:1:p:1-9. 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.