Executive Summary

Over the last decade, ranked-choice voting has gone from the fringes to the mainstream of political reform. Generally, ranked-choice voting (RCV) is seen as a way to encourage more compromise and moderation in politics; to reduce negative campaigning; to introduce more competition within the two major parties; to end the spoiler effect of third party candidates; and to ensure majority winners without costly and low-turnout runoff elections. With largely successful use-cases in the 2021 New York City mayoral primary, in several Democratic Party presidential primaries in 2020, and in Maine elections in 2018 and 2020, RCV has entered the national conversation as a sensible and popular reform with momentum. In its single-winner form, it is also a relatively modest change to the current voting system, and thus, appears to be a relatively achievable victory for reformers.

With a growing number of RCV elections to draw on, considerable research has followed. The goal of this report is to provide a systematic overview of this research.

The broad conclusion of this report is that, while single-winner ranked-choice voting does have many positive effects both in theory and in overseas usage, in practice these benefits have been somewhat limited and/or difficult to quantify based on limited usage thus far in the United States. On balance, the benefits of RCV outweigh the downsides, and RCV has many appealing qualities that make it a strong improvement over more traditional single-mark plurality voting. However, the benefits appear to be more marginal than many had initially hoped. Certainly, it is possible that the research has failed to adequately capture the benefits, and that the benefits take time to become apparent as candidates and voters learn and attitudes change. It is also possible that nationwide adoption of RCV would be more transformative than city-by-city and even state-by-state adoption. But given the broader structural forces at play in our deteriorating national politics, stronger medicine may be needed.

The most notable benefits of ranked-choice voting so far concern campaign tone and descriptive representation. Research suggests elections with RCV are more civil, and less nasty, as proponents have argued; and what limited evidence we have on RCV and electoral outcomes suggests that the system does, as promised, increase the odds of candidates of color and women candidates being elected. Additionally, there is strong evidence that most citizens like using ranked-choice voting, and they find it easy and straightforward to use—especially once they experience the system in a real election. Though critics and skeptics have raised concerns about the ways in which RCV voting could confuse and potentially demobilize certain voters, those concerns appear unfounded at this point.

Still, both ease of use and enthusiasm for RCV vary among the population. Not surprisingly, age is a significant correlate of support, with young people more likely to embrace change, and older people more likely to want to continue voting under the rules they have known for their entire lives, rather than having to learn something new. Also, Democrats tend to be more favorable toward RCV than Republicans. This may reflect the fact that conservatives are more averse to change, or that RCV is currently seen more like a Democratic reform than a Republican reform. However, since most voters do not have strong opinions either way, there is certainly room for this to change with appropriate grassroots movement building and elite signaling.

Additionally, RCV seems to work well in primaries, the elections where vote-splitting is most likely to be a problem and where extreme candidates are most likely to win with a small plurality. Another advantage of using RCV in primaries is that it combines well with voting by mail. Since candidates may drop out suddenly, mailed votes are not wasted if voters can indicate their back-up preferences. Certainly, the New York City Democratic primary of 2021 offers a success story of ranked-choice voting, despite some administrative blunders by the Board of Elections that had nothing to do with the reform itself.

Other impacts of ranked-choice voting are harder to observe. At this point, it is unclear whether the system has any consistent impacts on who votes, who runs, or how governing works. The lack of clear findings here may exist for a few reasons. First, a limited number of cities have implemented RCV, and these cities tend to be unique in various respects, which makes the kinds of comparisons needed to draw meaningful conclusions about broader implementation hard. Second, it may take time for these downstream effects to show up, as voters, candidates, and public officials learn and adjust to different rules. Third, and most likely, it may simply be the case that the single-winner form of RCV that most cities have implemented has only marginal impacts.

Again, the existing literature has its limits, and even this overview does not encompass the totality of studies on the effects of ranked-choice voting. Notably, this report’s deliberate focus on RCV in the United States leaves less room for discussion of RCV usage overseas, even as the international scholarship laid the groundwork for many of the domestic studies examined here. The report also does not account for the results of research currently underway to understand the effects of RCV in New York City’s 2021 primaries, nor the 2022 implementation of Alaska’s final-four open primaries with RCV in the general election. These limitations notwithstanding, many of the bolder claims about the transformative nature of ranked-choice voting are still hypothetical.

This review of the RCV literature is structured around four key aspects of electoral reform—how the reform affects the voting experience (“who votes, and how do voters experience the process?”), candidates and campaigns (“who runs, and how?”), electoral outcomes (“who wins?”), and policy and governance (“what happens then?”). Within these main sections we test 12 specific claims that RCV advocates have made against the available research, and offer summary conclusions and future research recommendations for each one. The claims, and our conclusions, are previewed below.

Key Findings

I. The Voting Experience

• Claim 1: Voters can understand RCV | Conclusion: Supported
• Claim 2: Voters utilize their rankings | Conclusion: Mostly supported
• Claim 3: RCV increases voter participation | Conclusion: Mixed evidence, hard to assess
• Claim 4: Voters like RCV, and consider it an improvement over the status quo | Conclusion: Generally supported, with caveats
• Claim 5: RCV makes voters think elections are fairer | Conclusion: Not well-supported

II. Candidates and Campaigns

• Claim 6: RCV changes who runs | Conclusion: Possibly, more study needed
• Claim 7: RCV changes how candidates campaign | Conclusion: Mostly supported at the local level

III. Electoral Outcomes

• Claim 8: RCV changes who wins | Conclusion: Limited evidence is mainly promising for minorities and women, less so for independents and moderates; more data is needed
• Claim 9: RCV leads to more Condorcet winners | Conclusion: Mainly supported
• Claim 10: RCV makes primaries work better in avoiding polarizing candidates | Conclusion: Early evidence is promising, more study needed

IV. Consequences for Policy and Politics

• Claim 11: RCV reduces polarization | Conclusion: Unclear, hard to assess
• Claim 12: RCV changes policy outcomes | Conclusion: Not supported, very hard to assess