{"id":12596,"date":"2024-11-08T16:58:24","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T23:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=12596"},"modified":"2024-11-09T08:55:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T15:55:54","slug":"portland-mayor-ranked-choice-voting-visualized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=12596","title":{"rendered":"Portland Mayor Ranked Choice Voting visualized"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Portland just tried ranked choice voting. It was an interesting experience. I’m not sure if I’m 100% sold just yet, but it seems to have worked reasonably well. If nothing else – it’s a fascinating dive into the data.
On the plus side: I did like having the ability to pick 2nd and 3rd choice candidates. In one case, my 2nd choice candidate won.
On the down side: it required a LOT more work. There were almost 20 candidates for mayor alone, and a decent number of them didn’t submit any information about themselves, were odd-ball one-issue candidates, or were borderline quacks. This easily took me 2-4x the time I would have normally spent. Doing this for a dozen candidates at state and local levels would be exhausting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with all things, the unintended consequences are likely what is most interesting. I suspect it’s going encourage candidates to start overlapping on stances in order to steal\/appeal each other’s 2nd and 3rd votes – especially if they are not a front runner. This could make the voter’s work even more tough as it’s more like splitting hairs than decisive differences. I think it’s also going to encourage candidates to be more homogenous. Outliers and more extreme ends – on both the left and right – were very soundly defeated. This is probably a good thing in such a far left state like Oregon that’s had some pretty extreme candidates in previous elections<\/a>. It’s definitely going to make campaign strategy much more interesting, and likely break up the entrenched homogenous political structure of Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, if you’re curious how to see how each round of voting went, the Multnomah website has a neat visualization how each of the rounds worked out<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alternatively, a local forum user put together a Sankey diagram<\/a> of the way the votes flowed from one candidate to the next as candidates were eliminated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The district 4 councilor race was even more crazy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here was district 2 with Kanal starting out a resounding 3rd and ending up bubbling to the top, while Guiney started first and ended 2nd:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bonus<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KGW8 did a great mayoral candidate interview. I liked the format a LOT. They had some pre-canned questions, but I loved the fact they asked audience submitted ‘raise your hand’ questions that made the candidates actually state their opinions in a yes\/no fashion instead of just waffling around like the career candidates usually do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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