In voting systems, the Minimax Condorcet method is a single-winner ranked-choice voting method that always elects the majority (Condorcet) winner. Minimax compares all candidates against each other in a round-robin tournament, then ranks candidates by their worst election result (the result where they would receive the fewest votes). The candidate with the largest (maximum) number of votes in their worst (minimum) matchup is declared the winner.

The Minimax Condorcet method selects the candidate for whom the greatest pairwise score for another candidate against him or her is the least such score among all candidates.

Imagine politicians compete like football teams in a round-robin tournament, where every team plays against every other team once. In each matchup, a candidate's score is equal to the number of voters who support them over their opponent.

Minimax finds each team's (or candidate's) worst game – the one where they received the smallest number of points (votes). Each team's tournament score is equal to the number of points they got in their worst game. The first place in the tournament goes to the team with the best tournament score.

Formally, let ${\displaystyle \operatorname {score} (X,Y)}$ denote the pairwise score for ${\displaystyle X}$ against ${\displaystyle Y}$. Then the candidate, ${\displaystyle W}$ selected by minimax (aka the winner) is given by:

When it is permitted to rank candidates equally, or not rank all candidates, three interpretations of the rule are possible. When voters must rank all the candidates, all three variants are equivalent.

Let ${\displaystyle d(X,Y)}$ be the number of voters ranking X over Y. The variants define the score ${\displaystyle \operatorname {score} (X,Y)}$ for candidate X against Y as:

When one of the first two variants is used, the method can be restated as: "Disregard the weakest pairwise defeat until one candidate is unbeaten." An "unbeaten" candidate possesses a maximum score against him which is zero or negative.