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A plurality vote (in
A plurality vote (in American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...
) or relative majority (in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth) describes the circumstance when a party, candidate, or proposition polls more votes than any other but does not receive more than half of all votes cast.
For example, if from 100 votes that were cast, 45 were for ''Candidate A'', 30 were for ''Candidate B'' and 25 were for ''Candidate C'', then ''Candidate A'' received a plurality of votes but not a majority. In some votes, the winning candidate or proposition may have only a plurality, depending on the rules of the organization holding the vote.
Versus majority
In international institutional law, a "simple majority" (also a " majority") vote is more than half of the votes cast (disregarding abstentions) ''among'' alternatives; a "qualified majority" (also a " supermajority") is a number of votes above a specified percentage (e.g. two-thirds); a "relative majority" (also a "plurality") is the number of votes obtained that is greater than any other option; and an "absolute majority" is a number of votes "greater than the number of votes that possibly can be obtained at the same time for any other solution", when voting for ''multiple'' alternatives at a time.Henry Watson Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' and his work on the ''Con ...
suggested that the American terms "plurality" and "majority" offer single-word alternatives for the corresponding two-word terms in British English, "relative majority" and "absolute majority", and that in British English "majority" is sometimes understood to mean "receiving the most votes" and can therefore be confused with "plurality". William Poundstone
William Poundstone is an American author, columnist, and skeptic. He has written a number of books including the ''Big Secrets'' series and a biography of Carl Sagan.
Early life and education
Poundstone attended MIT and studied physics.
Personal ...
observes that systems which allow choosing by a plurality of votes are more vulnerable to the spoiler effect—where two or more similar choices each draw fewer votes than a dissimilar choice that would have lost to any individual similar choice on its own—than systems which require a majority.
See also
* Plurality voting system *Plurality-at-large voting
Plurality block voting, also known as plurality-at-large voting, block vote or block voting (BV) is a non- proportional voting system for electing representatives in multi-winner elections. Each voter may cast as many votes as the number of sea ...
*Plurality opinion
A plurality opinion is in certain legal systems the opinion from one or more judges or justices of an appellate court which provides the rationale for the disposition of an appeal when no single opinion received the support of a majority of th ...
*Voting system
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections m ...
Notes
References
{{Majorities Majority Voting theory