  A method is given for quantitatively rating the social acceptance of
different options which are the matter of a preferential vote. The proposed
method is proved to satisfy certain desirable conditions, among which there is
a majority principle, a property of clone consistency, and the continuity of
the rates with respect to the data. One can view this method as a quantitative
complement for a qualitative method introduced in 1997 by Markus Schulze. It is
also related to certain methods of one-dimensional scaling or cluster analysis.
