Fact-Checking the Evidence: Does Ranked-Choice Voting Actually Reduce Political Polarization?

The landscape of American elections is quietly undergoing one of its most significant structural shifts in a century. Over the last decade, dozens of municipalities and several states have moved away from traditional "choose one" plurality voting, searching for systems that better reflect the will of the majority.[3]

The alternative gaining the most traction is Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV), also known as instant-runoff voting. Instead of bubbling in a single name, voters rank candidates by preference: first, second, third, and so on.[8]

The mechanics are straightforward but fundamentally different from the status quo. If no candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Their voters' second choices are then distributed to the remaining candidates, a process that repeats until someone crosses the 50% threshold.[1]

Proponents have long argued that this system changes the underlying incentives of political campaigns, rewarding consensus-building over base-pandering and zero-sum attacks. But with over 50 U.S. jurisdictions now using RCV, political scientists no longer have to rely on theory—they have hard data.[3][8]

This evidence pack examines the empirical data behind three major claims about ranked-choice voting: that it increases campaign civility, that it boosts voter turnout, and that it confuses voters into spoiling their ballots.[8]

The first and most prominent claim is that RCV reduces negative campaigning. The structural logic suggests that candidates cannot afford to alienate their opponents' supporters, because they desperately need to be those voters' second or third choice to survive later elimination rounds.[1]

The empirical evidence here is robust and largely supports the claim. A comprehensive study published in the American Political Science Review analyzed mayoral elections across RCV and non-RCV cities, finding a measurable, statistically significant decrease in attack ads and negative mailers in jurisdictions utilizing ranked ballots.[4]

Surveys of the electorate corroborate this shift in tone. According to data from the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, voters in RCV cities are significantly more likely to report that local campaigns were "civil" and "focused on issues" compared to voters in demographically similar plurality-voting cities.[7]

Candidates themselves report changing their strategies to adapt to the new rules. Instead of zero-sum attacks, campaigns often engage in "cross-endorsements," where two ideologically similar candidates encourage their supporters to rank the other second, effectively teaming up to block a more polarizing opponent.[1][7]

The second major claim is that RCV increases voter turnout. Advocates argue that by eliminating the "spoiler effect" and allowing voters to support third-party or underdog candidates without feeling like they are wasting their vote, RCV draws more disaffected citizens to the polls.[1]

However, the empirical evidence on turnout is mixed, leaning only slightly positive and heavily dependent on local context. The Bipartisan Policy Center notes that while some cities saw turnout bumps of 2 to 3 percentage points after adopting RCV, it is difficult to isolate the voting method from other factors, such as highly competitive open-seat mayoral races.[5]

Where RCV does show a clear participation benefit is in eliminating off-cycle runoffs. Researchers at the Stanford Center on Democracy found that traditional two-round runoff elections suffer massive drop-offs in voter participation. By combining the primary and runoff into a single high-turnout general election, RCV effectively increases the number of voters who actually participate in the decisive round.[6]

The third claim, often raised by skeptics, is that RCV is too complex and leads to spoiled ballots. Critics warn that ranking candidates is confusing, leading to higher rates of ballot errors and "exhausted ballots"—where a voter's ballot is discarded in later rounds because all their ranked choices have been eliminated.[2]

Data from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab confirms that there is a measurable learning curve. In a jurisdiction's first RCV election, the rate of "overvotes"—such as accidentally ranking multiple candidates in the same column—is typically higher than in standard plurality elections.[2]

However, this error rate drops significantly in subsequent election cycles as voters become familiar with the ballot design. By a city's third RCV election, error rates generally return to the baseline levels seen in traditional voting systems, suggesting the confusion is temporary rather than structural.[2][3]

Ballot exhaustion, on the other hand, remains a persistent phenomenon. If a voter only ranks one candidate, and that candidate is eliminated early, their ballot does not factor into the final round. Studies show that 3% to 5% of ballots typically exhaust before the final round in highly fragmented, multi-candidate races.[2][5]

To mitigate this, election administrators emphasize the critical importance of robust public education campaigns prior to rolling out RCV. Jurisdictions that invest heavily in community outreach and clear, intuitive ballot instructions see significantly lower rates of ballot exhaustion and voter confusion.[3][5]

Ultimately, the accumulated data suggests that ranked-choice voting is not a magic bullet for all democratic ailments, but it does deliver on its core promise of incentivizing broader consensus and penalizing extreme polarization.[8]

As more states and municipalities consider ballot measures to adopt RCV in the coming years, voters can look to this growing body of evidence. The transition requires upfront administrative investment and voter education, but the long-term dividends in campaign civility and majority-supported outcomes are empirically measurable.[4][8]