Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
majority, plurality (nn.)
Majority regularly takes either a singular or plural verb: The majority is [are] unchanged. There is a good deal of objection to the use of majority with a mass noun: not the majority of his argument, but most of his argument. The majority of those present is Standard, but The majority of the audience is Informal and Casual at best; Most of the audience is Standard.
Majority is regularly modified by great, large, huge, and overwhelming, and so long as such combinations do not become personal clichés, they’ll work fine. Vast majority is already a cliché; so is bare majority, meaning the minimum number needed to make a majority (100 to 99 is a bare majority).
A majority of votes is at least one more than half of them; a plurality is the largest number of votes given any of the contenders. Hence there must be at least three contenders if a plurality is not automatically a majority as well: If A gets ten votes, B gets five, and C gets nine, A wins with a plurality of one, but A would have needed thirteen votes to win a bare majority of the twenty-four votes cast.
