MPR-Humphrey Poll: 56% of voters prefer instant runoff voting
There’s a lot of good news in the new MPR-Humphrey poll for Ranked Choice Voting. People like it, they understand it and – we think particularly telling – they like it more after they’ve used it than before.
That said, it’s just one data point in the analysis of RCV and we’re all well-advised to remember that fact. We’ll get a more comprehensive report on how the election went from the City’s election department in fairly short order, but that too will be just another data point.
The critics of RCV are trying to blame RCV for lopsided victories and low turnout; the actual cause of these symptoms was a shortage of interest in most races, not RCV.
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by Curtis Gilbert, November 16, 2009
St. Paul, Minn. — A new Minnesota Public Radio News/University of Minnesota poll shows Minneapolis residents are divided over the city's new instant runoff voting system.
Those who turned out to vote in this year's election tend to prefer the new system, but many of those who stayed home wish the city would go back to the old way of voting.
One of the key concerns raised about instant runoff voting prior to Election Day was that the new system would confuse voters. But University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs said the poll shows that was not the case for the vast majority of voters.
"We find over 90 percent of Minneapolis voters, and even a large percentage of those who didn't vote in Minneapolis, saying that they were familiar, understood, had knowledge of the system, [and] knew what to expect when they went into the voting booth," Jacobs.
The other good news for instant runoff voting supporters is that a majority of the people who voted this year -- 56 percent -- said they liked it better than the old system.
