An emerging narrative holds that ranked-choice voting is in trouble as a cause due to its performance at this year’s general election. It therefore might be useful to look at historical data on the incidence and potential consequences of ‘bad years.’ I don’t see much evidence for the effect of a ‘bad year’ — at least from the perspective of failed adoption.
The data cover efforts to adopt the single transferable vote (STV), in almost all cases alongside the council-manager form of government.1 Close readers will note that this is not the same as what lost earlier this month: instant runoff voting with jungle primaries. I do not have the kind of data you see above for “single-winner” adoptions (i.e., instant runoff), at either the state or local levels. What I can say is:
- I am not aware of any effort in this period to impose nonpartisan instant runoff for statewide elections.2
- Statewide-election use of instant runoff was restricted to party primaries. I do not know if this was in state law or a decision internal to parties themselves.
- I think these data provide a decent if imperfect comparison because we are dealing with the same basic phenomenon: an effort to break up parties so that more independents might win.
The data show a string of bad years in the late 1930s. They clearly did not end adoptions; more than half of winning referendums came after. Also, these ‘bad’ years followed a few in which STV did very well.3
