IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1901.07542.html

Dancing with Donald: Polarity in the 2016 Presidential Election

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Chuchro
  • Kyle D'Souza
  • Darren Mei

Abstract

In almost every election cycle, the validity of the United States Electoral College is brought into question. The 2016 Presidential Election again brought up the issue of a candidate winning the popular vote but not winning the Electoral College, with Hillary Clinton receiving close to three million more votes than Donald Trump. However, did the popular vote actually determine the most liked candidate in the election? In this paper, we demonstrate that different voting policies can alter which candidate is elected. Additionally, we explore the trade-offs between each of these mechanisms. Finally, we introduce two novel mechanisms with the intent of electing the least polarizing candidate.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Chuchro & Kyle D'Souza & Darren Mei, 2019. "Dancing with Donald: Polarity in the 2016 Presidential Election," Papers 1901.07542, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1901.07542
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.07542
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Levin & Barry Nalebuff, 1995. "An Introduction to Vote-Counting Schemes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 3-26, Winter.
    2. Hall, Andrew B., 2015. "What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 18-42, February.
    3. Myerson, Roger B., 1993. "Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 856-869, December.
    4. Hall, Andrew B. & Thompson, Daniel M., 2018. "Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(3), pages 509-524, August.
    5. Amartya Sen, 1999. "The Possibility of Social Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 349-378, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Shino Takayama & Yuki Tamura & Terence Yeo, 2019. "Primaries, Strategic Voters and Heterogenous Valences," Discussion Papers Series 605, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    2. Frederico Finan & Maurizio Mazzocco, 2021. "Electoral Incentives and the Allocation of Public Funds," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2467-2512.
    3. Stommes, Drew & Aronow, P. M. & Sävje, Fredrik, 2023. "On the Reliability of Published Findings Using the Regression Discontinuity Design in Political Science," I4R Discussion Paper Series 22, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    4. Raghul S. Venkatesh, 2020. "Political activism and polarization," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1530-1558, September.
    5. Jan Cameron, 2025. "Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 282-285, September.
    6. Rahul Singh & Moses Stewart, 2025. "Placebo Discontinuity Design," Papers 2507.12693, arXiv.org.
    7. Vincenzo Atella & Jay Coggins & Federico Perali, 2005. "Aversion to inequality in Italy and its determinants," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(2), pages 117-144, January.
    8. Regenwetter, Michel & Grofman, Bernard & Marley, A. A. J., 2002. "On the model dependence of majority preference relations reconstructed from ballot or survey data," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 451-466, July.
    9. Le Breton, Michel & Truchon, Michel, 1997. "A Borda measure for social choice functions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 249-272, October.
    10. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2018. "Increasing Foreign Aid for Inclusive Human Development in Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(2), pages 443-466, July.
    11. Søberg, Martin, 2003. "Voting rules and endogenous trading institutions: An experimental study," Memorandum 17/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    12. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    13. Embrey, Matthew & Seel, Christian & Philipp Reiss, J., 2024. "Gambling in risk-taking contests: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 570-585.
    14. Andina-Díaz, Ascensión & Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2021. "Institutional flexibility, political alternation, and middle-of-the-road policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    15. Subhasish Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "An experimental investigation of Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 833-861, April.
    16. Crutzen, Benoît S Y & Flamand, Sabine & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2020. "A model of a team contest, with an application to incentives under list proportional representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    17. Brandl, Florian & Brandt, Felix, 2024. "A natural adaptive process for collective decision-making," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(2), May.
    18. Mollie Painter-Morland & Geert Demuijnck & Sara Ornati, 2017. "Sustainable Development and Well-Being: A Philosophical Challenge," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(2), pages 295-311, December.
    19. Khalid Iqbal, 2017. "Welfare Economics: A Story of Existence," Romanian Economic Journal, Department of International Business and Economics from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, vol. 20(64), pages 75-83, June.
    20. Sebastian M. Saiegh, 2009. "Coalition Governments And Sovereign Debt Crises," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 232-254, July.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:1901.07542. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.