Abstract
In this paper, we expose the results of a voting experiment realized in 2007, during the French Presidential election. This experiment aimed at confronting the single transferable vote (STV) procedure with two criteria: simplicity and the selection of a Condorcet-winner. Building on our electoral sample’s preferences, we show that this voting procedure can design a different winner, depending on the vote counting process. With the vote counting process advocated by Hare, the winner is Nicolas Sarkozy, while the Coombs vote counting process has François Bayrou as winner. For these two vote counting processes, the details of the experiment are the same and it is shown that the simplicity criterion is respected. However, with regard to the Condorcet-winner criterion, the Coombs method is the only one to elect the Condorcet-winner, i.e., François Bayrou.
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Notes
- 1.
See Laslier and Van der Straeten (2004, 2008) for an experiment showing that, in practice, approval votes equally satisfy the simplicity criteria.
- 2.
This point does however vary between elections. In the Australian case, the voter must complete the entire ballot, but in San Francisco, the voter only needs to rank three candidates.
- 3.
Or simply for information, to know how voters in the area voted.
- 4.
Some of the mistakes can be attributed to us. We neglected to precise in the letter addressed to the participants that ranking candidates with an equal number would not be allowed.
- 5.
We can see that in this fifth repetition, Voynet shares the worst score with Buffet. They are in a dead heat in terms of votes; therefore we need to determine which one should be eliminated. The electoral process should define these criteria before the vote takes place. We envisaged two possible criteria: eliminate the candidate with the worst initial score (in the first round), in this case Voynet; or eliminate the candidate with the least number of second place votes in this fifth repetition (Voynet 34, Buffet 46). Voynet is therefore eliminated, whichever of the criteria, which would have been upheld at the beginning, is applied.
- 6.
Testing the sincerity of voters in our sample is impossible in reality; our experiment takes place in the field, and not in a laboratory (in which case the initial allocations as well as participants’ profiles can be defined, allowing one to measure the difference between their behavior and their “real” preferences).
- 7.
For an introduction, see Truchon (1999) or Diamantopoulos (2004).
- 8.
As noted above, the theory gives a partial response to the question of whether the Coombs’ method allows the Condorcet winner to be identified when preferences are unimodal (Grofman and Feld 2004). However, we can easily show that the preferences expressed in our sample are not compatible with unimodality.
Acknowledgments
We thank Bernard Dolez, Bernard Grofman, Abel François, Guillaume Hollard, Annie Laurent, Pierre-Guillaume Méon, Remzi Sanver, Nicolas Sauger, and participants in the conference on “Reforming the French Presidential election system: experiments on electoral reform” (Paris, June 2009), and in the 10th Congress of the French Political Studies Association (Grenoble, September 2009). We also acknowledge the helpful assistance from the city of Fâches-Thumesnil, and the enthusiastic help provided by the students of the Master Program in “Economie et Administration Publique” of the University of Lille 1. Any remaining error or omission would be ours.
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Farvaque, E., Jayet, H., Ragot, L. (2011). French Presidential Election: A Field Experiment on the Single Transferable Vote. In: Dolez, B., Grofman, B., Laurent, A. (eds) In Situ and Laboratory Experiments on Electoral Law Reform. Studies in Public Choice, vol 25. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7539-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7539-3_3
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