San Francisco held a special election for Mayor on June 5. Voters were able to use ranked choice voting for that office. The first place choices were counted first, and they showed London Breed winning. The first-choice preliminary results for the three leading contenders were: Breed 35.64%; Mark Leno 25.92%; Jane Kim 22.84%.
The preliminary results of the second choice votes were released at approximately 1 a.m. They put Leno into a narrow lead, approximately 50.4% to 49.6% for Breed. There are still many uncounted ballots. Thanks to Ross Levin for this news.
An interesting aspect of this race is that two of the top three candidates (Leno & Kim) supposedly campaigned together, urging their voters to pick the other one as the second choice. It looks to have worked, with Kim’s voters choosing Leno as their 2nd choice by a vast majority, possibly enough for a victory. This is the sort of campaigning that RCV advocates have said would happen, and it’s fascinating to see it happen.
The preliminary results are available here: http://www.sfelections.org/results/20180605/data/20180605_4/mayor/20180605_4_mayor.pdf
Lots of exhausted votes, and not because the three permitted were not enough.
Who is the Condorcet winner?
Who did Breed’s voters express as a second preference. Interesting identity politics involved.
See my earlier postings about the FATAL math of RCV.
Condorcet in elections = Calculus in curves math.