Majority: Difference between revisions
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*'''consensus''' usually means complete agreement or "all voters"
Note that when there are only two candidates, either one of them will have a majority of the voters with any preference preferring them, or there will be a tie. This is because in essence, a two-candidate election is like a two-sided scale where either there is a side with more weight (more voters), or both sides of the scale are evenly balanced (a tie). This is the reason why [[Pairwise counting|pairwise counting]] looks at all possible two-candidate elections when determining the majority winner.
There will not always be a majority winner, depending on the context and definition that's used.
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== Majority rule/Majority winner - Four Criteria ==
Many methods claim to elect the "majority winner" or work by "majority rule" (See, for example, the [[Center for Voting and Democracy|CVD]]'s talking points re: IRV: [http://www.fairvote.org/irv/talking.htm]). However, [[Condorcet's paradox]] raises an issue: with some groups of voters, no matter which candidate wins, ''some'' majority of the voters will prefer a different candidate. Below is a list of criterion, in ascending order of strictness, which could be used to rank the relative strengths of a "majority." (See the following section for criticism of this explanation).
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*'''Criterion 1:''' If a majority of the electorate coordinates their efforts, they can assure that a given candidate is elected, or that another given candidate is not elected. (Weak form of [[Majority criterion|majority criterion]]).
*'''Criterion 2:''' [[Mutual majority criterion]]
*'''Criterion 3:''' [[Condorcet criterion]]
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