Negative responsiveness

A 4-candidate Yee diagram under IRV. The diagram shows who would win an IRV election if the electorate is centered at a particular point. Moving the electorate to the left can cause a right-wing candidate to win, and vice versa. Black lines show the optimal solution (achieved by Condorcet or score voting).

In social choice, the negative responsiveness, perversity, or additional support paradox is a pathological behavior of some voting rules, where a candidate loses as a result of having "too much support" from some voters, or wins because they had "too much opposition". In other words, increasing (decreasing) a candidate's ranking or rating causes that candidate to lose (win). Electoral systems that do not exhibit perversity are said to satisfy the positive response or monotonicity criterion.

Perversity is often described by social choice theorists as an exceptionally severe kind of electoral pathology. Systems that allow for perverse response can create situations where a voter's ballot has a reversed effect on the election, thus treating the well-being of some voters as "less than worthless". Similar arguments have led to constitutional prohibitions on such systems as violating the right to equal and direct suffrage. Negative response is often cited as an example of a perverse incentive, as voting rules with perverse response incentivize politicians to take unpopular or extreme positions in an attempt to shed excess votes.

Most ranked methods (including Borda and all common round-robin rules) satisfy positive response, as do all common rated voting methods (including approval, highest medians, and score).

Perversity occurs in instant-runoff voting (IRV), the single transferable vote, and quota-based apportionment methods. According to statistical culture models of elections, the paradox is especially common in RCV/IRV and the two-round system. The randomized Condorcet method can violate monotonicity in the case of cyclic ties.

The participation criterion is a closely-related, but different, concept. While positive responsiveness deals with a voter changing their opinion (or vote), participation deals with situations where a voter choosing to cast a ballot has a reversed effect on the election.

Definition

Miller defined two main classes of monotonicity failure in 2012, which have been repeated in later papers:

Upward monotonicity failure: Given the use of voting method V and a ballot profile B in which candidate X is the winner, X may nevertheless lose in ballot profile B' that differs from B only in that some voters rank X higher in B' than in B

Downward monotonicity failure: Given the use of voting method V and a ballot profile B in which candidate X is a loser, X may nevertheless win in ballot profile B' that differs from B only in that some voters rank X lower in B' than in B.

In simpler terms, an upward failure occurs when a winner loses from more support, and a downward failure occurs when a loser wins with less support.

By method

Runoff voting

Runoff-based voting systems such as ranked choice voting (RCV) are typically vulnerable to perverse response. A notable example is the 2009 Burlington mayoral election, the United States' second instant-runoff election in the modern era, where Bob Kiss won the election as a result of 750 ballots ranking him in last place. Another example is given by the 2022 Alaska at-large special election.

An example with three parties (Top, Center, Bottom) is shown below. In this scenario, the Bottom party initially loses. However, they are elected after running an unsuccessful campaign and adopting an unpopular platform, which pushes their supporters away from the party and into the Top party.

Popular Bottom				Unpopular Bottom
	Round 1	Round 2			Round 1	Round 2
Top	25% N		+6%	Top	31%	46%
Center	30%	55% Y	↗	Center	30% N
Bottom	45%	45%	-6%	Bottom	39%	54% Y

This election is an example of a center-squeeze, a class of elections where instant-runoff and plurality have difficulties electing the majority-preferred candidate. Here, the loss of support for Bottom policies makes the Top party more popular, allowing it to defeat the Center party in the first round.

Proportional rules

Some proportional representation systems can exhibit negative responsiveness. These include the single transferable vote and some implementations of mixed-member proportional representation, generally as a result of poorly-designed overhang rules. An example can be found in the 2005 German federal election, where CDU supporters in Dresden were instructed to vote for the FDP, a strategy that allowed the CDU to win an additional seat. This led the Federal Constitutional Court to rule that negative responsiveness violates the German constitution's guarantee of equal and direct suffrage.

Frequency of violations

For electoral methods failing positive value, the frequency of less-is-more paradoxes will depend on the electoral method, the candidates, and the distribution of outcomes. Social choice theorists generally agree that non-monotonicity is a particularly serious defect. Gallagher, in 2013, writes that for some social choice theorists, vulnerability to monotonicity violations is sufficient to disapprove of runoff based electoral methods, while political scientists and some other social choice theorists tend to be less concerned.

Empirical analysis

In the US, a 2021 analysis of instant-runoff elections in California between 2008 and 2016, as well as the 2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral election, found an upward monotonicity anomaly rate of 0.74% (1/135) in all elections, 2.71% (1/37) when limited to elections going to a second round of counting and 7.7% (1/13) of elections with three competitive candidates. A more comprehensive 2023 survey of 182 American IRV elections where no candidate was ranked first by a majority of voters found seven total examples of non-monotonicity (3.8%), broken down into 2.2% (4/182) examples of upward monotonicity, 1.6% (3/182) of downward montonicity and 0.5% (1/182) of no-show or truncation (one example was both an upward and downward monotonicity failure). Two of those elections are also noted as specific examples below.

Semi-empirical

Some empirical research do not have access to full ballot preference data, and thus make probabilistic estimates of transfer patterns. A 2013 survey of Irish elections using IRV and PR-STV found plausible non-monotonicity in 20 out of 1326 elections between 1922 and 2011.

Data from the five UK general elections between 1992 and 2010 showed 2642 three candidate elections in English constituencies. With second preferences imputed from survey data, 1.7% of all elections appeared vulnerable to monotonicity anomalies (1.4% upward, 0.3% downward), significantly lower than simulated datasets from the same paper. However, when limited to the 4.2% of elections considered three-way competitive, 40.2% appeared vulnerable (33% upward, 7.1% downward), and further increasing with closer competition, a result closer to the simulations.

A 2022 analysis out of the 10 French presidential elections (conducted under the two-round system) 2 had results where monotonicity violations were not mathematically possible, another 6 where violations were unlikely given the evidence, leaving 2 elections (2002 and 2007) where an upward monotonicity violation was probable and likely respectively.

Theoretical models

Results using the impartial culture model estimate about 15% of elections with 3 candidates; however, the true probability may be much higher, especially when restricting observation to close elections.

A 2013 study using a two-dimensional spatial model of voting estimated at least 15% of IRV elections would be nonmonotonic in the best-case scenario (with only three equally-competitive candidates). The researchers concluded that "three-way competitive races will exhibit unacceptably frequent monotonicity failures" and "In light of these results, those seeking to implement a fairer multi-candidate election system should be wary of adopting IRV."

Specific examples

Alaska 2022

Alaska's first-ever instant-runoff election resulted in a victory for Mary Peltola, but had many Republican voters ranked Peltola first, Peltola would have lost.

Burlington, Vermont

In Burlington's second IRV election, incumbent Bob Kiss was re-elected, despite losing in a head-to-head matchup with Democrat Andy Montroll (the Condorcet winner). However, if Kiss had gained more support from Wright voters, Kiss would have lost.

2005 German Election in Dresden

Some proportional representation systems can exhibit negative responsiveness. These include the single transferable vote and some implementations of mixed-member proportional representation, generally as a result of poorly-designed overhang rules. An example can be found in the 2005 German federal election, where CDU supporters in Dresden were instructed to vote for the FDP, a strategy that allowed the CDU to win an additional seat. This led the Federal Constitutional Court to rule that negative responsiveness violates the German constitution's guarantee of equal and direct suffrage.

See also

• Participation criterion, a closely-related concept
• Voting system
• Voting system criterion
• Monotone preferences in consumer theory
• Monotonicity (mechanism design)
• Maskin monotonicity