On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Michael Ossipoff <[email protected]> wrote: > Elimination would start at the extremes. Transfers would be sent > inward, until the candidates adjacent to the CW would have collected > all of those inward-transferred votes, enough to eliminate the CW.
It seems more realistic that the CW is the centrist and one of the 2 large parties wins. > So it's safe to say that IRV isn't at all good at electing CWs or fair > compromises. Right, that is the problem. IRV supports the 2 party system. It is not clear if the effect is weaker than with plurality. It might be weaker, but it is still sufficient. See Australia, they have IRV and a 2 party system. The 2 party system forces 1 dimension to politics. You can't selected policy direction and low corruption (or even 2 have 2 dimensions for policy). > In that squeeze-effect scenario, of course the voters preferring > candidates to one side, plus those preferring the CW, must add up to a > majority. So there are two majorities, and the one that prevails will > be the one on the side that the CW's voters prefer and transfer their > votes to, when the CW is eliminated. 45) L > C > R 10) C > L > R 45) R > C > L The center candidate loses. The mutual majority is (C, L), but the C candidate is the CW. > IRV is a special purpose method that should > only be supported by befeficiaries of a mutural majority. It benefits the 2 parties, since they will be the last 2 parties to be eliminated. Spoiler effects mean that voters can't pick the best candidate. In the L/C mutual majority that can just pick L/C as a bloc. Anyway, "better" systems would not be an advantage for the current parties, better to have a 50% chance of winning the election, than a centre party wins most of the time. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
