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SanAndreasX on 12 November 2022
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Bandorr said:
SanAndreasX said:

Only ten states conduct runoff elections, eight of them in the South. The exceptions are South Dakota and Vermont, and runoffs are only conducted in Vermont if there is a tie between the two front-runners. Runoff elections were conceived as a way to keep the evangelical establishment (which meant white supremacist back when these laws were enacted) in power in Southern states. So the person who gets the most votes in Nevada gets the seat (and Cortez-Masto has narrowed the gap down to a few hundred).

In Alaska and Maine, where they have ranked choice voting, candidates regularly win with less than half. Paul LePage never won a majority on either of his two terms as governor. Mary Peltola, the Democratic front-runner for Alaska's at-large congressional district, holds 46% of the vote, but is benefitting because the Republican vote is split between Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. Thankfully so, because Palin is ahead of Begich, and Palin will hopefully go away forever if she loses this time.

You can't really split the vote if it is ranked choice.  To argue they are splitting the vote you'd also have to argue that everyone that voted for one of them - would have voted for the other.

We know that to be false because of ranked choice voting.  The last run the Belich voters chose Mary over Palin. I think the number was like 30% of them not choosing a second choice. Which means that if they had to choose only one vote and that vote couldn't be belich most of them wouldn't have voted for palin.

Cool. I still live in a winner-takes-all jurisdiction so I don't have personal experience with RCV. So I wonder how many people who voted Peltola had Begich or Palin as their second choice. I have a friend who is a park ranger in Maine and suffered for eight years under Paul LePage, who won one of his elections with just 37.6% of the vote. He is very glad that LePage lost this time, needless to say.

On that note, our Senate election was called for Mark Kelly, which is a relief, and Katie Hobbs is still holding her own against Kari Lake. Arizona counts ballots at a glacial pace.