The Sensitivity of Political Outcomes to Electoral Decision Rules

The outcome characteristics of various voting procedures are analyzed on the basis of sample survey data. In particular, we examine the sensitivity of the social choice, the social preference ordering, and the distribution of relative political shares to the use of different point voting schemes (including the Borda method and the plurality rule), the Copeland method, and the Condorcet rule. We treat two related issues: first, the relationship between political concentration and the various rules under investigation; second, the possibility of approximating the celebrated unrestricted point voting scheme by a simpler and more practical procedure.