  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-Smith principle, and a property of 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 one-dimensional scaling or cluster analysis.
