“Former Speaker of the House trounces Romney in South Carolina with 40% of the vote”
LOL at plurality voting systems. What would happen if the US party nominees (let alone the actual president) were decided by STV (or more accurately in the context, IRV)? I’ve been thinking about this since the whole Romney/Santorum neck-and-neck thing in Iowa - where would Ron Paul’s transfers go? I know Republicans aren’t very hot on redistribution of either votes or money (except away from less advantaged social groups), but the single transferable/instant runoff (or ‘ranked choice’) vote would seem to be a more efficient way of deciding on one candidate from the anybody-but-Romney camp (or, of course, on Romney himself). Though as it stands the whole circus seems to be working fairly well, probably because:
- a) eliminations of the lowest-placed candidates are taking place after each caucus (Bachmann, Huntsman) which in effect means those who may have voted for them now switch to another candidate from a smaller pool, in essence the operation of the single transferable vote.
- b) Ron Paul’s transfers likely wouldn’t have made a difference in South Carolina, as the gap between Gingrich and Romney (at 40% and 28%) was almost as large as Paul’s vote share (13%). Therefore, had Paul voters been able to transfer, they would have been very unlikely to have changed the result unless they went 95% or more for Romney and that Romney also gained more from the elimination of Santorum in third place - this, of course, neglects how voters’ behaviour might change if they knew they weren’t voting in a plurality race.
As it stands, Romney will obviously gain from Paul remaining in the race and splitting the vote of his opponents, contrary to how a single transferable vote system would act. The most ‘electable’ candidate remains the one who can achieve the largest individual vote share, which is good I guess if it means the Republican Party are stuck with a Mormon that their evangelical wing can’t tolerate, a reasonably moderate conservative their libertarian or social conservative wings can’t agree with, or just basically someone a (real) majority of their primary voters didn’t vote for. And who’s not Newt.
