Thanks for alerting us to this interesting election, Rob. I confirm that Flores is rather convincingly the Condorcet Winner, according to the pre-election polls, and yet lost in the actual Plurality with top-two runoff election.
Would Flores have lost in an IRV election? This is harder to say (but the bottom line is that I think Flores would have lost an IRV election). Here is an analysis: * How Flores might have _won_ an IRV election: The results of the first round Plurality election were: 30.848% Humala 23.534% Flores 24.348% Garcia 21.270% Others (the next three candidates got 7.452%, 5.758%, and 4.379%, followed by 14 candidates who got less than 1% each.) Flores and Garcia were nearly tied in Plurality votes. So, if the Others votes flowed more to Flores than to Garcia, then Flores would have made the the runoff and then would likely win. The Wikipedia page says that Flores is "the leader of the conservative, right-wing Unidad Nacional coalition", while Humalia and Garcia are both leaders of "left-leaning" parties. As the only major "right-wing" candidate, it is possible Flores might attract more second-choice votes from the Other voters, while the two major leftist candidates would split the Others' preferences. * How Flores might have _lost_ an IRV election: Other than the left/right designations, there is no evidence that I could see that the Other voters would prefer Flores over Garcia. So, if the Other's preferences would not upset the ranking of Humala > Garcia > Flores, then Flores would indeed lose under IRV. There are two bits of evidence that Flores was a centrist candidate, and that she would have fallen victim to the infamous center-squeeze effect of IRV. The first bit of evidence is that Humala is a revolutionary - he led an uprising against former president Fujimori. Meanwhile, Garcia was also a former president but his administration "was marked by... economic crisis, as well as widespread terrorist activities..." Thus Garcia might be seen as "old establishment" in sharp contrast with the revolutionary Humala, and thus Flores might actually be seen as somewhere in between! The second bit of evidence comes from assuming that the Others' preferences would flow to the three main candidates in the same proportion as the votes in the Plurality election. Thus, with just the three main candidates remaining, the votes would be: 39.182% (round to 39%) Humala 29.892% (round to 30%) Flores 30.926% (round to 31%) Garcia If we combine those percentages with the Condorcet poll results, we see that the partial orderings are: 11 H>G>F 28 H>F>G 12 F>H>G 18 F>G>H 25 G>F>H 6 G>H>F (I find it helpful to visualize this by drawing a pie chart with six sections in the order shown.) There are very few H-first and G-first voters giving their second choices to each other. And the F-first voters divide their second choices more evenly between H and G. Thus, Flores seems to be the centrist candidate in this election. I have an ...intuition... (not sure there is much factual basis for it) that minor candidates -- the low vote-getters -- tend to be outliers on the political landscape. If that is true, then we could expect that the Others' preferences would flow more to H and G. This would increase the probability that Flores would fall victim to the center squeeze effect in an IRV election. Cheers, - Jan On 4/17/06, Rob LeGrand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The current election for president of Peru may give an excellent real- > world example of top-two runoff (and thus probably IRV) failing to elect > a Condorcet winner. According to the Wikipedia coverage of the election > at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_national_election,_2006 , the > official results of the vote that took place on 9 April 2006 will be > released in around ten days. The "partial official results" place > Ollanta Humala ahead of Alan Garcia and Lourdes Flores, in that order, > meaning that the runoff election to be held in around a month will likely > include only Humala and Garcia. However, the last polls before the > election showed that Flores would win a runoff against either Humala > (55%-45%) or Garcia (58%-42%), making her the likely Concorcet winner, > since all other candidates were well behind the pack. (Those same polls > showed that Humala would be favored over Garcia 51%-49%. My brother is > in Peru right now with the Peace Corps and is hoping that Humala, a > friend of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, doesn't win--he says that Humala would > be likely to kick Peace Corps out of Peru.) > > -- > Rob LeGrand, psephologist > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Citizens for Approval Voting > http://www.approvalvoting.org/ ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
