mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

When Does Delegation Beat Majority? A Delegation-Based Aggregator for Multi-Sample LLM Inference

arXiv 2606.08098 ↗First posted 6 Jun 2026cs.AI cs.LGcited by 1

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Majority voting is the default unsupervised aggregator for multi-sample LLM inference, but it discards two signals: within-group answer entropy and between-group reasoning geometry. We aggregate by delegation instead (Propagational Proxy Voting, PPV): each group of samples keeps weight on its own answer in proportion to its entropy-based confidence (When) and routes the rest to peers by reasoning-embedding similarity (Whom); the stationary distribution of the resulting delegation matrix picks the consensus answer. This requires neither gold labels nor training. On MMLU-Pro with 128 samples per question, delegation beats majority by +1.5 pp overall and +2.24 pp on non-trivial questions (McNemar p ~ 1.0e-14, n = 8,099), overturning wrong majorities whose answer cluster is geometrically incoherent while the correct minority is tight. We then characterize exactly when delegation overturns majority: a two-option model gives a closed-form flip condition on each option's confidence and the weight it routes to the other, with a do-no-harm corollary for near-unanimous questions. The condition calls the realized winner on 96.5% of non-trivial questions, and its predicted mass gap tracks the realized gap at r = 0.97. We did not find any other unsupervised ensemble methods that close the oracle gap.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 38 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Jun 2026.

Builds on

38 of 46 references.

References · 38

  1. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  3. 2017On Calibration of Modern Neural Networkscited by 4,860
  4. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,598
  5. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  6. 2024Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameterscited by 1,928
  7. 2022Language Models (Mostly) Know What They Knowcited by 1,783
  8. 2024MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,758
  9. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,739
  10. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
  11. 2025Qwen3 Embedding: Advancing Text Embedding and Reranking Through Foundation Modelscited by 1,175
  12. 2023Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debatecited by 995
26 more
  1. 2023Semantic Uncertainty: Linguistic Invariances for Uncertainty Estimation in Natural Language Generationcited by 795
  2. 2024Mixture-of-Agents Enhances Large Language Model Capabilitiescited by 420
  3. 2023Generating with Confidence: Uncertainty Quantification for Black-box Large Language Modelscited by 286
  4. 2024Debating with More Persuasive LLMs Leads to More Truthful Answerscited by 255
  5. 2024Semantic Entropy Probes: Robust and Cheap Hallucination Detection in LLMscited by 246
  6. 2023Universal Self-Consistency for Large Language Model Generationcited by 198
  7. 2024Kernel Language Entropy: Fine-grained Uncertainty Quantification for LLMs from Semantic Similaritiescited by 156
  8. 2023Let's Sample Step by Step: Adaptive-Consistency for Efficient Reasoning and Coding with LLMscited by 111
  9. 2024Reasoning Aware Self-Consistency: Leveraging Reasoning Paths for Efficient LLM Samplingcited by 63
  10. 2025Beyond Semantic Entropy: Boosting LLM Uncertainty Quantification with Pairwise Semantic Similaritycited by 26
  11. 2025Beyond Majority Voting: LLM Aggregation by Leveraging Higher-Order Informationcited by 25
  12. 2024Language Model Council: Democratically Benchmarking Foundation Models on Highly Subjective Taskscited by 17
  13. 2025Ranked Voting based Self-Consistency of Large Language Modelscited by 16
  14. 2025Certified Self-Consistency: Statistical Guarantees and Test-Time Training for Reliable Reasoning in LLMscited by 12
  15. 2025The Sequential Edge: Inverse-Entropy Voting Beats Parallel Self-Consistency at Matched Computecited by 11
  16. 2024Graph-based Confidence Calibration for Large Language Modelscited by 10
  17. 2018On Rational Delegations in Liquid Democracycited by 9
  18. 2026Know When You're Wrong: Aligning Confidence with Correctness for LLM Error Detectioncited by 8
  19. 2017Binary Voting with Delegable Proxy: An Analysis of Liquid Democracycited by 7
  20. 2026From Debate to Decision: Conformal Social Choice for Safe Multi-Agent Deliberationcited by 6
  21. 2021Liquid Democracy with Ranked Delegationscited by 5
  22. 2022Generalizing Liquid Democracy to multi-agent delegation: A Voting Weight Measure and Equilibrium Analysiscited by 2
  23. 2024Controlling Delegations in Liquid Democracycited by 2
  24. 2025A statistically consistent measure of semantic uncertainty using Language Modelscited by 1
  25. 2025The Cost Perspective of Liquid Democracy: Feasibility and Controlcited by 1
  26. 2025Propagational Proxy Votingcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.