The Importance of Voting Order
Voting order matters. A democratic vote is decided not only on who or what is being voted on but also how these people or things are paired when voting. One thing or person could win a series of votes after a certain order of pairings, but an entirely different thing or person could have won should the pairings be rearranged. Though differing in some aspects to a pure democratic vote, the United States 2016 Presidential Election is a good example of how order matters. The outcome was, obviously, Donald Trump won the election, but the outcome may have been different if the order in which voting took place had been changed. In the article linked below, Tony Fabrizio, a pollster working for the Trump campaign, is quoted saying that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump if Bernie had been the candidate for the Democrats. “ ‘I think Sanders beats Trump,’ [Tony Fabrizio] said. ‘I think Sanders would have had the ability to reach a lot of the less than college-educated, low-income white voters.’ “
Due to political structure and various other factors, the series of voting for the President of the United States could not have been changed. Altering and simplifying the election so that the voting population was the same for all vote matchups and the order of the matchups could be rearranged, you see a voting scenario which is heavily based on order. In this simplified scenario, the three candidates are S, C and T. In the real scenario, C beat S in a matchup, and then T beat C. Candidate T was the final winner. However, let’s say we switch the original matchup. Instead of this matchup being between S and C, let’s make the matchup between C and T. In this matchup, T will win as was shown in the real scenario The following matchup will be between candidates T and S. If the pollster Tony Fabrizio is correct, then candidate S would win this matchup. The result would be candidate S being the final winner. Let us now mix up the matchups one more time and have the first candidate matchup being S and T. According to Tony Fabrizio, S may win this matchup. This would result in the final matchup being between S and C. According to the real results, C would win this matchup and be the final winner.
In all three of the previous scenarios, the matchup winners among S, C and T was either determined by what actually happened or by relying on what Tony Fabrizio believed to be the case. This means that the winner of each matchup pair remained the same in all scenarios. However, every single one of the scenarios had a different final winner. The winners of each matchup stayed the same, but the order played a very important role in the final outcome. By not changing the voting population’s opinion at all, but by changing the voting matchups and order, you can determine who will win the vote. Who win’s a voting series relies much more than on just the voting population’s preferences.
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-pollster-says-bernie-sanders-would-have-won-election-if-nominee/