English

Three Candidate Plurality is Stablest for Correlations at most 1/10

Probability 2023-08-10 v3 Computational Complexity

Abstract

We prove the three candidate Plurality is Stablest Conjecture of Khot-Kindler-Mossel-O'Donnell from 2005 for correlations ρ\rho satisfying 1/43<ρ<1/10-1/43<\rho<1/10: the Plurality function is the most noise stable three candidate election method with small influences, when the corrupted votes have correlation 1/43<ρ<1/10-1/43<\rho<1/10 with the original votes. The previous best result of this type only achieved positive correlations at most 10101010^{-10^{10}}. Our result follows by solving the three set Standard Simplex Conjecture of Isaksson-Mossel from 2011 for all correlations 1/43<ρ<1/10-1/43<\rho<1/10. The Gaussian Double Bubble Theorem corresponds to the case ρ1\rho\to1^{-}, so in some sense, our result is a generalization of the Gaussian Double Bubble Theorem. Our result is also notable since it is the first result for any ρ<0\rho<0, which is the only relevant case for computational hardness of MAX-3-CUT. In fact, assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, we show that MAX-3-CUT is NP-hard to approximate within a multiplicative factor of .98937.98937, which improves on the known (unconditional) NP-hardness of approximation within a factor of 1(1/102)1-(1/102), proven in 1997. As an additional corollary, we conclude that three candidate Borda Count is stablest for all 1/43<ρ<1/10-1/43<\rho<1/10.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.03312,
  title  = {Three Candidate Plurality is Stablest for Correlations at most 1/10},
  author = {Steven Heilman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.03312},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

44 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:57:18.634Z