Voter Understanding and Support
Voter Support and Understanding of RCV
It is absolutely crucial that voters understand how to interact with a ranked ballot, understand their electoral system, and are able to cast a meaningful vote for a candidate of their choice. This section examines how well voters understand RCV and voters’ level of satisfaction with RCV.
Voter Support for RCV
- In 2021, 77% of voters surveyed by Rank the Vote NYC in the New York City primaries supported using RCV for future local elections.
- Maine used RCV for the first time for statewide elections in 2018. An exit poll after their November 2018 general election showed 60.9% of respondents in favor of keeping RCV or expanding use of RCV.
- 94% of Santa Fe voters reported feeling “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their first use of RCV in 2018, as reported in an 2018 exit poll by FairVote New Mexico.
- In Minneapolis in 2017, 66% of voters reported support for continued use of RCV, compared with only 16 percent who said they do not support its use and 18 percent who were unsure.
- Find additional details from exit surveys in the following report:
FairVote. 2020. Exit Surveys: Voters Evaluate Ranked Choice Voting.
Voter Understanding of RCV
- 95% of voters surveyed by Rank the Vote NYC in the New York City's 2021 primary elections found the ballot "simple to complete". These results were consistent across every ethnic group. 78% said they understood Ranked Choice Voting "extremely" or "very well".
- Over 90% of Maine voters reported that their experience using RCV was either “excellent” or “good”. This poll was an online survey conducted by the League of Women Voters after the June 2018 primary elections, which was the first time most respondents had used RCV.
- Santa Fe voters overwhelmingly reported they were not confused by their ballot after their first RCV election. More than 67% of respondents said the ballot was not at all confusing.
- Voters in Minneapolis have been using RCV since 2009 and continue to report positive results. 92% of respondents said they find voting with RCV “simple”.
- Two cities in Utah used ranked choice voting for city council races for the first time in 2019. Voters overwhelmingly utilized the option to rank candidates, even in their first use of RCV. A majority of voters in both Payson and Vineyard fully ranked their ballots.
- As part of the surveys conducted by the Eagleton Poll in 2013-2014, likely voters in cities using RCV were asked, "When you voted in the recent election, how easy was it to understand the voting instructions?”. In these two surveys, 90% and 89% of respondents say they found the RCV ballot easy to understand. This level of understanding remained high across demographic and socioeconomic groups.
John, S. & Tolbert, C. April 2015. Socioeconomic and Demographic Perspectives on Ranked Choice Voting in the Bay Area.
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In the 2014 Eagleton Poll in California, self-reported understanding of RCV compares favorably to understanding of plurality and the top-two primary.
- The percentage of voters in RCV cities who understood RCV at least “somewhat well” (84%) was roughly equivalent to the percent of voters in plurality cities who understood plurality (83%).
- More respondents (49%) in RCV cities reported understanding RCV extremely or very well than reported understanding the top-two primary extremely or very well (40%).
John, S. & Tolbert, C. April 2015. Socioeconomic and Demographic Perspectives on Ranked Choice Voting in the Bay Area.
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A 2019 study by Todd Donovan, Caroline Tolbert, and Kellen Gracey analyzed survey data to examine whether there are racial disparities in voter understanding.
- In terms of understanding voting instructions for RCV, there were “no differences… between whites and people of color.”
- There were “no differences in RCV cities in how whites, African Americans, and Latinx respondents reported understanding” the system.
- Read FairVote’s highlights here or find the full study at:
Donovan, T., Tolbert, C., & Gracey, K. April 2019. Self‐Reported Understanding of Ranked‐Choice Voting.
Further reading:
- Andrew Douglas explores the findings from the 2013 survey in Ranked Choice Voting and Civility: New Evidence from American Cities.
- Professor Caroline J. Tolbert examines voter experiences in the 2013 election season in Tolbert, Caroline J. Experiments in Election Reform: Voter Perceptions of Campaigns Under Ranked Choice Voting vs. Plurality Voting. Paper prepared for the Workshop on Electoral Systems, Electoral Reform, and Implications for Democratic Performance. Stanford University, March 14-15, 2014.
