| dc.description.abstract | When groups of individuals make choices among several alternatives, the most compelling social outcome is the Condorcet winner, namely the alternative beating all others in a pair-wise contest. Obviously the Condorcet winner cannot be overturned if one sub-group proposes another alternative it happens to favor. However, in some cases, and especially with haphazard voting, there will be no clear unique winner, with the outcome consisting of a triple of pair-wise winners that each beat different subsets of the alternatives (i.e. a  top-cycle .) We explore the sensitivity of Condorcet winners to various perturbations in the voting process that lead to top-cycles. Surprisingly, variations in the number of votes for each alternative is much less important than consistency in a voter s view of how alternatives are related. As more and more voter s preference orderings on alternatives depart from a shared model of the domain, then unique Condorcet outcomes become increasingly unlikely. | |
