[EL] RCV in Maine and Third-Party Spoilers

Mon Nov 26 17:59:32 PST 2018

I thought Vlad's email offers an opportunity to think why sometimes voters
"exhaust" ballots with ranked choice voting or don't come back for runoff
elections -- with, on the latter, the average drop inf participation in
federal congressional runoffs this year being 47% of the first round, with
half the runoff winners in fact earning fewer votes in the runoff than they
did in the first round.

Although it's perhaps fun to look at the new kid on the block (ranked
choice voting), I thought i'd look at the old standards of runoffs through
the eye of exhaustion - -specifically the Top Two elections in California
this year.

See some numbers below that I generated from the California Secretary of
State's website. As of Nov. 26, with votes still being tallied
<https://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/governor>. you'll see votes for governor
(a Democrat-Republican runoff), Secretary of State (a Democrat-Republican
runoff), and Lt. Governor (a Democrat-Democrat runoff).

My comparison isn't with the June preliminary round ("primary"), but within
the same contest with voter reacting to the choices being offered to them.
With the D-R runoff in statewide races, the dropoff from governor to those
races is small. For Secretary of State, for example. it is only 1.53%. But
for the D-D runoff for Lt. governor (and to a large, if lesser extent for
US Senate), the dropoff is much bigger - 16.24% in the case of Lt.
governor, or nearly 1.9 million votes.

If you think about who is likely dropping off, it's almost certainly
Republicans. If you generously use the Cox vote in the governor's race as a
the baseline for Republicans, that means that more than 40% of Republican
voters likely skipped the Lt. Governor race -- they indicated a "pox on
both your houses."

That is actually higher than the percentage of Maine independents who
didn't indicate a Republican or Democrat as a backup preference. And I'm
actually not surprised by that dropfff - there often is a core of third
party and independent voters who really do think some version of "the
lesser of 2 evils is still evil" or "don't encourage them with a vote."

So, then, the question is whether those voters are "spoilers" or really
"abstainers." Are they fundamentally different than the some 40% of Maine's
eligible voters who didn't vote at all? I'd suggest not. Just like those
non-voters, they were "in play" for the candidates, and the candidates in
fact did do enough to earn the votes of almost two-thirds of the
independent candidate backers. The fact that they didn't earn the rest is
something they'll need to reflect on, just like they need to reflect on not
inspiring so many potential voters to get to the polls in the first place.

Speaking of runoffs as an alternative to RCV, I trust Vlad will keep an eye
on the upcoming runoffs in Mississippi and Georgia. The Mississippi runoff
turnout in the US Senate race may end up being pretty high , given the
stakes -- we'll see. The Georgia turnout for next months' runoffs for
secretary of state and another statewide office... not so much. You can be
absolutely sure that a winner with RCV in the GA Secretary of State race
this year would have won with a much larger number of votes than will end
up being the case with runoffs.

- Rob Richie

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
Gavin Newsom (D)
7,213,464

John H. Cox (R)
4,481,280
Total Votes 11,694,744

CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE RACE
Alex Padilla (D)
7,385,637

Mark P. Meuser (R)
4,130,499

Total votes
11,516,136
Dropoff, votes 178,608 1.53%

CALIFORNIA LT. GOVERNOR RACE
Eleni Kounalakis (D)
5,542,766

Ed Hernandez (D)
4,253,319

Total votes
9,796,085
Dropoff, votes 1,898,659 16.24%

Dropoff of GOP Voters (est)
42.37%
(lt. governor dropoff divided by Cox vote)

On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 7:45 PM Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu> wrote:

> I wanted to flag the election results in Maine’s 2nd Congressional
> District, where ranked-choice voting was used. Four candidates ran — one
> Democrat, one Republican, two independents. Here are the results:
>
>
>
> *Round 1*
>
> *Round 2*
>
> *Candidate Names*
>
> *Votes*
>
> *Percentage*
>
> *Transfer*
>
> *Votes*
>
> *Percentage*
>
> *Transfer*
>
> Bond, Tiffany L.
>
> 16260
>
> 05.73%
>
> -16260
>
> 0
>
> 00.00%
>
> 0
>
> DEM Golden, Jared F.
>
> 128999
>
> 45.48%
>
> *10232*
>
> *139231*
>
> *50.53%*
>
> *0*
>
> Hoar, William R.S.
>
> 6753
>
> 02.38%
>
> -6753
>
> 0
>
> 00.00%
>
> 0
>
> REP Poliquin, Bruce
>
> *131631*
>
> *46.41%*
>
> *4695*
>
> 136326
>
> 49.47%
>
> 0
>
>
>
> Several things worth highlighting: (1) The “ballot exhaustion” rate was
> fairly low, about 2.8% of valid first-round votes; (2) the victor still did
> not win a majority of valid first-round votes; (3) by my calculation 35%
> (!) of voters who picked one of the independents as their #1 choice did not
> subsequently rank either the Democrat or Republican in a lower-ranked
> position.
>
>
>
> I bring this up in response to the argument that RCV is a solution to the
> problem of third-party spoilers (who syphon off enough votes from one
> major-party candidate to lose him/her the election). Of course, all of
> those 35% may not have voted at all had the independent candidates not run;
> or perhaps they would’ve voted for Bond or Hoar even in the absence of RCV
> (assuming, of course, that Bond and Hoar would’ve still run had the
> election not been held under RCV…). But I thought this was worth flagging.
>
>
>
> Note: This is not meant to be a general indictment of RCV or an argument
> that RCV is worse than the alternative.
>
>
>
> Vlad
>
>
>
> [image: The Ohio State University]
> *Vladimir Kogan*, Associate Professor
> *Department of Political Science*
>
> 2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
> 510/415-4074 Mobile
>
> 614/292-9498 Office
>
> 614/292-1146 Fax
>
> http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
> kogan.18 at osu.edu
>
> [image: Twitter icon]@vkoganosu <https://twitter.com/vkoganosu>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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