You describe a situation where the public is almost equally divided between the first preference for three candidates. This rarely happens. Be that as it may…
Your donkey vote example I am happy to surrender to as if by a roll of the dice. In the USA, where voting is done electronically, it is easy enough to randomly order candidates for each voter.
The second example, while unfortunate, again is an almost random outcome in a finely balanced field. The two voters still may as well in future put their favorite in the top position despite it randomly turning out to not benefit that candidate.
In such a finely balanced field, the last poster voters see can influence the outcome. The colour of the sunset that day could too.
In electoral systems which use ranked voting, a donkey vote is a cast ballot where the voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot itself. The voter that votes in this manner is referred to as a donkey voter.
But I didn’t intend to provide any donkey vote examples.
You describe a situation where the public is almost equally divided between the first preference for three candidates. This rarely happens. Be that as it may…
Your donkey vote example I am happy to surrender to as if by a roll of the dice. In the USA, where voting is done electronically, it is easy enough to randomly order candidates for each voter.
The second example, while unfortunate, again is an almost random outcome in a finely balanced field. The two voters still may as well in future put their favorite in the top position despite it randomly turning out to not benefit that candidate.
In such a finely balanced field, the last poster voters see can influence the outcome. The colour of the sunset that day could too.
I looked it up on Wikipedia:
But I didn’t intend to provide any donkey vote examples.