Mind blown! I just saw this real-life example of the Condorcet paradox on “Around the Horn” (ATH), namely the episode that aired on 26 September 2023:

To the point (pun intended), this year’s WNBA MVP award went to Breanna Stewart (who plays for the New York Liberty), even though Alyssa Thomas (Connecticut Sun) had obtained the most first-place votes and A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas Aces) had garnered the most second-place votes!

More broadly speaking, this voting paradox emerges when there is no clear, universally agreed-upon winner with three or more alternatives. By way of illustration, imagine a referendum to decide the best flavor of ice cream. For simplicity, there are only three voters (A, B, and C), and their individual preference rankings are as follows:

Person A prefers Chocolate > Vanilla > Strawberry

Person B prefers Strawberry > Chocolate > Vanilla

Person C prefers Vanilla > Strawberry > Chocolate

This set of preferences produces a Condorcet cycle because none of the options can consistently beat the other two choices in pairwise comparisons. In my simple ice cream referendum, each flavor can win against one flavor but loses to another. One way to solve this impasse is to assign weights to each rank, e.g. 10 points for first place, seven points for second place, and five points for third place (like in the WNBA vote pictured above), but in my ice cream example each flavor would end up with 22 points apiece, hence the paradox!

PS: I identified another real-life example of the Condorcet Paradox here.