Borda Count

What the ballot looks like with Borda Count

Borda Count is a ranked-choice voting system, meaning voters rank the candidates from their most preferred to their least preferred.

Here is an example of a ranked-choice ballot.

Ranked ballots on StrawPoll.vote work by dragging the options, but this is not the case with physical ballots used in many elections, such as for government officials. Physical ranked ballots generally require that the voters fill in a separate bubble for their first choice, second choice, third choice, etc.

How the winner is determined

With Borda Count, each candidate receives a point for every candidate that is ranked below them. The option ranked last will receive zero points, the option ranked second-to-last will receive one point, the option ranked third to last will receive two points, etc.

For your ballot above, the following points would be awarded to each candidate:

The winner then is whichever candidate receives the most points.

Where Borda Count performs best

As a ranked-choice voting system, Borda Count performs best when the voters have a ranked preference between the options.

An example of this is in the election of government officials, where many candidates are running and voters are likely to have an opinion on each (or at least many) of the candidates.

Borda Count also performs really well in avoiding ties with a small number of voters, which is very useful for informal straw polls.

Where Borda Count performs worst

As a ranked-choice voting system, Borda Count should not be used in situations where the options are mutually exclusive to the voter. For example, when looking at the number of senior citizens in a population, a voter will either fall into the bucket of "Below 65" or "65 and Over". It should also not be used when voters are unlikely to have a ranked preference between options.

Borda Count is also not a Condorcet voting system, meaning it can elect an option that would lose in a head-to-head election against other options.

Try Borda Count

Create your own poll and send it to your friends to see how Borda Count performs.

Learn about other voting systems