Quote:
Originally Posted by meridian5850
From the Wall Street Journal
By The Editorial Board
Nov. 2, 2020
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As for the idea that RCV will moderate politics, San Francisco State University political scientist Jason McDaniel followed mayoral voting patterns in cities that adopted RCV and those that didn’t. RCV led to “greater racial divisions at the ballot box between white and Asian voters, and quite possibly also between white and Black voters,” he wrote in a 2018 paper for the California Journal of Politics and Policy. Faced with a more confusing set of options, voters may be “more likely to rely on candidate traits.”
In a 2019 paper, Mr. McDaniel also found RCV leads to a “significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3-5 percentage points in RCV cities.” College-educated progressives may appreciate the chance to list more choices. But for voters who favor one candidate but don’t spend as much time gaming out political possibilities, it is a burden they would rather avoid.
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The article mentioned in
WSJ is available online. It is NOT an analysis of whether ranked choice moderates political extremes, rather it is focused entirely on a different question. McDaniel writes that in the two cities he studied, Oakland and San Fran, the mayoral elections tend to be racially polarized.. whites vote for the white, Asians for the Asian etc. He wanted to know if ranked choice changed that dynamic and that dynamic only. It did not. Here is the actual conclusion to his work
Quote:
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..assessing whether a relatively new electoral reform adopted in several California cities, Ranked-Choice Voting, could lead to a reduction in racially polarized voting. The results presented here suggest that the hopes of reformers for the potential of RCV to reduce polarized voting are misplaced. Racially polarized voting did not decrease due to the implementation of RCV. Racial competition at the ballot box persists, and voters continue to use their vote choices to express their racial group identity interests.
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This is the same Jason McDaniel who authored this article
Economic Anxiety Didn’t Make People Vote Trump, Racism Did
How do you feel now about his political analysis of voting behaviors?