Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
DOI 10.1007/s11135-011-9454-9
Abstract We try to find out a methodology for identifying Borda Paradox and Condorcet
Paradox in the absence of information on preference profile of citizens, and try to apply the
same to find out existence of such paradoxes in the 2004 Indian Parliamentary elections.
Keywords
1 Introduction
Although, voting paradoxes have been well well documented in the theoretical literature,
there are still attempts to identify the actual occurrences of these paradoxes. Klitgaard (2008)
has tried to look for voting paradoxes under proportional elections with data from the Danish elections. Coleman and Pountney (1978) look for the theoretical likelihood and electoral
occurrences of Borda Voting Paradox using sample surveys of preference ordering of citizens
from 1966 British Elections. However, since most electoral systems do not ask for preference ordering from citizens, deciphering the preference ordering and therefore identifying
the occurrences of the paradoxes becomes a difficult task. This paper tries to address this
specific issue of how much can be deciphered about voting paradoxes from election results of
the first past the post system of the kind that is prevalent in India. The next section discusses
some features of Indian elections which might affects the identification of voting paradoxes,
Section 3 discusses ways to decipher occurrences of a Borda Paradox in the Indian context, Section 4 discusses ways to identify the occurrence of a Condorcet Paradox. Section 5
concludes.
S. Gupta (B)
XLRI, School of Business and Human Resources, C. H. Area (East), Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India
e-mail: santanu@xlri.ac.in
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950
S. Gupta
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District 2
A
District 3
A
10
District 2
PR
PP
PA
PB
Votes
District 3
PR
PP
PA
PB
Votes
PR
PP
PA
PB
R and A
R and A
R and A
R and B
R and B
R and B
P and B
P and B
P and B
P and A
P and A
P and A
Total
Total
Total
Outcome: PP wins
Outcome: PA wins
Outcome: PA wins
community characteristic, all votes from this voter profile go to that party. If there is no party
contesting that represents either the income or the community characteristic from an electoral
district, such voters would tend to abstain from the election. Table 2 gives the results in an
electoral contest if all the four parties were to contest from each of the three districts. In
District 1, the two votes of the voters who are rich and belong to community A, are divided
equally between party PR and PA , and likewise all the other votes are distributed. In such
a situation, we see that party PP is the plurality winner from district 1, and party PA is the
plurality winner from districts 2 and 3.
In such a scenario, parties PR and PB may decide to form an electoral alliance, which we
will say as a pre-poll alliance. According to the alliance agreement, party PR agrees not to
field a candidate in district 1, and party PB agrees not to field candidates in districts 2 and 3.
Under such an alliance, the electoral results are depicted in Table 3. After the formation of
the alliance, PP , PA , and PB are the competing parties in district 1, all the two votes of the
rich voters from community A, which were earlier split between party PR and PA now go to
party PA , however all the six votes of the rich voters from community B, which were earlier
split between party PR and PB , now go to party PB . Now party PB emerges as the plurality
winner from district 1, and party PR emerges as the plurality winner from districts 2 and 3.
Therefore, by having a pre-poll alliance, parties PR and PB are able to win all the seats and
form the government.
We will like to illustrate with the above example, the mechanism of electoral alliances,
and that parties entering into an alliance may be successful only if they choose their alliance
partners carefully keeping in mind the population profile in different districts. However, we
will also like to highlight, that the reason for the large number of candidates contesting Indian
elections, is due to the fact that each party is trying to locate a voter profile and trying to
appeal to a particular characteristic, or a set of characteristics. One of the mainstream national
party, the Indian National Congress, has had a presence in most parts of India, has largely
identified itself as one striving for the interests of the poor at large. The main opposition party,
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952
S. Gupta
District 2
PP
PA
PB
Votes
District 3
PR
PP
PA
Votes
PR
PP
PA
R and A
R and A
R and A
R and B
R and B
R and B
P and B
P and B
P and B
P and A
P and A
P and A
Total
7
6
Outcome: PB wins
Total
8
7
Outcome: PR wins
Total
11
10
Outcome: PR wins
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), initially drew its support base from small traders, then tried
to expand its base by trying to appeal to the religious sentiments of the majority community.
However, since the 1990s regional parties became strong, and the Indian National Congress
which had earlier drawn support from all sections of the poor found its support base being
taken away by regional parties which appealed to caste or other local characteristics of the
voters. However, the BJP realized, that merely by having appealing to the majority community will not enable it to form a government at the national level and therefore it went for
alliances with regional parties. Finally in the 2004 Parliamentary elections, even the Congress realised the loss of its support base amongst some sections and went in for electoral
alliances with regional parties, and 2004 elections saw two major alliances emerging, the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Indian National Congress, and the other the
National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
We will like to emphasize that the notion of a Condorcet Winner in such a situation may
be inappropriate, a Condorcet Winner in this case even if it exists will not have the mandate
of the whole population. In such a situation, if we are looking at two candidate elections, it
may be so that a chunk of the voters will abstain if the parties participating do not reflect their
characteristics, in this case a Condorcet winner will necessarily have to be an alliance, which
beats any other alternative alliance only for situations when there is full voter participation.
3 Borda Paradox
A weak Borda Paradox is said to occur when a majority of the voters prefer a losing candidate to the plurality winner and a strong Borda Paradox can be said to occur when a majority
of the voters prefer any of the losing candidates to the plurality winner. Attempts to trace
a Borda Paradox were done by Coleman and Pountney (1978). They used an election survey data after the 1966 general elections in UK, to find out the proportion of voters with
different preference profiles and only 15 of the 261 constituencies with three candidate contests displayed the Borda effect. Nurmi and Suojanen (2004) use a similar methodology to
look for a Borda Paradox in the 2001 British elections, and they found such a possibility in
eight such constituencies. Given the absence of survey data giving preference profiles, in the
Indian elections, we resort to alternative information available in such a situation that helps
us decipher a Borda Paradox.
In India, in order to avoid situations like the Borda Paradox, parties normally resort to
what is called electoral alliances and it boils down to having seat adjustments in electoral
districts. The official reason as given by the parties entering into an alliance is that they
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have similar agenda, then there is a possibility of votes being split up between these parties,
and a third party with lower votes than the combined vote of these parties win. However, as
explained in the last section, electoral alliances help in the consolidation of votes of voters
with different characteristics. Seat adjustments would imply that such parties divide the total
electoral districts amongst themselves, and only one of these two parties fields a candidate in
any district. Parties then urge the voters, in electoral districts they are not contesting to vote
for the party they have alliance with. If alliance partners are chosen carefully, both parties
have a chance to win a larger number of seats and are in a better position to stake claims to
government formation.
In the 2004 election both the national parties, the Congress and BJP went for electoral
alliances with different parties in the states. However, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which
has 80 seats of the total 543 electoral seats, talks of electoral alliance failed between both the
national parties and the two regional parties, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi
Party (SP). So in most of the electoral districts, all the four parties contested. However, after
the elections, the Samajwadi Party joined the ruling coalition led by the Congress. Electoral
analysts had then commented that had these two parties gone for a pre-poll alliance, it would
have been better for both these parties. To analyze this logic, one needs to look at electoral
districts where both the Congress and the Samajwadi party lost, but their combined votes were
more than that of the plurality winner, and if their combined votes is more than 50% there is
a strong possibility of a Weak Borda Paradox. There are 20 such electoral districts where the
combined vote share of Congress and SP is more than the vote share of the Plurality Winner,
but the largest combined vote share is as high as 49%. It might be interesting to rank these
20 districts in descending order of the possibility of Borda Paradox. We will say the higher
is the combined vote in these 20 districts, the higher is the possibility of a Borda Paradox,
and the higher is the difference between the combined vote share of these two parties and
the vote share of the plurality winner, the higher the chances of a Borda Paradox.
Let x1 = combined vote share of SP and INC in these 20 districts and x 2 = difference in the
combined SP, INC vote share and the vote share of the plurality winner. Let us construct an
index
x1 min(x1 )
1
(x2 ) min(x2 )
I =
+
2 max(x1 ) min(x1 )
max(x2 ) min(x2 )
where max(xi ) i {1, 2} is the maximum value of xi in these 20 districts, and min(xi ) is
the minimum value of xi in these 20 districts. The rankings of these 20 districts and the value
of the index is reported in Table 4. We see that the maximum possibility of a Borda Paradox
exists in Azamgarh while the least possibility is in Jalaun.
4 Condorcet Paradox
Given a first past the post electoral system, a Condorcet Paradox is possible in an election
involving three or more than three candidates and the winner receives less than 50% of the
votes in which case there exists no Strong Condorcet winner who can defeat every other candidate in a two candidate election involving him and any one else. With an election involving
three candidates, A, B, and C, let A receives the largest votes and hence is the winner, B
receives the second largest votes and C the least number of votes. Let A , B and C be the
share of total votes obtained by A, B and C respectively. If there exists no strong Condorcet
Winner, it is the case that A < 0.5. With such an electoral outcome, Table 5 lists the eight
preferences profile that are theoretically possible, provided all citizens who voted for A, or B
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Table 4 Ranking of districts in
Uttar Pradesh with possible
Borda Paradox
S. Gupta
No.
Electoral district
Value of I
Azamgarh
0.9768
Maharajganj
0.8127
Domariaganj
0.8100
Unnao
0.8085
Mirzapur
0.7426
Basta
0.6947
Sultanpur
0.5969
Sitapur
0.5916
Misrikh
0.5221
10
Fatehpur
0.5134
11
Aonla
0.3747
12
Bareilly
0.3326
13
Chandauli
0.3123
14
Robertsganj
0.2961
15
Padrauna
0.2766
16
Pilibhit
0.1707
17
Faizabad
0.1464
18
Bilhaur
0.1445
19
Bara Banki
0.1391
20
Jalaun
0.0050
or C as their first choice have the same preference profile. Given the set of profiles generated
in Table 5, we see the outcome in these profiles in Table 6. Profile 3 and Profile 7, generate A
as the Condorcet Winner, Profile 2 and Profile 4 generate B as the Condorcet Winner, Profile
5 and Profile 6 generate C as the Condorcet Winner and Profile 1 and Profile 8 generate a
Condorcet Paradox.
Therefore, even in the absence of a Strong Condorcet Winner in a three candidate election, there is only a 0.25 probability that a Condorcet Paradox exists. A Condorcet Paradox
may also be said to be a situation with outcomes with no clear mandate (OWNCM), that
is there is no candidate who can defeat anyone everyone else in a two candidate election.
However, in the absence of information on whom the second and third votes went to, it is not
possible to comment on the likelihood of a Condorcet Paradox looking only at the first vote
shares of different parties, we will look for outcomes with no clear mandate (OWNCM).
We will say that OWNCM most likely exists for a vote share profile that is most distant from
profiles where either, A, B or C are strong Condorcet Winners. If there happens to be a strong
Condorcet Winner, the candidate will naturally be a plurality winner with more than 50% of
the votes. We are also aware that in a Saari Vote Share Triangle in a representation of vote
shares with three candidates, a strong Condorcet Winner is concentrated at one of the edges
of the triangle, and the further the profile is from any of the edges, we will say are profiles
with OWNCM.
In Fig. 1, we have the representation of a Saari Vote Share Triangle where any point
inside the equilateral triangle represents the vote share of each of the three candidates A, B
and C (See Nurmi 1999, pp. 3133, for more details). The triangle is a plane (simplex) in a
three-dimensional space that intersects all three axes at points (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0) and (0, 0, 1).
So, the coordinates of any point within the triangle sum up to unity. From any point inside an
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Table 5 Possible preference profiles in the first past the post electoral system with three candidates
Profile 1
Profile 2
Profile 3
Profile 4
Profile 5
Profile 6
Profile 7
Profile 8
Profile
A and B
B and C
A and C
Implication
A > B
B > C
C > A
Condorcet cycles
B > A
B > C
C > A
B > C >A
A > B
B > C
A > C
A > B >C
B > A
B > C
A > C
B > A >C
A > B
C > B
C > A
C > A >B
B > A
C > B
C > A
C > B >A
A > B
C > B
A > C
A > C >B
B > A
C > B
A > C
Condorcet cycles
equilateral triangle, the sum of the length of the perpendiculars drawn to the three sides of
a triangle are equal. In Fig. 1, D, E and F are the midpoints of AB, BC and AC respectively,
therefore all points on the line DF represent vote share profiles where A gets exactly 50% of
the vote. Therefore, the region ADF represent vote share profiles with a Strong Condorcet
Winner, which is candidate A in this case. The region AFD represent the region where A is
a Strong Condorcet Winner, and the region AHD represents the region where A receives the
largest vote share, B the second largest and C the least. Therefore, the region GHD represents
the region, where, where A gets the largest number of votes, B second and C the least number
of votes, but A gets less than 50% of the votes so there exists no Strong Condorcet Winner. We
know in this region there are equal possibilities of A, B or C being the Condorcet Winner, and
of a Condorcet Paradox, from Table 6, we therefore divide this region into four equal regions,
GIKD, DKJH, HJIG and IJK. The first three regions, GIKD, DKJH and IJK represent regions
where candidates, A, B, and C have performed their best, respectively, relative to that in a
plurality outcome with no Strong Condorcet Winner. The triangle IJK, represents the region
where neither party B nor C can be said to be giving a tough fight to the plurality winner A,
neither can A be said to be the majority mandate, we will then say that profiles in this region
represent OWNCM. It is important to note that in a plurality outcome when we question, the
chances of the winner being a Condorcet Winner, we need to ask as to who could have been
the Condorcet winner, and in the absence of information on preference orderings, we need
to give weightage to the first votes also due to the fact, that voters may care only for their
most preferred candidate.
Now that one has identified the region where OWNCM can be said to take place, one can
now calculate the limits within which the vote shares of candidates should be, for one to
say that the profile represents an OWNCM (see Appendix 1 for the complete proof). Table 7
reports the critical values within which As vote share should lie if A is the plurality winner,
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S. Gupta
0.3889
0.4722
0.0972
0.2639
Table 8 Vote shares of candidates with most and least votes in the five electoral districts with no Strong
Condorcet Winner with Three Candidate Elections: Indian Parliamentary Elections 2004
No.
Electoral district
State
Share first
1
2
3
4
5
Share third
Anakapalli
Andhra Pradesh
0.4928
0.0341
Bijapur
Karnataka
0.4367
0.1741
Nowrangpur
Orissa
0.4611
0.1097
Sambalpur
Orissa
0.4818
0.0546
0.4951
0.0207
and the critical values within which Cs vote share should lie, if C is the candidate getting least
votes in a three candidate election for a situation of OWNCM. In order to be in the triangle
IJK, As vote share limit must be between 0.3889 and 0.4722, and Cs vote share, must be
between 0.0972 and 0.2639. In Table 8, we report the vote shares in the five electoral districts,
from the 2004, Indian Parliamentary Elections with three candidate elections with no Strong
Condorcet Winner, and only two electoral districts, namely Bijapur and Nowrangpur can be
identified as OWNCM.
It will be interesting to identify situations with OWNCM in elections with four or more
candidates, a similar methodology could be used, first in determining the list of possible preference profiles, then identifying the various Condorcet Winners and their frequency and then
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the frequency with which cycles occur. Once this has been done, the critical values of OWNCM can be worked out depending on the probability of such an outcome. Since geometric
method cannot be used to compute the critical values, this remains a challenge and scope for
future work. This exercise will be all the more relevant if since in such situations it is most
unlikely that citizens will have a clear idea of their preference profile, they will however,
know for sure their most preferred candidate, and at most their least preferred candidate.
5 Conclusion
This paper tried to discuss unique features of Indian elections that may help us decipher the
existence of voting paradoxes in Indian elections. We also try to highlight the fact that that
in situations with large number of candidates, identifying traditional voting paradoxes may
not be so much relevant, especially since voters may not know the candidates at all therefore
may not be able to come up with a proper ranking. Even when the number of candidates are
small, the conventional voting paradoxes may not be relevant since there may not be full
participation in situations with only a small number of candidates. Therefore future work
needs to redefine the voting paradoxes in the context of electoral contests with large number
of candidates and also identify a suitable methodology of identifying them.
Acknowledgments The author wish to thank European Research and Educational Collaboration in Asia
(EURECA) which sponsored his visit to the Public Choice Research Centre (PCRC), in the University of
Turku, Finland in March to May 2009, during which time this paper was written. The author wish to thank
Hannu Nurmi in particular for valuable feedback on this work and introducing him to the area of Voting
Paradoxes.
Appendix 1
ABC is an equilateral triangle of length
2. Therefore AB = AC = BC =
AD = D B = AF = FC = C E = E B =
AE = B F = C D = 23
DF =
DG =
1
2 BC
1
2EB
HD =
1
3C D
=
=
= 1
6
2
2
G H = H D DG = 16
IK =
1
2
1
2 2
1
3
3
2
1
8
1
24
2.
1
2
2 6
1
1
2 DG = 4 2
1
1
I J = 2GH =
4 6
1
J K = 21 H D =
2 6
1
1
Area of G D H = 21 DG G H = 21
= 1
2 2
2 6
16 3
1
1
Area of I J K = 21 I K I J = 21
= 1
4 2
4 6
64 3
Area of G I K D = D K J H = H J I G = 1
64 3
1
Area of G I K D = I N 21 (G D + I K ) =
64 3
1
1
3
GD + I K =
+
=
2 2
4 2
4 2
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958
S. Gupta
IN =
1
64 3
LG = I N =
LM = I J =
4 2
3
1
12 6
1
12 6
1
4 6
M H = G H LG L M =
H E = 13 AE = 13 23 = 1
MH + HE =
6 6
LM + MH + HE =
2 6
6
7
1 =
6
6 6
1
7
+
4 6
6 6
1
12 6
4 6
6 6
17
12 6
be normalized since AE =
3
2.
= 0.3889
2
3 (L M
= 0.4722
Area of H J I G = M J 21 (G H + I J ) =
17
36
GH + I J =
MJ = 2
2 6
1
64 3
1
3
=
4 6
4 6
4 6
1
3 = 12 2
J H2 = M J2 + M H2 =
7
J H = 16 24
1
12 2
2
6 6
2
H P2 = J H 2 J P2 =
HP =
1
6
7
24
2
3
6 6
2
17
3 12 6
=
=
1
62
1
8
1
6
1
62
7
24
1
64 3
JK + HD =
JP = 2
+ M H + H F) =
1
64 3
Area of D K J H = J P 21 (J K + H D) =
1
3
+ 1 =
2 6 6
2 6
1
2 3 6 = 1
64 3
24 2
(M H + H E) =
2
3
1
24 2
2
1
246
7
243
7
6
1
8
25
6242
5
24 6
PD = HD HP =
QD = PD PQ =
5
1
6
24 6
19
1
24 6
2 6
=
19
24 6
7
24 6
2
3 QD
19
72
7
72
= 0.2639
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