Would Barkley have won under Condorcet?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Would Barkley have won under Condorcet?

[Horus]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Condorcet?

[ag]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Condorcet?

Binary majority vote. Rephrasing, would Barkley win in a one-on-one race against both Franken and Coleman (separately). Not impossible, actually.

[ilikeverin]

Seems pretty likely to me.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

We know for sure Barkley was preferred by at least 15% of voters to both Coleman and Franken, and the number is even higher when you consider the people who did but voted for Coleman or Franken seeing them as the lesser evil. In addition it's safe to say almost all Franken voters would've preferenced him over Coleman and almost all Coleman voters would've preferenced him over Franken. Barkley would probably win well over 60% against either one.

[Horus]

Alright, now that I know, absolutely. I can't imagine too many people who would've wanted Coleman and Franken more than Barkley.

[Хahar 🤔]

Certainly. This is why Condorcet sucks.

[minionofmidas]

Very likely.

And in this case, it's not even an example of Condorcet sucking - you can get scenarios where really illsupported candidates would win under Condorcet though (especially if the major parties provided cheat sheets, leading to large numbers of identical votes), which just doesn't feel right.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

An example of a crappy candidate winning under Condorcet could be like this. Under FPTP:

R - 49%
D - 48%
Crazy Libertarian - 3%

However with Condorcet you'd have more fringe right Republicans preferencing the Libertarian first, let's say he gets 10% first prefs. And then the Democrats preference him second because he's not a Republican (the noted phenomena in Arkansas and Idaho.) The Libertarian could end up winning assuming a majority of Republican first prefs pref him second. Basically any scenario where a supporter of one of the major candidates absolutely hates the other major party candidate (as this race is a textbook perfect example) and the top third party candidate is a nut rather than a centrist.