4 ms·
The candidate who is everyone's 10th choice can't win. To make it through the first exclusion the candidate has to be more people's first choice than at least
by caf 7y ago
The candidate who is everyone's 10th choice can't win. To make it through the first exclusion the candidate has to be more people's first choice than at least one other candidate.
In practice the most outlandish result you get is someone winning from third on the primary (first choice) votes (eg https://results.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/State2017/results/district35.html https://results.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/State2017/res... or https://results.aec.gov.au/15508/Website/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-15508-194.htm https://results.aec.gov.au/15508/Website/HouseDivisionFirstP... ), but such a candidate still needs a considerable amount of first choice votes to be in the running (and of course a very strong flow of second/subsequent choice votes).
The legitimacy argument of IRV is that the winning candidate needed to accrue 50%+1 of first-and-subsequent choice votes, so they are at least the preferred winner over the second-place candidate by a majority of the electorate.
- yyyk 7y agoI did exaggerate (and said I did), but my point was that IRV makes it very obvious when a candidate loses badly on 1st order preferences but wins based on subsequent choices. That can be argued as an IRV benefit over other systems (the winner knows s/he's on thin ice! The winner does have 50%+1 overall!), but the other way to see it is that the winner would be hobbled and would have difficulty governing effectively, and a voting system that emphasizes the ranking a bit less might have had the same result but with the winner having more legitimacy following the election.