Ranked choice voting

Fair Vote - Fewest votes wins: plurality victories in 2024 primaries catalogs candidates who won their statewide or congressional primary with under 50% of the vote. A whopping 70 candidates did so this year:

• 33 of these non-majority winners won their primary in a “safe seat” for their party, meaning they will almost certainly win the general election. When they do, they will have been selected by a fraction of a fraction of their constituents.
• Another 17 non-majority winners are advancing to highly competitive general elections. Recent research from Northwestern University and FairVote shows that they’ll be less likely to win without a majority mandate from their own party.

RCV would solve both problems – strengthening party nominees and ensuring winners represent a majority of voters.

Our other report, The 2024 presidential primaries and ranked choice voting, looks back at this year’s presidential primaries and highlights how RCV would improve the process in 2028:

• More than 300,000 Republicans cast “zombie votes” for candidates who dropped out before their state’s primary day. Because of single-choice voting, these voters were not able to express their preference among the candidates still running.
• Most of the candidates who ran dropped out before a single vote had been cast, often due to concerns they would “split the vote” with ideologically similar candidates.

RCV would let more candidates stay in the race and virtually eliminate zombie votes