As the year comes to a close, we are approximately five weeks from the first votes of the 2020 election.  This post is to highlight one of the new features of this election — that several states will be using ranked choice voting.  (As described further below, Nevada will be using ranked-choice voting to allow early voters to participate in the caucuses.   Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Wyoming will be using ranked-choice voting in a party-run primary.  Maine will be using ranked-choice voting in a state-run primary.)

In the past, we have had something similar to ranked choice voting in some of the caucus states.  Typically, many of the caucus states allow attendees to realign after the first vote if their preferred candidate does not receive enough votes to qualify for a delegate.  Of course, when this process occurs at a caucus, the attendees have some idea of where the candidates currently stand and have the ability to negotiate delegate slots in exchange for moving as a bloc.  (Even at the handful of remaining caucus, the ability to make deals will be greatly reduced.  In the past, it was possible — for example — for Richardson supporters to move to Edwards in exchange for a pledge that one of the delegate slots would go to a Richardson supporter who would be a free agent at the county convention.  Under the new rules, the national delegate allocations are locked after the precinct convention significantly reducing the value of such delegate deals.)

Ranked choice voting requires voters to decide in advance whom they would support if their candidate is not viable.  For the most part, there has not been large support for moving to ranked choice voting in general elections in this country.  For a variety of reasons, the two major parties are more dominant in the U.S. than in most other countries.  (For example, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia all held parliamentary elections last year.  In those elections, the two main parties had a combined vote total of 67-76% of the vote.  By contrast, in the 2018 house elections, the two main parties had over 98% of the vote.  Even at the low point of the 1992 election, the two main parties combined for over 80% of the vote.)  The absence of significant votes for third-party candidates means that — most of the time — the winning candidate in U.S. elections gets a majority of the vote in their district.  (Again for comparison, in the 2019 elections abroad, the winning candidate only had a plurality in about one-third of the districts in the United Kingdom, and about two-thirds of the districts in Canada and Australia.  By contrast, combining the House, the Senate, and state-wide races, the winning candidate in the 2018 elections in the U.S. only had a plurality in 28 contests — less than five percent of the races. ) Continue Reading...