On Apr 14, 2011, at 3:27 PM, // ravi wrote:
> That’s an Americanism, isn’t it? (I know, I know, we are in the USA, most of us, and importantly, the list is, but still, we are Internationalists, aren’t we!). In comparison to the rest of the world, AFAIK:
>
> English US English
> ==================================
> Majority Plurality
> Absolute Majority Majority
Wow, you learn something new every day. From Wikipedia:
> "With three-cornered contests as common as they now are, we may have occasion to find a convenient single word for what we used to call an absolute majority... In America the word majority itself has that meaning while a poll greater than that of any other candidate, but less than half the votes cast, is called a plurality. It might be useful to borrow this distinction..." (Fowler, H.W. 1965 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage)