Score Voting

What the ballot looks like with Score voting

With Score voting, voters assign a score to each of the options. The min, max, and default scores are all things that can differ based on the scoring system. At StrawPoll.vote, scores can range from 0% to 100%, with 0% as the default.

Here's an example of what a ballot might look like that supports Score voting:

Score ballots on StrawPoll.vote work with sliders, but this is not the case with physical ballots used in many elections, such as for government officials. Physical score ballots generally require that the voters fill in a bubble corresponding to the score given to every candidate.

How the winner is determined

Determining the winner is very simple under Score voting. The scores are summed up, and the candidate with the highest score wins. Note that this is equivalent to taking the average score given to every candidate.

Where Score voting performs best

Score voting is best suited for situations where voters can independently evaluate each of the options.

Score voting is somewhat similar to the rating system used by Google and Amazon. Consumers evaluate each service or product independently, and leave a rating, usually out of 5 stars.

While Score voting does not guarantee the election of the Condorcet winner (the candidate that would beat every other candidate head-to-head), it tends to elect the Condorcet winner in practice. This makes Score voting competitive with the best ranked-choice voting systems.

Where Score voting performs worst

While Score voting tends to perform well in most situations where the options can be considered independently, it should not be used to place the population into buckets, such as to understand the age distribution of a population (e.g. "Under 18", "18-64", "65 and Over").

Score voting is also susceptible to strategic bullet voting, where voters give insincere ratings to one or more options in order to increase the likelihood that their favorite option is selected.

Try Score voting

Create your own poll and send it to your friends to see how Score voting performs.

Learn about other voting systems