Warren wins in ranked choice voting poll

Fair Vote - In a first-of-its-kind poll, FairVote has partnered with YouGov to simulate what the Democratic primary would look like—if conducted in the past week—were ranked choice voting (RCV) used to choose a nominee.

The results may surprise you. While current polling frontrunner Joe Biden wins a plurality of first-choices, once lower-polling candidates are removed and their supporters’ votes are distributed to their second and third choices, Senator Elizabeth Warren comes out on top.

Want to look under the hood and see how that vote transferring process works? Vox, in a feature about the poll, created a wonderful series of graphics illustrating the process.

Also, using FairVote’s interactive, innovative widget, one can select different demographics and remove certain candidates to envision several scenarios that might take place under RCV.

Notably, the poll also reveals that voters are ready to rank their candidates—in both surveys and real elections. According to an official report, more than 95 percent of survey participants opted to rank more than one candidate, while upwards of 85 percent of participants opted to rank all five frontrunners when offered the opportunity.

Most encouragingly, more than two-thirds of respondents said the ranking process was easy—and 65 percent said they favored RCV (as opposed to only 13 percent who said they opposed it).