Sincere, Strategic, or Something Else? The Impact of Ranked-Choice Voting on Voter Decision Making Processes

Abstract

The academic debate on how voters decide which candidates to support often centers on whether they prioritize their personal preferences or consider who can beat the opposing candidate. American research on voting behavior has largely focused on first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. However, considering jurisdictions are adopting new electoral systems such as ranked-choice voting (RCV) this leads to several questions about the impact of system adoption on voter decision-making. Particularly, does the voter decision-making process differ depending on the system used? To investigate the impact of RCV on voter decision-making across electoral systems we conducted a survey experiment in a federal senate election. Our findings indicate that in comparison to FPTP elections, RCV elections may lead to decreases in both sincere and strategic voting. Instead, RCV appears to increase voter uncertainty around how to decide which candidates to support and leads to voters who appear to be neither sincere nor strategic.