IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jgu/wpaper/2506.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dichotomous Preferences: Concepts, Measurement, and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Salvatore Barbaro

    (Johannes-Gutenberg University, Germany)

  • Anna-Sophie Kurella

    (Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany)

Abstract

Dichotomous preferences are a widely assumed feature in social choice theory. Despite their prominence in theoretical models, the empirical validity of this assumption has remained largely unexplored. Nor is it always clear how dichotomous preferences are defined across different research contexts. This paper introduces two new concepts that weaken the strict dichotomy assumption and can each be tested empirically. Using CSES data and three experimental datasets—two from French presidential elections and one from a regional election in Austria—we examine how frequently the different forms of dichotomous preferences occur. In addition, the paper provides evidence on the relationship between ranking and approval ballots. The results suggest that while dichotomous preferences do not offer a perfect representation of voter preferences, they constitute an acceptable approximation, particularly among voters who approve more than two alternatives and among respondents with higher educational attainment levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvatore Barbaro & Anna-Sophie Kurella, 2025. "Dichotomous Preferences: Concepts, Measurement, and Evidence," Working Papers 2506, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    • Handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2506.pdf
    File Function: first version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lachat, Romain & Laslier, Jean-François, 2024. "Alternatives to plurality rule for single-winner elections: When do they make a difference?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    3. Gale, D. & Mas-Colell, A., 1979. "Corrections to an equilibrium existence theorem for a general model without ordered preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 297-298, December.
    4. Pierre Dehez & Victor Ginsburgh, 2020. "Approval voting and Shapley ranking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 415-428, September.
    5. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Ðura-Georg Granić, 2012. "Two field experiments on Approval Voting in Germany," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(1), pages 171-205, June.
    6. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon, 2020. "Some regrettable grading scale effects under different versions of evaluative voting," Working Papers halshs-02926780, HAL.
    7. Inada, Ken-Ichi, 1969. "The Simple Majority Decision Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 490-506, July.
    8. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Michele Garagnani & Jaume García-Segarra, 2025. "The framing of elections: cooperation vs. competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 65(2), pages 363-385, September.
    9. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon & Frédéric Gavrel & Jean-François Laslier, 2014. "Who's favored by evaluative voting? An experiment conducted during the 2012 French presidential election," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01113068, HAL.
    10. Cowell, Frank A & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 1996. "Robustness Properties of Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(1), pages 77-101, January.
    11. Manjunath, Vikram & Westkamp, Alexander, 2021. "Strategy-proof exchange under trichotomous preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    12. 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.
    13. François Maniquet & Philippe Mongin, 2015. "Approval voting and Arrow’s impossibility theorem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 519-532, March.
    14. Jean-François Laslier & Karine Straeten, 2008. "A live experiment on approval voting," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(1), pages 97-105, March.
    15. Brandl, Florian & Peters, Dominik, 2022. "Approval voting under dichotomous preferences: A catalogue of characterizations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    16. Antoinette Baujard & Frédéric Gavrel & Herrade Igersheim & Jean-François Laslier & Isabelle Lebon, 2013. "Who’s Favored by Evaluative Voting ? An Experiment Conducted During the 2012 French Presidential Election," Working Papers of BETA 2013-08, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    17. Gehrlein, William V. & Lepelley, Dominique & Moyouwou, Issofa, 2016. "A note on Approval Voting and electing the Condorcet loser," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 115-122.
    18. Markus Brill & Jean-François Laslier & Piotr Skowron, 2018. "Multiwinner approval rules as apportionment methods," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(3), pages 358-382, July.
    19. Sato, Norihisa, 2019. "Approval voting and fixed electorate with dichotomous preferences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 51-60.
    20. 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.
    21. Ebert, Udo, 2010. "The decomposition of inequality reconsidered: Weakly decomposable measures," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 94-103, September.
    22. Florian Brandl & Dominik Peters, 2022. "Approval voting under dichotomous preferences: A catalogue of characterizations," Post-Print hal-03816040, HAL.
    23. Bogomolnaia, Anna & Moulin, Herve & Stong, Richard, 2005. "Collective choice under dichotomous preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 165-184, June.
    24. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1994. "Economic distance and overlapping of distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 147-159, March.
    25. Marc Vorsatz, 2008. "Scoring rules on dichotomous preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(1), pages 151-162, June.
    26. Komatsu, Hiroyuki, 2024. "Characterizations of approval ranking," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 18-24.
    27. Bernard Grofman & Michel Regenwetter, 1998. "Choosing subsets: a size-independent probabilistic model and the quest for a social welfare ordering," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 15(3), pages 423-443.
    28. Gehrlein, William V. & Lepelley, Dominique, 1998. "The Condorcet efficiency of approval voting and the probability of electing the Condorcet loser," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 271-283, April.
    29. Niemi, Richard G., 1984. "The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(4), pages 952-958, December.
    30. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon & Frédéric Gavrel & Jean-François Laslier, 2014. "Who's favored by evaluative voting? An experiment conducted during the 2012 French presidential election," Post-Print halshs-01113068, HAL.
    31. Florian Brandl & Felix Brandt, 2020. "Arrovian Aggregation of Convex Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 799-844, March.
    32. repec:zbw:hohpro:325 is not listed on IDEAS
    33. Marc Vorsatz, 2007. "Approval Voting on Dichotomous Preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 28(1), pages 127-141, January.
    34. Andreas Darmann & Christian Klamler, 2023. "Does the rule matter? A comparison of preference elicitation methods and voting rules based on data from an Austrian regional parliamentary election in 2019," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 197(1), pages 63-87, October.
    35. Michele Costa, 2016. "Overlapping component and inequality decomposition: a simulation study for the Gini index," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 74(2), pages 193-205, August.
    36. Anand, Paul, 1993. "The Philosophy of Intransitive Preference," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(417), pages 337-346, March.
    37. Marc Fleurbaey & Peter Lambert & Domenico Moramarco & Vito Peragine, 2025. "Inequality decomposition analysis, the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient," Post-Print halshs-05158595, HAL.
    38. repec:old:wpaper:325 is not listed on IDEAS
    39. Antoinette Baujard & Frédéric Gavrel & Herrade Igersheim & Jean-François Laslier & Isabelle Lebon, 2014. "Who's favored by evaluative voting? An experiment conducted during the 2012 French presidential election," Working Papers halshs-01090234, HAL.
    40. William Gehrlein, 2005. "Probabilities of election outcomes with two parameters: The relative impact of unifying and polarizing candidates," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 9(4), pages 317-336, December.
    41. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon, 2021. "Some regrettable grading scale effects under different versions of evaluative voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(4), pages 803-834, May.
    42. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1989. "Improving the accuracy of estimates of Gini coefficients," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 43-47, September.
    43. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    44. Batool, Fatima & Hennig, Christian, 2021. "Clustering with the Average Silhouette Width," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    45. Barbaro, Salvatore, 2025. "Election methods and political polarization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    46. Shlomo Yitzhaki & Robert I. Lerman, 1991. "Income Stratification And Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 313-329, September.
    47. Foster, James E. & Shneyerov, Artyom A., 2000. "Path Independent Inequality Measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 199-222, April.
    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. Brandl, Florian & Peters, Dominik, 2022. "Approval voting under dichotomous preferences: A catalogue of characterizations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    2. Aaron Hamlin & Whitney Hua, 2023. "The case for approval voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 335-345, September.
    3. Igersheim, Herrade & Durand, François & Hamlin, Aaron & Laslier, Jean-François, 2022. "Comparing voting methods: 2016 US presidential election," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    4. Tanya Gibbs & Henry W. Chappell, Jr., 2021. "Elections with Multiple Positive and Negative Votes," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 37-47, December.
    5. Erdamar, Bora & Sanver, M. Remzi & Sato, Shin, 2017. "Evaluationwise strategy-proofness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 227-238.
    6. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon, 2020. "Some regrettable grading scale effects under different versions of evaluative voting," Working Papers halshs-02926780, HAL.
    7. repec:ehu:ikerla:25736 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Antoinette Baujard & Herrade Igersheim & Isabelle Lebon, 2021. "Some regrettable grading scale effects under different versions of evaluative voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(4), pages 803-834, May.
    9. Darmann, Andreas & Grundner, Julia & Klamler, Christian, 2019. "Evaluative voting or classical voting rules: Does it make a difference? Empirical evidence for consensus among voting rules," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 345-353.
    10. Granić, Đura-Georg, 2017. "The problem of the divided majority: Preference aggregation under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 21-38.
    11. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Johannes Buckenmaier, 2021. "Voting for compromises: alternative voting methods in polarized societies," ECON - Working Papers 394, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Andreas Darmann & Julia Grundner & Christian Klamler, 2017. "Election outcomes under different ways to announce preferences: an analysis of the 2015 parliament election in the Austrian federal state of Styria," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 201-216, October.
    13. Salvatore Barbaro, 2024. "Electoral Methods and Political Polarization," Working Papers 2411, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    14. Barbaro, Salvatore, 2025. "Election methods and political polarization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    15. Antoinette Baujard & Isabelle Lebon, 2020. "Retelling the Story of the 2017 French Presidential Election: The contribution of Approval Voting," Working Papers halshs-02926773, HAL.
    16. Frank Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2021. "Inequality Measurement: Methods and Data," Post-Print hal-03589066, HAL.
    17. Bol, Damien & Blais, André & Coulombe, Maxime & Laslier, Jean-François & Pilet, Jean-Benoit, 2023. "Choosing an electoral rule: Values and self-interest in the lab," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    18. Dodge Cahan & Arkadii Slinko, 2018. "Electoral competition under best-worst voting rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(2), pages 259-279, August.
    19. Chiang, Yen-Sheng, 2015. "Inequality measures perform differently in global and local assessments: An exploratory computational experiment," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 437(C), pages 1-11.
    20. Lachat, Romain & Laslier, Jean-François, 2024. "Alternatives to plurality rule for single-winner elections: When do they make a difference?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    21. Baujard, Antoinette & Gavrel, Frédéric & Igersheim, Herrade & Laslier, Jean-François & Lebon, Isabelle, 2018. "How voters use grade scales in evaluative voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 14-28.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:jgu:wpaper:2506. 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: Research Unit IPP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlmaide.html .

    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.