Borda paradox in the 2017 Iranian presidential election: empirical evidence from opinion polls

Abstract

Different voting paradoxes identified by social choice theorists have rarely been documented in real-world elections. The collected data from the opinion polls in the 2017 Iranian presidential election provides substantial empirical evidence indicating that during the electoral campaigns, strong Borda paradox (the Condorcet loser wins plurality.) and weak Borda paradox (An alternative that is not the Condorcet winner wins plurality.) have occurred. At the same time, there was no evidence of a Condorcet paradox, i.e., a cycle among the top three candidates. The results support the empirical relevance of theoretical paradoxes in social choice and a call for the importance of voting procedures.