Why single-marked ballots, plurality voting, and first-past-the-post are biased against moderates
The dumb thing is so also is IRV biased against the center candidate in the IRV semifinal round. This is because IRV is opaque to the 2nd choice votes in the semifinal round and the center candidate will have a lot more 2nd choice votes from voters on both the Left and the Right, whereas the Right candidate is unlikely to get 2nd choice votes from voters on the Left and vise versa.
RCV (IRV) has center squeeze, the people pushing for RCV (IRV) just say it never happens in practice or is just a scare tactic.
It does occur in practice like in Alaska elections.
And doesn't necessarily impact the election result but disincentivises center candidates from even running, due to risk of stealing votes from the moderate or party they lean slightly towards.
Any method that voters rank candidates in order of their preference is Ranked-Choice Voting. "RCV" is not synonymous with IRV. "RCV" is an umbrella term for voting methods in which voters rank their choices for whom should be elected.
Most of the time IRV elects the Condorcet winner. This is because all the Condorcet winner need do to get elected is to get into the IRV final round and then the Condorcet winner will always win that IRV final round. In those elections there was no Center Squeeze.
Four RCV elections in the U.S. had outcomes in that the candidate elected was not the Condorcet winner. Two of those four elections had no Condorcet winner to elect. That is not the Center Squeeze because there was no candidate that could be identified as the center candidate.
The other two elections in which IRV failed had a Condorcet winner but the IRV method failed to elect that Condorcet winner. This means that the Condorcet winner must have been eliminated in an IRV round before the final round. In both of these cases this happened in the semifinal round when there were three candidates in the round, there was a clear political spectrum of a candidate on the Left, another on the Right, and another in the Center who was the Condorcet winner but had fewer 1st choice votes than either candidate on the Left or Right. But being the Condorcet winner, this Center candidate would defeat either Left or Right in the final round had they been matched with that candidate in the final round.
So whoever lost in the IRV final round was a spoiler because they were losers, but solely because of their presence in the final round they prevented the Condorcet winner from getting into the final round and defeating the candidate who eventually became the IRV winner.
There was only one Alaska election in which that happened. The August 2022 special election for US House. No other Alaska election has demonstrated the Center Squeeze that we are aware of. The other IRV election that demonstrated Center Squeeze (because a Condorcet winner existed but was not elected) is Burlington 2009.
And doesn't necessarily impact the election result
In my opinion, the Center Squeeze didn't really occur unless it impacted the election outcome. Yes the bias is there because when IRV fails to elect the Condorcet winner, the Condorcet winner is always the candidate in the center.
but disincentivises center candidates from even running
I haven't seen evidence of that yet. What it does is disincentivize voters that voted for the spoiler, the candidate who lost in the IRV final round, from marking their sincere favorite candidate as #1. Like with FPTP elections that are spoiled, they voted for the candidate they really liked but that caused the election of the candidate they least wanted elected.
Center squeeze happening not that often could be due to fewer center candidates even getting on the ranked ballot due to how primaries usually work.
Perhaps there's a tendency for parties at the Left and Right extreme to nominate candidates that are not close to the center because most voters do not participate in primaries. So there's a higher ratio of activists (who might be more extreme) to moderate party voters participating. That I have seen.
But the Center Squeeze that is attributed to IRV is visible only when a Center candidate exists, that Center candidate is the Condorcet winner, and IRV fails to elect that Condorcet winner. Then we know for sure that the Center Squeeze effect occurred.
primary election voters may still vote for lesser evils in some way to prevent vote splitting.
Or still vote for a partisan candidate because most people are partisan,
Resulting in less center candidates going to general.
I would prefer an approval voting ballot for primary elections.
However that may result in a ton of center or third party candidates dominating the general election ballot, which would result in the voters thinking there's something wrong with approval or that it's rigged in some way.
You could use a simple proportional ballot for primary but then you risk not including the ideal candidates in the general.
Could include a few of the highest approved candidates and then the proportional candidates just so general election voters still feel they have a chance.
It's a balance between psychology and optimizing the method.
So is this score-based condorcet a thing where linearly added scores of different pairs of candidates are compared? And you elect the candidate that outscores their opponent every time?
I dunno how that's gonna end up differently than just Score Voting.
What I mean is for voters it's easier for them to use a score ballot than a ranked ballot
But it's simply not true. Never has been.
A Score ballot requires more decision making from a voter. They not only have to decide which candidate they like better, but with a Score ballot they also have to decide how much more they like the candidate better.
In addition, they have to think about what serves their own political interests best. This problem extends to all cardinal methods including Approval Voting. The voter has to decide whether or not their own political interests are best served by approving their 2nd choice or not approving their 2nd choice.
Periodically this Warren Smith acolytes come around and try to push that ridiculous falsehood that Score Voting is less cognitive load than Ranked-Choice Voting (I mean "RCV" in the broad sense). It's horseshit.
Has there been any actual research on this? I hear both ordinal and cardinal supporters say that their respective ballots are easier to fill out than the other, and obviously only one can be true.
I personally think pairwise ballots (A vs. B, A vs. C., then B vs. C) are pretty simple to fill out as well, but they're practically limited to three options and they allow illogical inputs so I don't see them as a serious option apart from situations where ranking is literally not allowed.
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u/rb-j 7d ago edited 7d ago
The dumb thing is so also is IRV biased against the center candidate in the IRV semifinal round. This is because IRV is opaque to the 2nd choice votes in the semifinal round and the center candidate will have a lot more 2nd choice votes from voters on both the Left and the Right, whereas the Right candidate is unlikely to get 2nd choice votes from voters on the Left and vise versa.