Once a popular figure, Mr. Belmont now runs fourth in the polls, winning 3 percent of voter preferences.

Fixed and variable voter preferences are self-explanatory labels.

What's worse, voter preferences are often contradictory.

Such action is the essence of democracy - a direct transmission of voter preference.

For one thing, they say, voter preferences could be widely dispersed.

The first step is to create a matrix or table that counts pairwise voter preferences.

There are voter preferences that can yield every possible overall order-of-preference result, including ties at any combination of preference levels.

Other generalizations, such as a "votes-only" generalization that makes no reference to voter preferences, may result in a different analysis.

It found no sudden shift in voter preferences on the eve of the election.

In neither Iowa nor Nevada are individual voter preferences reported.