Center squeeze

Center squeezes are a kind of spoiler effect in which the majority-preferred candidate is eliminated before the final round of an election. Candidates focused on appealing to a small base of core supporters can squeeze Condorcet winners out of the race, by splitting the first-preference votes needed to survive until the final round. By Black's median-voter theorem, the candidate who appeals most to the median voter will be the majority-preferred candidate, which means they will be elected by any method compatible with majority-rule. The "center" in "center squeeze" refers to candidates who are close to the center of public opinion, and is not limited to centrists along a traditional, one-dimensional political spectrum. A center squeeze can occur in any situation where voters prefer candidates who hold views similar to their own. Center-squeeze has been observed in Australia, Maine, Fiji, and various US cities, all of which use ranked-choice voting, in addition to California (which uses nonpartisan primaries). Susceptibility by system Center squeeze is a major feature of two-party systems using primaries or other multiple-round systems. Under most models of strategic voting, spoilerproof cardinal methods tend to behave like approval voting and thus converge on the Condorcet winner. The opposite situation—a bias in favor of bland, inoffensive, or unknown candidates—is not common in any widely-used voting rules. However, it can occur for "negative" voting methods that choose candidates with the least opposition, like anti-plurality, D21 – Janeček, or Coombs' method. == Example ==

M is the "best" or "most popular" candidate under both common metrics of candidate quality in social choice. If we use RCV instead of FPP then the first round of the election is the same as the FPP election. But then M, because they have the least first preferences, is eliminated. Their votes are then reassigned to A and Z, according to their ballot. In the second round, enough voters who preferred M as their first choice took A as their second choice and A wins the election. RCV thus fails to have a substantial moderating impact, instead only causing a swing from one extreme to the other. == Real-world occurrences ==

1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election Buddy Roemer was squeezed out of the election, leaving corrupt Edwin Edwards and white supremacist David Duke in the runoff. 2007 French presidential election The 2007 French presidential election was seen as an example of a center squeeze. The second round saw Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, face off against Ségolène Royal, a socialist. Moderate liberal François Bayrou was eliminated in the first round, despite polls showing a majority of voters preferred Bayrou in a one-on-one match with either of his opponents. 2012 Egyptian presidential election In the 2012 Egyptian presidential election, held using the two-round system, vote-splitting among three leading moderate, non-Islamist candidates caused them all to be eliminated in the first round. This allowed the two more polarizing candidates, Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, to advance to the runoff, despite pre-election polls suggesting the eliminated moderates would have defeated either finalist in a head-to-head contest. This led to the June 2013 Egyptian protests and 2013 Egyptian coup d'état. 2022 Alaska special election The 2022 Alaska special election seat was seen as an example of a center squeeze, where Nick Begich III was eliminated in the first round by right-wing spoiler Sarah Palin, despite a majority of voters preferring Begich to either one of his opponents. The ranked-choice runoff election involved one Democrat (Mary Peltola) and two Republicans (Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III). Because the full ballot data for the race was released, social choice theorists were able to confirm that Palin spoiled the race for Begich, with Peltola winning the race as a result of several counter-intuitive behaviors that tend to characterize center-squeeze elections. In this race, Peltola would have lost if she had received more support from Palin voters, In the 2009 election, incumbent Burlington mayor Bob Kiss won reelection as a member of the Vermont Progressive Party, defeating Kurt Wright in the final round with 48% of the vote. The election results were criticized by mathematicians and voting theorists for several pathologies associated with RCV. These included a no-show paradox, where Kiss won only as a result of 750 votes ranking Kiss in last place. Several electoral reform advocates branded the election a failure after Kiss was elected despite 54% of voters voting for Montroll over Kiss, violating the majority-rule principle. Later analyses showed the race was spoiled, with Wright pulling moderate votes away from Montroll, who would have beat Kiss in a one-on-one race. The controversy culminated in a successful 2010 initiative that repealed RCV by a vote of 52% to 48%, a 16-point shift from the 64% who had supported the 2005 ratification. 2016 United States presidential election Another possible example is the 2016 United States presidential election, where polls found several alternatives including Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson defeating both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton under a majority- or rated-voting rules but being squeezed out by both RCV and the primary election rules. 2024 United States presidential election Election law scholar Ned Foley criticized the two-round system variant used in the United States, which has been described as a first round of primaries before a de-facto runoff, for creating a center squeeze in the 2024 presidential election and thus contributing to political polarization. Foley stated that both the existing primary system and a hypothetical election instant-runoff system would have led to the election of Donald Trump by eliminating Nikki Haley. He claimed that Haley would have been the majority-preferred (Condorcet) candidate according to polling, but he only quoted polls on Haley beating Biden, but none on Haley beating either Trump or Harris. == See also ==