How is the strength of a pairwise victory measured?
Some methods assign pairwise victories a strength so that it can be determined which prevail when there is a conflict. There have been a number of ways suggested, but mainly either margins or winning-votes are used. Consider a contest of 15 to 5 Margins– use the margin of victories, in this case 15-5=10 Winning-Votes– use only the votes on the winning side, 15 Losing-Votes– use only the votes on losing side, 5 For Margins and Winning-votes, a higher score means a victory of greater strength. For losing-votes, a higher score means a weaker victory. These measures are clearly equivalent as long as only full rankings are given. That is, they only make a difference if some people rank candidates as equal.
