Executive Summary

Ranked-Choice Voting: What is It?

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) has emerged as an increasingly partisan issue in American electoral politics. After initial momentum in 2022 with implementation in Maine and Alaska, RCV experienced significant setbacks in 2024: Ballot measures failed in six states, Nevada reversed its 2022 approval, and seventeen states have enacted legislative bans.

Under RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate achieves a majority of first-place votes, the last-place finisher is eliminated and the votes of all who ranked that candidate first are transferred to the second-choice candidates. The process repeats until a candidate secures a majority. Proponents contend RCV reduces “spoiler” effects from minor-party candidates and expands voter choice. Critics argue it introduces unnecessary complexity and can produce counterintuitive results.

Who likes RCV?

One might expect partisan preferences for RCV to vary by local context—Republicans favoring it where right-leaning minor parties compete, Democrats where left-leaning parties attract votes.  However, contemporary positioning on RCV does not follow this geographic logic; partisan alignment appears relatively uniform across different electoral contexts. 

For instance, 2024 referendum results demonstrate consistent positive associations between Republican vote share and opposition to RCV. Across eight states and five municipalities, the higher the Trump vote, the lower the RCV support. In Alaska, where voters narrowly rejected repealing RCV by 0.2 percentage points (despite pro-RCV forces having outspent opponents $14.6 million to $500,0), district-level results showed near-linear correlation between Republican presidential support and anti-RCV voting. Nevada’s identical referenda in 2022 and 2024 showed most counties shifting both toward Republicans and against RCV. 

Table 1. Ranked-Choice Voting Referenda in November 2024

Legislative Division

Legislative voting patterns reveal even more pronounced partisan divisions. Across seventeen states that have banned RCV since 2022, most roll-call votes show Republican legislators voting nearly unanimously to prohibit the system and Democratic legislators voting nearly unanimously against such bans. 

Political discourse has centered on procedural questions, with Republicans citing voter confusion and delayed tabulation and Democrats questioning the necessity of banning an unused system. Academic research provides context for both perspectives: RCV does introduce specific complications—including scenarios where additional support can paradoxically harm a candidate—yet studies examining effects on voter confusion, campaign civility, and turnout have produced mixed results.

Partisanship and Public Support for RCV (of late)

Recent ballot measures reveal increasingly partisan divides in public support for ranked-choice voting, though the pattern is more complex than simple party alignment. Figure 1 examines 2024 RCV ballot measure results across 8 states and 5 municipalities, plotting the Republican (Trump-Vance) vote share against the proportion opposing RCV. The analysis reveals a strong positive correlation (r=0.66 for states alone, higher when including municipalities): jurisdictions with higher Republican vote shares consistently showed greater opposition to RCV, with more Democratic venues proving substantially more receptive to electoral reform. 

Figure 1. 2024 Ranked-Choice Referenda Results and Presidential Vote

However, a notable pattern emerges in the data—RCV consistently underperformed expectations based on partisanship alone. In all but two cases (Alaska and Richmond, California), opposition to RCV exceeded what Trump’s vote share would predict. This systematic underperformance suggests that while partisan alignment clearly matters, RCV faces measurable resistance even in Democratic-leaning areas. The authors caution against drawing direct individual-level inferences from these aggregate patterns, but the findings indicate the issue doesn’t break purely along party lines, with RCV facing headwinds beyond simple Republican opposition.

Implications 

While RCV has a long history in the United States, the current backlash against RCV appears strongly (though not perfectly) partisan and largely disconnected from this empirical evidence. However, the authors argue that much work remains to fully understand the partisan dimensions of RCV support, requiring deeper analysis of aggregate votes, voter files, ballot-image data, surveys, and campaign rhetoric. Critically, they contend that the increasingly common assumption that RCV primarily benefits Democrats over Republicans remains largely untested, with effects likely more complex and conditional than widely recognized. The authors urge advocates and opponents alike to resist viewing electoral reform through a reflexive partisan lens, instead engaging seriously with logic and evidence. Election rules, they argue, are too consequential to be dismissed as arcane technicalities or resigned to as inherently unfair.