The single transferable vote (STV), sometimes known as proportional ranked choice voting (P-RCV), is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes, so that their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running. STV aims to approach proportional representation based on votes cast in the district where it is used, so that each vote is worth about the same as another. Formally, STV satisfies a fairness criterion known as proportionality for solid coalitions.
Strategic voting, also called tactical voting, sophisticated voting or insincere voting, occurs in voting systems when a voter votes for a candidate or party other than their sincere preference to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, in a simple plurality election, a voter might gain a better outcome by voting for a less preferred but more generally popular candidate.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is insuperable for most people, but they can manage it, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills.
The bandwagon effect is the tendency for people to adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. More specifically, it is a cognitive bias by which public opinion or behaviours can alter due to particular actions and beliefs rallying amongst the public. It is a psychological phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases with respect to the proportion of others who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.
On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to other sites in the group for the purpose of increasing SEO rankings. In graph theoretic terms, a link farm is a clique. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a web search engine. Other link exchange systems are designed to allow individual websites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites, and are not considered a form of spamdexing.
An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster.
Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded markets established for trading bets in the outcome of various events. The market prices can indicate what the crowd thinks the probability of the event is. A typical prediction market contract is set up to trade between 0 and 100%. The most common form of a prediction market is a binary option market, which will expire at the price of 0 or 100%. Prediction markets can be thought of as belonging to the more general concept of crowdsourcing which is specially designed to aggregate information on particular topics of interest. The main purposes of prediction markets are eliciting aggregating beliefs over an unknown future outcome. Traders with different beliefs trade on contracts whose payoffs are related to the unknown future outcome and the market prices of the contracts are considered as the aggregated belief.
The random ballot, single stochastic vote, or lottery voting is an electoral system in which an election is decided on the basis of a single randomly selected ballot.
A straw poll, straw vote, or straw ballot is an ad hoc or unofficial vote. It is used to show the popular opinion on a certain matter, and can be used to help politicians know the majority opinion and help them decide what to say in order to gain votes.
Robert Epstein is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He was awarded a Ph.D. in psychology by Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, and has held positions at several universities including Boston University, University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. He is also the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA. In 2012, he founded the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), a nonprofit organization that conducts research to promote the well-being and functioning of people worldwide.
The Bradley effect is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to California attorney general George Deukmejian, a white person, despite Bradley being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.
Steven Fein is a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Fein has two daughters named Alina and Hannah.
The Borda count is a family of positional voting rules which gives each candidate, for each ballot, a number of points corresponding to the number of candidates ranked lower. In the original variant, the lowest-ranked candidate gets 0 points, the next-lowest gets 1 point, etc., and the highest-ranked candidate gets n − 1 points, where n is the number of candidates. Once all votes have been counted, the option or candidate with the most points is the winner. The Borda count is intended to elect broadly acceptable options or candidates, rather than those preferred by a majority, and so is often described as a consensus-based voting system rather than a majoritarian one.
Instant-runoff voting (IRV) or preferential voting is an electoral system that uses ranked voting. Its purpose is to elect the candidate in single-member districts with majority support even when there are more than two candidates. Instant-runoff voting most often accomplishes majority rule but does not guarantee it. It is a single-winner version of single transferable voting. Formerly the term "instant-runoff voting" was used for what many people now call contingent voting or supplementary vote.
Search neutrality is a principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. This means that when a user types in a search engine query, the engine should return the most relevant results found in the provider's domain, without manipulating the order of the results, excluding results, or in any other way manipulating the results to a certain bias.
Elections were held on November 2, 2010 to determine Maine's two members of the United States House of Representatives. Representatives were elected for two-year terms to serve in the 112th Congress from January 3, 2011 until January 3, 2013. Primary elections were held on June 8, 2010.
Elections were held on November 2, 2010 to determine Utah's three members of the United States House of Representatives. Representatives were elected for two-year terms to serve in the 112th United States Congress from January 3, 2011 until January 3, 2013. Primary elections were held on June 22, 2010.
Soft support is a phrase used in politics to describe the volatility of support for a candidate among voters. The concept of soft support is one that is used to discredit any recorded measures of support for a candidate, including preference polls, campaign infrastructure, media and fundraising strength, which may or may not be reflected in an election by hard votes. The term soft supporter, also known as a swing voter, refers to a person who states support for a candidate but is likely to change their mind.
The social influence bias is an asymmetric herding effect on online social media platforms which makes users overcompensate for negative ratings but amplify positive ones. Positive social influence can accumulate and result in a rating bubble, while negative social influence is neutralized by crowd correction. This phenomenon was first described in a paper written by Lev Muchnik, Sinan Aral and Sean J. Taylor in 2014, then the question was revisited by Cicognani et al., whose experiment reinforced Munchnik's and his co-authors' results.
Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that create "unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the algorithm.
