The Republican Party of the U.S. Virgin Islands will hold a caucus on February 8, 2024, to choose delegates to the national convention. Candidates have until December 31 to file. The caucus will use Ranked Choice Voting.

The only states choosing delegates to the Republican National Convention earlier than February 8 are Iowa and New Hampshire. The date of the New Hampshire presidential primary hasn’t been set yet.

U.S. territories have no electoral votes so they can’t participate in a binding way in the general election. But both major parties let the organized territories choose delegates to their national conventions.

The author of this paper is Kevin Kosar. Conservatives have been generally hostile to electoral reforms, usually positioning them as efforts by “the left” to bias election results in their favor.

Republicans have succeeded in banning Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in five states: Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota. Sarah Palin complained bitterly about RCV after her RCV election loss for US House from Alaska in 2022, and there is an effort in Alaska to repeal RCV, even though polls have shown that it is popular with Alaskans.

RCV is popular with Republican Party members in at least two states: Utah and Virginia. The Utah GOP has long used RCV for internal party elections, and the Virginia GOP nominated Glenn Youngkin using RCV at its 2021 Gubernatorial nominating convention. He went on to defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the November 2021 General Election. The Republican Party of Virginia has thereafter sometimes used RCV in privately run primary elections (historically called “firehouse primaries” in Virginia).

Thanks to Election Law Blog for spreading the word on this and for all it does.

The data for this survey was gathered between September 1 and September 23, 2023. I would lay money that the pro-third party percentage would be even higher today, after removal of Kevin McCarthy as US House Speaker yesterday.