Friday, May 25, 2012

Two New French Voting Studies

In the last couple days, two new voting studies have come out of France, following the Presidential elections there. One (translation to English) and two (and also in English.) The first included a look at approval voting, and the second score voting, with a range of -2 to 2, and both suggest that France would have gotten a different, and probably better, result if they had used either of these methods.

Specifically, the first study found that, if approval voting had been used in the first round, that the two candidates to advance would have been Hollande (the Socialist leader who advanced in the real election, and went on to defeat incumbent center-right President Sarkozy) and the original fourth-place finisher, François Bayrou. Bayrou is an interesting character; he came in third in the previous election, and his Democratic Union party is considered a centrist group. The study also showed that, in a head-to-head match up, Bayrou would have beaten Hollande. This is some real-world data supporting the theory that approval voting does a better job of electing centrist candidates than plurality. They examined instant runoff voting as well, but got the same result as the plurality election, supporting that theory as well.

The second study looked at score voting. Again, Bayrou and Hollande led (and were the only candidates with net-positive scores!) while Sarkozy slipped back to fourth place. Their head-to-head challenges also found Bayrou to be a beats-all winner. They also found very little bullet voting.

These studies build on previous, smaller ones from the 2002 and 2007 elections, which found similar results. All told, this is some excellent real-world data adding further evidence to our theoretical expectations of approval and score voting.

13 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. (Wish blogger had an edit button..)

    Well, that all assumes the "centrist" candidate *should* (for lack of a better word) be entitled to win whatever election and the electoral system should be *rigged* (not using that in a literal sense, should find a better word but meh) to have them win every time. Especially given that his platform didn't necessarily necessarily resonate with the French electorate (IE he supported austerity from what I recall, which is of course increasingly unpopular throughout Europe), I'm skeptical that his results would have been much different.

    Given that Bayrou got even less of a vote than the solid left wing candidate, (and far less than the solid right wing candidate), that adds a second point to my skepticism.

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  3. Often, the centrist _should_ win, because they often will provide the highest net utility.

    I don't describe myself as a centrist (I'm somewhere between Obama and Bernie Sanders) but I would gladly take consistent centrist winners over alternating partisans.

    I'm confused at what you mean by "less of a vote", especially since these are studies of different measures of voting. Unless you mean "since 2007"? But similar to how getting few votes in plurality means little, getting fewER votes in plurality doesn't mean much either.

    Bayrou's approval percentage, head-to-head percentages, and score-voting score, have not declined since 2007 (note: the 2007 numbers used a score from 1 to 5, and this used -2 to 2, so subtract 3.) I would disagree that his support has declined.

    I couldn't find any direct evidence for Bayrou's stance on austerity (it might help if I were better at reading French ;) but he did endorse Hollande (the anti-austerity candidate) in the final round, and the most important point of difference between Hollande's and Sarkozy's platforms were their stances on austerity.

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  4. "I don't describe myself as a centrist (I'm somewhere between Obama and Bernie Sanders) but I would gladly take consistent centrist winners over alternating partisans."

    Well, it's fair to keep in mind that partisanship doesn't necessarily equate to ideology. A good case is the US, where both the Democrats and Republicans have staunch partisans at their command but the policy differences between the two are pretty minimal, outside decisive social issues.

    As for less of a vote, I meant he got less than the National Front's candidate, and less than the solid left's candidate, and far less than Hollande. His support is fairly minimal (keep in mind the French presidential first round is where one can "vote their hearts", and most French do), but re reading their arguments, I can see where they're coming from. While I'm always very skeptical of "mathematical predictions" when it comes to "what if's" since you can't really accurately predict these type of things, I could see how under such a scenario he could be used as a universal spoiler of sorts, as a sort of "I don't really like him but I'd rather he win than everyone other than my preferred candidate" type of thing.

    As for his support of austerity, if I recall correctly, his stance was a milder form of Sarkozy's austerity, along with the typical "third way" neoliberal policies, which are generally being rejected throughout Europe. Keep in mind, that Hollande, Le Pen, and Mélenchon were all outstandingly anti austerity, and all got more of a vote than Bayrou, and I don't even mean just combined.

    I guess only time will tell what the "correct" course of action is though, assuming Hollande actually goes through with his platform and isn't just another Obama. These are interesting times!

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  5. "I guess only time will tell what the "correct" course of action is though"

    As they say, predictions are hard, especially about the future.

    However, you mistake my stance. I would not personally say that Bayrou was the best choice; rather, what I would say is that Bayrou is likely the choice France _intended to_, but was prevented from, making.

    Personally, I think that Hollande is a better choice than Bayrou, and that France will be better off for it, so this time I'm glad that France's voting system got it "wrong". But elections aren't about what I, or any one voter, think is right, they're about making choices as a group. Take a look at the previous-years studies, and you'll see that Bayrou was also the Condorcet, approval, and score winner in the 2007 versions, and in that case, I would very much have preferred to see Bayrou rather than Sarkozy. I think, on average, everyone would be better off if we got these things "right" every time, rather than getting them "wrong, but in the direction I prefer" half the time (and wrong in the direction I despise the other half).

    Coming back the the "less of a vote" comment: plurality voting is a terrible metric of a candidate's true support. Even if voters were being more honest (which I would question, but let's let that slide) there is little, if any, informational content about the candidate's true value to the electorate to be gleaned from their plurality votes, because even honest votes--especially honest votes!--are susceptible to vote splitting. If Bayrou were perfectly positioned as the median voter's best-fit, right at 50%, if there are candidates at 49% and 51%, Bayrou would come out with just 1% of the vote; but that doesn't make him an obviously worse choice than those other two candidates.

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  6. I wonder if the IRV case could be redone under the presumption that they only get to vote for 3 and the first three ranked votes are initially treated as approval votes used to narrow down the choice to the final 3....

    dlw

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  7. There is the "improved Condorcet/approval" method http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/ICA

    It passes both the favorite betrayal criterion and the Condorcet (and therefore majority) criterion.

    I don't think stapling approval onto IRV helps in the same way though, since there's no equivalent to the Smith set for IRV; the choice of "3 candidates" is therefore entirely arbitrary and prone to abuse (and therefore can't rise to meet the bar of passing FBC.)

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  8. Remind me what is the smith set?

    I believe that the use of Approval voting in the first stage of a 2-tier election like the french prez election is not unlike using it for the first stage of an IRV election,
    except the latter could be done with just one election and thereby at less cost.

    3 is arbitrary, but it's useful. And in a world with many low-info voters, sometimes arbitrary cut-offs are quite useful.

    I don't think FBC is that crucial.
    In single-winner elections for very important elections, there tends to be an inevitable need for size to matter. A centrist prez, with no strong party base to help her or him, would have a hard time getting things done, even if in theory (s)he'd be the best winner.

    dlw

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  9. If there's a Condorcet cycle (at the top of the vote), the candidates included in the cycle are the members of the Smith Set.

    The Smith set will contain either 1 member (the Condorcet winner) or 3 or more members, but never 2. In this sense, 3 isn't a bad arbitrary cut off.

    While I do _fear_ your theory about a centrist executive having a hard time getting things done might be correct, I don't see much evidence about it, for or against. Voters seem to (up until center squeeze and "lesser evil" strategy gets to them) appreciate centrist, and some off the few centrist governors the country has had have done quite well. Jesse Ventura not so much, and Chafee is not doing well, but Angus King did alright (and is now running for US Senate) and Lowell Weicker did more or less okay. That's about a 50/50 track record (and they've more-often been disliked for what they DID do than at an INABILITY to do anything.)

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  10. But you would concede that it'd be easier to get adopted an electoral reform that doesn't elect centrists with a small base of support in a 2 party dominated system?

    For me, what is most needful is to mitigate the cut-throat competitive nature of US politics than to enable centrists to get elected.

    Our system will tend to have center-left and a center-right party, and if we give LTPs voice and make the duopoly contested, then the center they both center around will be dynamic and inclusive of all who sincerely seek to move it.

    To reach vision, we don't need to agree or push for the best single-winner election rule...
    dlw
    ps, I wonder how Approval Voting in 3rd party primaries will affect intra-party discipline if there ends up being too much circulation of the minor party elites....

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  11. If you do non-threatening things, you're not going to make as many enemies. IRV is less threatening to the incumbent parties, sure. At the margin, that might make it a bit easier to get passed the incumbent-party-ruled legislatures. On the other hand, IRV is losing as many cities as it gains each year, so I don't think getting by the incumbents is the only hurdle you have to deal with when it comes to ultimate acceptance.

    As for moving towards the center, under plurality, a two-party system can dominate elections by situating themselves at the 17th and 83rd percentile marginal voter's ideology (1/6th and 5/6ths). Under IRV, they can do the same at the 25th and 75th (1/4th and 3/4ths). That's the entire potential motion you can see wrt making the center "more inclusive" or "dynamic", and there's still the potential for spoilers (although diminished) and there's still going to be only two major parties. That's not nothing, but I don't think it's enough.

    Will approval, if passed, be more likely to hold on? I don't know for certain. I know it lasted a long time in Venice, but I also know it didn't with the IEEE. But there is no way for a pair of parties to "lock down" elections under approval unless both position themselves at the 50th percentile; you literally can't do better than that.

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  12. Dale:f you do non-threatening things, you're not going to make as many enemies. IRV is less threatening to the incumbent parties, sure. At the margin, that might make it a bit easier to get passed the incumbent-party-ruled legislatures.

    dlw: Aye, and according to Alan Renwick's book the Politics of Electoral Reform, most successful electoral reforms have either been driven by attempts by incumbents to consolidate their power or elite-mass interactions. IOW, the best we can hope for is a middle way between our ideals and the status quo power situation.

    Dlae: On the other hand, IRV is losing as many cities as it gains each year, so I don't think getting by the incumbents is the only hurdle you have to deal with when it comes to ultimate acceptance.

    dlw: Yes, but our system also has been sliding towards utter kleptocracy and so the attacks on IRV can be seen as an aspect of such... and the $pin of $peech could just as well obfuscate Approval Voting as it does IRV, especially given the depths of ignorance of most US_Americans about even the basics of electoral reform.

    Dale:As for moving towards the center, under plurality, a two-party system can dominate elections by situating themselves at the 17th and 83rd percentile marginal voter's ideology (1/6th and 5/6ths). Under IRV, they can do the same at the 25th and 75th (1/4th and 3/4ths). That's the entire potential motion you can see wrt making the center "more inclusive" or "dynamic", and there's still the potential for spoilers (although diminished) and there's still going to be only two major parties. That's not nothing, but I don't think it's enough.

    dlw: I agree. This is why I supplement IRV with AV in the first stage and advocate for the use of American forms of PR in "more local" elections. I trust that electoral reforms that empower the proliferation of LTPs who have low overhead and vote strategically together in "less local" elections will trickle-up to improve outcomes there, regardless of what election rule is used.

    Dale:Will approval, if passed, be more likely to hold on? I don't know for certain. I know it lasted a long time in Venice, but I also know it didn't with the IEEE. But there is no way for a pair of parties to "lock down" elections under approval unless both position themselves at the 50th percentile; you literally can't do better than that.

    dlw: But if the heuristic of a one-dimensional political system is just that, a possibly useful and possibly obfuscating heuristic, then it's hard to justify the right election rule based on such a schema...

    I put my hopes for change more in civil disobedience acts by small groups that seek to move rather than capture the "political center" rather than on finessing the right electoral reforms... and this makes me flexible on which electoral reforms to push for. I don't mind taking a "less is more" approach that has a better chance of success, in the face of the aggressiveness of $peech against the essence of democracy.

    dlw

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