Talk:Condorcet paradox

Where to put a section on "cyclic preferences"
I have noticed that there is a rather lengthy explanation of the meaning of voters' preferences being cyclic occurring throughout Median voter theorem, and in Condorcet paradox. There is a link in Arrow's impossibility theorem "cyclic preferences" that links, generally, to Condorcet paradox. I think it would be beneficial to create a subsection of Condorcet paradox that generally describes what it means for preferences to be cyclic. This way, other pages can link to that section and the information can be consolidated.

I do not think that just linking to the root for Condorcet paradox is appropriate, since this page is about a phenomenon surrounding individual cyclic preferences, and is not a general article on the topic of cyclic preferences. I also am disinclined to create a separate page for cyclic preferences, but I'm not sure why, it just feels wrong.

Does anyone have suggestions or opinions on what is best? I am a fledgling Wikipedia editor, and am not entirely sure what the best solution would be. I am happy to undertake the work if I can get some corroboration on a general game plan.

"This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other."
What's the conflict?--Chealer 07:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

"This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other."
Two points. 1. The result is unexpected when falsely imagining that there is only a single 'majority' with well-agreed beliefs. There isn't. There are many majorities. A single individual can be a member of many overlapping majorities. This is very different from a two group 'left'/'right' model. 2. I can't find the word 'paradoxical' in the main article, so perhaps whatever is being asked here is moot? Should this section be deleted? -- Anonymous 66.85.230.140 (talk) 04:55, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Problem with Example(s)
I'm missing the paradox in the second example; it looks to me like the group is evenly split, which is not a paradox. Nobody thinks it's contradictory if we have two people vote differently. -- Sotek.

I agree with Sotek -- there is no paradox apparent in the examples cited, since in each case, no winner can be declared (except arbitrarily), since all candidates have an equal number of votes. I think something is missing here.

Agreed. I removed the example in question. 213.163.7.195 14:10, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

It still seems that the example used may not most clearly illustrate the concept. The entry on marquis de condorcet describes the paradox as occuring in situations where a majority favors canidate A, whereas in this case, there is no majority.

160.39.73.126 19:11, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Social Choice and Individual Values
Announcement: The above is the discussion tab for a new article Social Choice and Individual Values. Input is welcome through the article, the Talk page, or to me. The plan is to gather comment, corrections, or suggestions for probably at least a couple of weeks, make final changes, then go from there. Links to related articles (indluding the present one) would come after revision. Thanks for your help.

Thomasmeeks 22:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Renaming to "Condorcet's paradox"
Why was this page thus titled? A quick Google search shows that "Condorcet's paradox" is not significantly less popular than "voting paradox", but the latter term is less useful. How would you rewrite the sentence in the opening paragraph of Condorcet method that currently reads "Mainly because of Condorcet's paradox, a Condorcet Winner will not always exist in a given set of votes."?

Is Condorcet's paradox the only voting paradox? One Web page states "A voting paradox is where the election outcome is not what we think it should be. " which indicates that Condorcet's paradox is an example of a voting paradox.

I'd argue for renaming this page "Condorcet's paradox", and having the page "voting paradox" either redirect to it, or reference it.

I agree - this should be renamed Condorcet's Paradox-- Annie
 * The above discussion is not dated, but currently Google gives much less hits for "Condorcet's paradox" than for "voting paradox".--Chealer 07:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * "Condorcet Paradox" yields about 13,000 hits to "voting paradox"'s 16,000. I'd agree that the former term is more informative about the content of the article. - 128.12.91.154 01:13, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

There are many paradoxes related to voting, and the topic is so vast that a mere bibliography of academic papers on the subject fills almost 400 A4 pages. Also, some experts claim that Borda was the first person to spot the problem. An interesting question is why, say, the ancient Greeks did not discover it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.198.170 (talk) 08:16, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I also argue for naming this page back to Condorcet paradox; wikipedia uses the related term Condorcet Method, and as a user mentions above, there may be other voting paradoxes.

Dialectric 19:29, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Rename desired
I also favour the argument that there could be many different voting "paradoxes" and that this page covers only one of these. (I don't know why we persist in attaching the word 'paradox' to every naive wish easily rebuked with a napkin and five minutes by anyone willing to show up with a sharp pencil.)

One possibility is to rename the page "Condorcet voting paradox" so that the title remains meaningful without having to first read the article. On the downside, there are quite a few inbound links, so the rename project would be tedious and annoying. &mdash; MaxEnt 12:35, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 9 January 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to Condorcet paradox. (non-admin closure) JudgeRM   (talk to me)  00:23, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Voting paradox → Condorcet voting paradox – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. Votingstuff (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Andrewa (talk) 03:10, 17 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Agree with others on this page (Dialetric, Annie, and MaxEnt), to avoid conflict with Paradox of voting Votingstuff (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Alternate proposal Condorcet paradox
As far as I can see User:Dialectric and Annie both proposed above that the move be to Condorcet paradox not to Condorcet voting paradox, and this is both more concise and more common. See  for two quick Googles. User:MaxEnt does suggest Condorcet voting paradox but only as one possibility.

Condorcet paradox was also proposed by an anon long ago and another more recently. However the edit history is confusing, and not helped by unsigned comments!


 * Support renaming, but to Condorcet paradox. Relisting to allow it to be (re)considered. Andrewa (talk) 03:40, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Support move to Condorcet paradox.  ONR  (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Looks good. My thanks to everyone who participated. &mdash; MaxEnt 18:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)