More evidence that ranked choice voting works

Fair Vote - This year, Virginia’s Arlington County Democratic Committee successfully implemented ranked choice voting (which they refer to as instant runoff voting), to select nominees for three special elections.

The ACDC decided to make the switch for two primary reasons  - to ensure the nomination of a consensus winner and to encourage positive campaigning.  All three primary contests had strong turnout with thousands of voters participating, and one contest served to nominate a candidate for state legislature who now is serving in the Virginia Assembly.

Like many nomination contests in Virginia, Arlington Democrats do not have a taxpayer-financed primary. Instead, the party runs its own contest. Some parties will nominate candidates at a convention, but that can limit participation to those able to spend hours on a nomination. More frequently, parties are using what is called “firehouse primaries” – that is, privately administered nomination contests.

Fair Vote conducted an exit survey of participants to gauge how voters understood and perceived the use of IRV in this contest. Fair Vote staff and volunteers were were able to speak to over 1,000 voters as they were leaving the polls. Here are some highlights from our findings:

Voters Understanding of IRV

    85% of respondents found ranking candidates easy and 11% of respondent said that ranking was neither easy nor difficult.
    70% of respondents said that they understood IRV very well, 23% of respondents said they understood IRV somewhat well.
    88% of respondents found the instructions on the ballot very easy to understand.
    88% of respondents said that they ranked at least 2 candidates on their ballot.
    97% of the voters who participated in the caucus had their vote continue into the final round out counting.

Perceptions of IRV

    49% of respondents said that there was less criticism in this race, compared to only 2% that thought there was more criticism.
    26% of respondents said that they were more inclined to vote for their most preferred candidate as opposed to 3% who said they were less likely to vote for their favorite candidate.
    60% of respondents support using IRV for nominations, 32% of respondents had no opinion.
    73% of respondents would favor using IRV for state and congressional primaries.