Contingent vote
A flow chart for Contingent vote
This article is part of the
Politics series
Electoral methods
Single-winner
• Plurality (first-past-the-post)
• Multiple-round systems
• Two round
• Exhaustive ballot
• Preferential systems
• Condorcet criterion
• Condorcet method
• Copeland’s method
• Kemeny-Young method
• Minimax
• Nanson’s method
• Ranked Pairs
• Schulze method
• Bucklin voting
• Coombs’ method
• Instant-runoff
• Contingent vote
• Borda count
• Non-ranking methods
• Approval voting
• Range voting
Multiple-winner
• Proportional representation
• Mixed-member
• Party-list (open · closed)
• D’Hondt method
• Highest averages
• Largest remainder
• Sainte-Laguë method
• Single transferable vote
• CPO-STV
• Schulze STV
• Semi-proportional representation
• Cumulative voting
• Limited voting
• Single non-transferable vote
• Parallel voting
• Non-proportional representation
• Plurality-at-large
• Preferential block voting
Random selection
• Sortition
• Random ballot
Politics portal
The contingent vote is an electoral system
used to elect a single winner, in which the
voter ranks the candidates in order of prefer-
ence. In an election, if no candidate receives
an absolute majority of first preference votes,
then all but the two leading candidates are
eliminated and there is a second count. In the
second count the votes of those who suppor-
ted eliminated candidates are distributed
among the two remaining candidates, so that
one candidate achieves an absolute majority.
The contingent vote is similar to the alternat-
ive vote but differs from it in that the altern-
ative vote typically allows for many rounds of
counting, whereas under the contingent vote
there are never more than two. In the United
States both the contingent vote and the al-
ternative vote are often referred to as vari-
ants of instant-runoff voting. The contingent
vote can also be considered a compressed
form of the two round system, in which both
’rounds’ occur without the need for voters to
go to the polls twice.
Today a special variant of