• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Would you say that those elections were as polarized as our presidential elections are? Do you see my concern regarding all voters choosing their own party first, third-party second, and opposing party third? If first choice is split nearly 50/50, wouldn’t that put the third-party candidate at the top?

    • Liz@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      No? Under the usual American implementation of RCV only the highest ranked candidate on a ballot gets the vote from that ballot. If no one has a majority of the remaining votes the person in last place is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the individual ballot preferences. So if the American presidency was ~50/50 red v blue as first choices (with a few people picking third party candidates) whichever third party candidate that took last place would get eliminated. In fact, mathematically speaking, if red and blue each got at least 1/3 of the first place cuts votes, one of them must be the eventual winner and the other must take second place.

      There are other systems that could cause chaos with your suggested rankings, but they’re generally not considered serious methods exactly because they are chaotic under reasonable circumstances.