As you know, the difference between real life and fiction is that the latter has to make sense.

That’s as opposed to this presidential election season, which appears to be following the path of political fiction, with possibilities of a convention without a first-ballot presidential nominee and a presidential election that ends in the House of Representatives.

Duke University Prof. Georg Vanberg explores what the term “majority” means and does not mean in a democracy:

Given Donald Trump’s continuing electoral success, it appears increasingly likely that only a “brokered convention” can prevent a Trump nomination.

Various voices have begun to suggest that such an outcome would be an illegitimate, undemocratic maneuver — essentially, the party establishment’s “stealing” the nomination (see Newt Gingrich’s comments). Party leaders “should not be able to use conventions as a way to subvert the will of the people” (see the Atlantic, for example). Even those who favor this route apologetically acknowledge a brokered convention as an “anachronistic, undemocratic” means to an end.

Such arguments represent a fundamental confusion about the nature of democratic decision-making. A little reflection shows that concepts like “the will of the people” are quite slippery – and that Trump has no special claim on that title.

Of course, what voters want is important in a democracy. But the results of elections are not simply a reflection of “the people’s will.” They derive from the combination of three factors: voter preferences, the rules that define how citizens can vote and how votes are counted, and the choices that are presented to voters.

Here’s the key point: Exactly the same voter preferences can result in widely different election results under alternative (and equally democratic) election procedures. As a result, it is not at all clear what “the will of the people” might mean.

A simple example illustrates this. The following table lists the preferences of 100 voters over three candidates — for example, 34 voters prefer Lopez to Lee to Lewis, and so on.

34 voters	30 voters	26 voters	10 voters
Lopez	Lee	Lewis	Lewis
Lee	Lopez	Lee	Lopez
Lewis	Lewis	Lopez	Lee

Plurality rule — the person with the most votes wins — is standard for most elections in the United States. By this rule, the candidate who secures the most votes is declared the “winner” of a presidential primary (leaving aside the much more complicated question of delegate allocation). Under plurality rule, candidate Lewis wins with 36 percent of the vote.

But of course plurality rule is not the only plausible election procedure; many other procedures are used around the world and in the United States.

Consider, for example, an instant run-off procedure, used in some state and local elections in the U.S. Under this procedure, candidate Lee – who receives the fewest votes – would be eliminated in the first round, her votes would be transferred to her voters’ second choice (Lopez), and Lopez would win the election with a comfortable two-thirds majority (64-36) against Lewis. A majority run-off system (used, for example, to elect the president of France) would result in the same outcome.

Or consider the Borda count, which is used to elect the winner of the Heisman Trophy and baseball’s most valuable player, among others. Under this system, each voter ranks the candidates from best to worst, assigning one point for first place, two points for second place, and so forth. The points are totaled, and the candidate with the lowest score wins. In this case, Lee (180 points) beats both Lopez (192 points) and Lewis (238 points).

Finally, note that Lee is preferred by a majority of voters to both Lewis and Lopez – and thus would win a “round-robin” tournament between the candidates.

What is the point here? What the example underscores is that there is no straightforward or self-evident way to think about “what the people want” or what “the voters’ choice” is.

Step back for a moment. Does Lewis really reflect “the will of the people”? Sure, he secures the most votes if citizens can only choose one candidate. But two-thirds of the voters would prefer either of the other candidates!

Is Lopez “the people’s choice”? Almost as many voters place him first as Lewis, and he is second for many more. But Lopez would lose decisively to Lee!

So perhaps Lee represents “the people’s will”? Maybe. Lee seems to be a compromise candidate — but of course Lee is also the first choice of the smallest number of voters.

In short, it is not at all clear who voters prefer in a situation like this. The winner is determined as much by electoral rules as it is by the preferences of voters.

This fact — that aggregating the preferences of  individuals is a vexing problem — is one of the most important insights of the social sciences of the past 50 years. It earned Kenneth Arrow a Nobel Prize, and William Rikerwrote powerfully about its implications for democratic theory.

Of course, these results do not imply that votes cast are meaningless, or should be ignored. This is why it is important to specify electoral procedures ahead of time, and not to change them “midstream.” By this logic, should Trump win a majority of delegates, the Republican Party should accept this outcome.

But if Trump fails to win a majority of delegates, the logic is equally clear: securing a plurality of the vote (or delegates) does not provide Trump with any special claim to legitimacy, nor does it give him the mantle of “the people’s choice.”

In this case, a brokered convention that denies him the nomination is not a coup in which the party’s establishment thumbs its nose at the electorate. On the contrary, such an outcome can represent the preferences of many voters, and have an equally powerful claim to be “democratic.”

During the seven-year disaster that is the Obama administration I have pointed out that every example of government overreach — including, on the state level, the John Doe witchhunt — progressives lauded could come back to be used on them.

Enter Donald Trump, who, like progressives, feels no need to be limited by, you know, the U.S. Constitution, law or apparently anything else.

So Charles W. Cooke asks:

Herewith, an under-asked question for our friends on the progressive left: “Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the State?”

I make this inquiry because, for a long while now, I have been of the view that the only thing that is likely to join conservatives and progressives in condemnation of government excess is the prospect that that excess will benefit the Right. Along with their peculiar belief that History takes “sides” and that improvement is inexorable and foreordained, most progressives hold as an article of faith that, because it is now a “consolidated democracy,” the United States is immune from the sort of tyranny of which conservatives like to warn. As such, progressives tend not to buy the argument that a government that can give you everything you want is also a government that can take it all away. For the past four or five years, conservatives have offered precisely this argument, our central contention being that it is a bad idea to invest too much power in one place because one never knows who might enjoy that power next. And, for the past four or five years, these warnings have fallen on deaf, derisive, overconfident ears.

The case that the Right’s cynics have made is a broad one: Inter alia, we have argued that Congress ought to reclaim much of the legal authority that it has willingly ceded to the executive, lest that executive become unresponsive or worse; that, once abandoned, constitutional limits are difficult to resuscitate; that federalism leads not just to better government but to a diminished likelihood that bad actors will be able to inflict widespread damage; and, perhaps most important of all, that far from being a vestige of times past, the Second Amendment remains a vital protection upon which free men may fall should their government turn to iron. In most cases, the reactions to these submissions have been identical: That we are skeptical of power only because we dislike Barack Obama, and that this skepticism will vanish upon the instant when he is replaced by a leader that we prefer.

This response, I’m afraid to say, is entirely miscast. In fact, we have taken these positions because, like all cautious people, we worry what might happen in the days that we cannot yet see. As Edmund Burke memorably put it, a sensible citizen does not wait for an “actual grievance” to intrude upon his liberty, but prefers to “augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” Barack Obama’s extra-constitutional transgressions have been many and they have been alarming, and I do not regret my opposition to them. But their result, thus far at least, has been the marginal undermining of democracy and not the plain indulgence of evil. Will our executives’ excesses always take that form? Is it wise to appraise our current situation and to conclude that it will obtain for the rest of time?

To listen to the manner in which our friends on the left now talk about Donald Trump is to suspect that it is not. Time and time again, Trump has been compared to Hitler, to Mussolini, to George Wallace, and to Bull Connor. Time and time again, self-described “liberals” have recoiled at the man’s praise for internment, at his disrespect for minorities and dissenters, and at his enthusiasm for torture and for war crimes. Time and time again, it has been predicted — not without merit — that, while Trump would almost certainly lose a general election, an ill-timed recession or devastating terrorist attack could throw all bets to the curb. If one were to take literally the chatter that one hears on MSNBC and the fear that one smells in the pages of the New York Times and of the Washington Post, one would have no choice but to conclude that the progressives have joined the conservatives in worrying aloud about the wholesale abuse of power.

Hence my initial question: Have they? And, if they have, what knock-on effects has that worrying had? Having watched the rise of Trumpism — and, now, having seen the beginning of violence in its name — who out there is having second thoughts as to the wisdom of imbuing our central state with massive power?

That’s a serious, not a rhetorical, question. I would genuinely love to know how many “liberals” have begun to suspect that there are some pretty meaningful downsides to the consolidation of state authority. I’d like to know how many of my ideological opponents saying with a smirk that “it couldn’t happen here” have begun to wonder if it could. I’d like to know how many fervent critics of the Second Amendment have caught themselves wondering whether the right to keep and bear arms isn’t a welcome safety valve after all. Furthermore, I’d like to know if the everything-is-better-in-Europe brigade is still yearning for a parliamentary system that would allow the elected leader to push through his agenda pretty much unchecked; if “gridlock” is still seen as a devastating flaw in the system; if the Senate is still such an irritant; and if the considerable power that the states retain is still resented as before. Certainly, there are many on the left who are mistrustful of government and many on the right who are happy to indulge its metastasis. But as a rule, progressives favor harsher intrusion into our civil society than do their political opposites. Are they still as sure that this is shrewd?

When Peter Beinart warns that Donald Trump is a threat to “American liberal democracy” — specifically to “the idea that there are certain rights so fundamental that even democratic majorities cannot undo them” — he is channeling the conservative case for the Founders’ settlement, and taking square aim at the Jacobin mentality that would, if permitted, remove the remaining shackles that surround and enclose the state. Does he know this? And if he does, is he still as keen as ever to have the federal government spread its powerful wings and cast long shadows across the nation? Does an expansive role for Washington hold the same allure now that there is a possibility that a Trump-like figure could commandeer it? If the answer to these questions is “yes,” I have a modest second inquiry to go along with the first: “What is everybody smoking?”

It also makes one wish for Trump to get elected in November to see what happens when liberals get IRS audits from the Trump administration, or when Trump proposes to Congress that the libel laws be rewritten so that President Trump, who before he was elected was notoriously lawsuit-happy, has more ability to sue the liars in the news media (but why stop there?) who he hates.