The Properties of Simple Vs. Absolute Majority Rule: Cases Where Absences and Abstentions Are Important

Little attention has been paid to the differences between absolute majority rule and simple majority rule, which differ in their treatment of absences and ‘votes to abstain’. This article fills that gap by undertaking a probabilistic analysis of the two voting rules assuming two alternatives and a quorum requirement for simple majority rule. The rules are compared in both a modified sincere setting and a strategic setting using five criteria: (1) the Pareto criterion, (2) the BT criterion (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962), (3) the Expected Social Gain criterion, (4) the Responsiveness criterion, and (5) a modified version of Rae’s criterion. In the sincere setting, we find that simple majority rule (with and without a quorum) outperforms absolute majority rule under most conditions for four out of the five criteria. In the strategic setting, we find that the voting rules perform much more similarly.