A continuous rating method for preferential voting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a continuous rating method for preferential voting that ensures majority support, clone consistency, and data continuity, providing a quantitative complement to existing qualitative methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel continuous rating method satisfying key social choice criteria, enhancing the analysis of preferential votes.

Findings

Method satisfies majority principle

Ensures clone consistency

Maintains continuity with data

Abstract

A method is given for quantitatively rating the social acceptance of different options which are the matter of a preferential vote. The proposed method is proved to satisfy certain desirable conditions, among which there is a majority principle, a property of clone consistency, and the continuity of the rates with respect to the data. One can view this method as a quantitative complement for a qualitative method introduced in 1997 by Markus Schulze. It is also related to certain methods of one-dimensional scaling or cluster analysis.