A continuous rating method for preferential voting: the complete case

A method is given for quantitatively rating the social acceptance of different options which are the matter of a complete preferential vote. Completeness means that every voter expresses a comparison (a preference or a tie) about each pair of options. The proposed method is proved to have certain desirable properties, which include: the continuity of the rates with respect to the data, a decomposition property that characterizes certain situations opposite to a tie, the Condorcet?CSmith principle, and clone consistency. One can view this rating method as a complement for the ranking method introduced in 1997 by Markus Schulze. It is also related to certain methods of cluster analysis and one-dimensional scaling.