In democratic elections, the concept of 'will' embodies the desires, choices, and consent of  the electorate. It should serve as a powerful force, guiding the selection of competent  candidates who can effectively address the pressing issues of the people. However, the very  essence of will is questionable within even democratic electoral systems. This stems from the inherent flaw in plurality voting systems, resulting in fragmentation, whereby the winning party or candidate secures victory solely by obtaining more votes than any other individual or party,  even if a majority of voters did not support them. Moreover, despite the observed rationality of individual preferences, the preference of the majority can exhibit irrationality, as illustrated by the Condorcet's Paradox, thereby challenging the plausibility of a truly representative will. Compounding this predicament is  the alarming dissemination of discriminatory information through the media, which directly influences the perception of candidates. All of these factors coalesce to undermine the representation of people’s will in democratic elections.

The Condorcet's Paradox arises from the observation that in democratic elections, a collective preference among three or more alternatives cannot be determined consistently.  Consider a scenario where three candidates—A, B, and C—compete in an election, in pairs. Each voter has their preferences ranked, and the winner is determined by the plurality rule.  

Consider the following results: 

● 55% of voters prefer candidate A over B. 

● 60% of voters prefer candidate B over C. 

● 65% of voters prefer candidate C over A. 

Individually, these pairwise preferences seem reasonable, yet they reveal a profound  inconsistency when taken together. If A is preferred over B, and B is preferred over C, it  would naturally follow that A should be preferred over C. However, the results defy this  logical conclusion, as the majority favors C over A. This contradiction is in direct contrast to the principles of transitivity and challenges the tenability of a coherent collective preference. 

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Riker (1982) criticizes this assumption of strict individual rationality in the Condorcet's Paradox. He argues that the paradox assumes voters to possess stable and consistent preferences, independent of the context in which the contenders stand. Put simply, he believed that in real-world scenarios, voters are aware of the implications of their choices and strategically vote to counteract this paradox. 

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However, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, a seminal contribution to social choice theory,  breaks down Riker (1982)’s critique. Arrow (1951) argued that when three or more alternatives exist, no voting system can ever satisfy all key properties that any representative social choice mechanism should ideally possess: 

● Unrestricted Domain: All possible options must be made available. 

● Non-dictatorship: One individual’s will must not take precedence. 

● Weak Pareto: The community should prefer one candidate over another, whenever  each individual does. 

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● Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives: Whenever all individual preferences  among a pair of alternatives are the same in one profile as they are in another, the  social preference among these alternatives must also be the same for the two  profiles. 

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● Social Ordering: The result of aggregating individual preferences must be a ranking  of the alternatives from better to worse, perhaps with ties. 

Arrow's theorem exposes the constraints that impede any escape from the complexities of  expressing social preferences accurately. More fundamentally, it highlights the  deep-seated limitations of aggregating individual preferences into a coherent collective  preference, revealing that even if individual preferences are subjected to Riker (1982)’s strategic voting effect, there are still inherent difficulties in aggregating those preferences into a socially acceptable outcome, rendering Condorcet's Paradox inescapable.  

In his seminal treatise, Duverger (1954) posited that plurality voting systems (wherein the candidate with the highest number of votes wins) necessarily encourage strategic voting.  This law stipulates that voters tend to support the most viable candidate who has the highest chances of winning, rather than those that they truly align with. Polls are cardinal in this context, for they can affect strategic considerations because they are based on expectations about the outcome of the election. Polls can lead people to not vote for a particular party because that party is perceived to be unlikely to win. At an atavistic level, voters tend to evaluate parties more positively if their chances of winning appear to be strong and to evaluate parties more negatively if their chances seem to be slim. This is widely known as the bandwagon effect – the notion that if so many people seem to be supporting a particular party, it must be good. The key word here is ‘seem’ i.e the poll results need not be accurate to achieve this effect.

Duverger (1954) further expounds that the psychological effect of plurality voting systems leads voters to believe that voting for a third party is wasteful since they have limited chances of winning - even when they align with their specific policies. Undoubtedly, America stands as the best testament to Duverger's assertions. For centuries, the political landscape of the United States has been dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Lijphart (1994)’s analysis of the electoral systems of 27 democracies from 1945 to 1990 lends  support to Duverger's Law, establishing a correlation between plurality systems and the  emergence of two dominant parties. It could be argued that this dominance of the two  parties reflects the will of the voters, as they voluntarily choose to align themselves with  these parties to have a meaningful impact on the election process. 

However, if voting for two major parties is solely premised on the belief that voting for a third party is wasteful, it does not express the true will of the people. The true will should be considered in relation to, and usher in the selection of the most competent candidate to govern a particular place and not be founded on mere strategic voting. 

We could counter Duverger's Law by arguing that voters do not strategically vote for major parties, but instead support smaller parties based on issue or ideological resonance in certain instances. This is substantiated by spatial models of voting behavior, such as the Downsian model, which shows that voters choose parties based on  proximity to their own policy preferences. 

Even with that accounted for, however, smaller parties rarely emerge as winners in elections. Instead, their importance lies in their potential to influence the formation of post-election coalitions. Indeed, they wield the power to significantly alter the desired outcome of a majority of the voters. In 2010, several Westminster system countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand  experienced coalition governments.  It would be incredibly difficult to contend that voters foresaw these post-electoral coalitions, and the concomitant discord. Therefore, elections do not represent the will of the people.

Figure 1 was constructed with data from the Commons Library of the UK Parliament.

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The inherent flaw in plurality voting systems is that it is possible for a winning party or  candidate to not represent the true will of most voters. This situation arises when votes become divided among multiple candidates or parties. Consequently, the victorious party or candidate secures only a plurality of the votes, rather than an outright majority.  

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A discussion about democratic elections would be incomplete without considering the role of the media. It is widely known that voters, in large part, make evaluations based on newly acquired and readily accessible information from the mass media (Remoortere & Vliegenthart, 2023). In the context of the 2024 Indian elections, Narendra Modi received disproportionate endorsements from highly popular Indian news channels whilst they unwaveringly handed out opprobrium to his opposition. This played a crucial role in shaping public perception throughout his campaign – news outlets emphasized Modi’s strong man image and charismatic persona – imbuing an atmosphere of hope and change around his candidacy that warded off anti-incumbency even after 10 years of rule. When you control what people see and think, you control their will.

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Quantitative evidence can be found in the 2008 US elections. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center examined the tone of media coverage during the 2008 presidential campaign, revealing that Obama received 28% negative coverage compared to McCain’s significant 60% negative coverage. This stark contrast in media representation likely impacted public perception, playing a role in shaping voter preferences, specifically the perception of voters who are politically independent. That is not to say, however, that Obama’s win was entirely premised on this media crusade. This op-ed is concerned with the will of the people and not partisan politics. The fact of the matter is that even if 1% of total voters decided to vote for Obama upon the consumption of said Pro-Obama narrative, that is an inaccurate representation of their will in elections.

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Figure 2, retrieved from a study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

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Opponents could make the case that the media primarily reinforces existing beliefs rather than changing them, for voters selectively consume media content that conforms with their existing views rather than those that challenge them, thereby limiting the media's impact on shaping their specific will. This takes the form of democrats tuning into CNN, and Republicans tuning into Fox News. In the realm of social media, this would entail being a member of partisan echo-chambers wherein puffery is the norm and opposing views are stifled. As Locke puts it, if certain states are the only ones to which we can have access to the world, then we cannot compare them to the features of the world they actually represent.

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I concede to the opposition that Democrats and Republicans almost tend to believe in different facts through their subjective interpretations of objective reality and that media houses only strengthen these preconceived schisms. However, the argument that media only reinforces existing beliefs is ultimately tenuous because of the fact that 43% of Americans identify as political independents - and they constitute the largest political bloc in the US. Being politically independent necessarily entails being more receptive to news media to construct a politically coherent identity prior to elections. In many ways, therefore, the Republican and Democrat media houses are playing a vicious tug-of-war with political independents, incessantly swaying them to one side or the other. Therefore, the role of the media in influencing voters’ will cannot be discounted. Just like the US, many democracies harbor citizens who are undecided or independent of political allegiance, it would be safe to assume that the same tug-of-war plays out in those countries.

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With the advent of social media, this dichotomous relationship between the media and the political independents has only worsened worldwide. Social media companies do not derive direct profit from polarization, but polarization is the means to making profit. And that is for the patent reason that increased engagement drives profit, and increased engagement comes from the consumption of polarizing content.

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The convergence of Condorcet’s paradox, Duverger’s law, split-ticket voting, strategic voting, and the overpowering influence of the media erects a subtle but formidable barrier to genuine democratic representation. These elements intertwine to distort and dilute the true will of the people in elections around the globe. Just having the right to vote does not make us citizens of a democracy, we must ask ourselves if we have the proper vantage to exercise that right.

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References:

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Blais, André, Elisabeth Gidengil, and Neil Nevitte. “Do Polls Influence the Vote?” University of Michigan Press. https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472099213-ch11.pdf

"Duverger's Law." 2023. In Oxford Reference. Oxford University Press. 

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095737871.

Gaertner, Wulf. "Arrows Theorem." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2022 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/.

Jain, Kalpana. “In Modi’s India, press freedom is curbed and journalists are under threat for doing their job.” Georgetown University, 14 August 2023. 

https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/in-modi-s-india-press-freedom-is-curbed-and-journalists-are-under-threat-for-doing-their-jobs#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20India's%20ranking%20on%20the,150%20just%20a%20year%20ago.

Lijphart, Arend. Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990. Oxford, 1994; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198273479.001.0001.

Pew Research Center. “How the Press Reported the 2008 General Election.” October 28, 2008. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2008/10/22/winning-media-campaign/.

Riker, William H. “The Two-Party System and Duverger’s Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science.” American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (1982): 753–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/1962968.

Sandel, Michael J. Democracy’s Discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times. Harvard University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv319wqjf.

Van Remoortere, A., & Vliegenthart, R. (2023). The influence of mass media on the popularity of politicians. Party Politics, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688231187964.

Yared, Pierre. "Lecture 12: The Political Economy of Development." Lecture, Political Economy and Economic Development, MIT OpenCourseWare, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fall 2012. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-75-political-economy-and-economic-development-fall-2012/a9fd8e5ab75a325016094e6bbe625b2a_MIT14_75F12_Lec12.pdf.