Election of Green Party Cathaoirleach, 2007

In the autumn of 2007 the Green Party elected a new Cathaoirleach (Chairperson) by means of a ballot of all of its members. What made the election especially interesting to students of politics is that it took place using a voting system that is rarely used in real political systems, the Borda Count. Because the Green Party was willing to make the full set of electoral data available for analysis, it was possible not just to review the actual result but to consider what the result would have been under alternative voting systems and to investigate some theoretically relevant counterfactual scenarios. In this report, I set out the background and outcome of the election and then use the full set of data to comment on its relevance to some theoretical debates about voting.