A modified "winner-take-all'' rule for awarding state electoral votes in US presidential elections and a game model for its analysis
A modification of the "winner-take-all'' rule for awarding state electoral votes in US presidential elections is proposed. The modified rule has the potential of turning a state that is currently "safe'' for either major party candidate into a "battleground'' one, forcing presidential candidates to compete in the state and encouraging state voters (interested in the election result) to vote in presidential elections. A model for estimating the chances of a candidate to win state electoral votes in presidential elections with two major party candidates under the modified "winner-take-all'' rule is proposed. This model has the form of a two-person game on a polyhedral set of connected strategies with payoff functions each being a sum of two linear functions and a bilinear function. The model is one of the two models applicable for analyzing the proposed rule that are discussed in the article. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
electoral vote connected strategies electoral college games on polyhedral sets popular vote