Sincere favorite criterion

The sincere favorite or no favorite-betrayal criterion is a property of some voting systems that says voters should have no incentive to vote for someone else over their favorite. It protects voters from having to engage in lesser-evil voting or a strategy called "decapitation" (removing the "head" off a ballot).

Most rated voting systems satisfy the criterion while most ranked voting systems fail this criterion. Lesser-evil-voting is particularly prevalent in plurality-based voting systems like ranked choice voting (RCV), traditional runoffs, partisan primaries, and first-past-the-post. Lesser-evil voting is typically associated with center-squeeze in these systems.

Duverger's law says that systems vulnerable to this strategy will typically (though not always) develop two party-systems, as voters will abandon minor-party candidates to support stronger major-party candidates.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.