Election methods and political polarization

Abstract

Political polarization poses a significant challenge to democratic societies. While much of the scholarly focus has been on the socio-demographic factors that drive polarization, this paper focuses on voting rules and their effects on the incentives for candidates to be moderate or polarizing. It addresses the question: Which voting methods most impede the success of a polarizing candidate? Through a comparative analysis of plurality voting, the Condorcet method, and Borda’s rule, we find the Borda rule to be the most effective at discouraging extreme platforms. In a generalization, we show that a scoring rule is more effective at hindering the success of polarizing candidates the more weight that it places on voters’ second preferences in the tallying process.