Median voter theoremThe median voter theorem is a proposition relating to ranked preference voting put forward by Duncan Black in 1948. It states that if voters and policies are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum, with voters ranking alternatives in order of proximity, then any voting method which satisfies the Condorcet criterion will elect the candidate closest to the median voter. In particular, a majority vote between two options will do so. The theorem is associated with public choice economics and statistical political science.
Black's methodBlack's method is an election method proposed by Duncan Black in 1958 as a compromise between the Condorcet method and the Borda count. This method selects a Condorcet winner. If a Condorcet winner does not exist, then the candidate with the highest Borda score is selected. Among methods satisfying the majority criterion, Black's method gives the minimum power to the majority and hence the method is best at protecting minorities. Black's method satisfies the following criteria: Unrestricted domain Non-imposition (a.
Independence of clones criterionIn voting systems theory, the independence of clones criterion measures an election method's robustness to strategic nomination. Nicolaus Tideman was the first to formulate this criterion, which states that the winner must not change due to the addition of a non-winning candidate who is similar to a candidate already present. To be more precise, a subset of the candidates, called a set of clones, exists if no voter ranks any candidate outside the set between (or equal to) any candidates that are in the set.
Condorcet methodA Condorcet method (pronkɒndɔrˈseɪ; kɔ̃dɔʁsɛ) is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, that is, a candidate preferred by more voters than any others, whenever there is such a candidate. A candidate with this property, the pairwise champion or beats-all winner, is formally called the Condorcet winner. The head-to-head elections need not be done separately; a voter's choice within any given pair can be determined from the ranking.
