Elizabeth Warren leads Joe Biden in ranked-choice poll

[HelpImSurrounded]

[link:https://www.vox.com/2019/9/12/20860985/poll-democratic-primary-ranked-choice-warren-biden|

THIS is the kind of primary polling AND elections we should be doing.

Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead the crowded Democratic field — but under a “ranked-choice” system designed to suss out the majority’s ultimate preference, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would top Biden, 53 percent to 47 percent, according to a new poll exclusively provided in advance to Vox.

The online national poll of likely Democratic voters was conducted by YouGov, and sponsored by FairVote, a nonpartisan advocacy group supporting electoral reform. Unlike an ordinary poll, it asked respondents to rank several candidates in order of preference — so as to simulate ranked-choice voting, a system currently used in Maine and other localities. (FairVote advocates in favor of the system and hopes it will be adopted elsewhere in the US as well.)

The way ranked-choice voting works is that candidates with fewer votes are eliminated, and then their votes are redistributed to whomever each voter designated as their next-ranked preference. For instance, a voter could rank Sen. Bernie Sanders as their first choice and Warren as their second choice — meaning that, if Sanders was eliminated, this vote would be transferred to Warren.

YouGov tested the ranked choice methodology offering all 20 remaining Democratic candidates as options (with the ability to rank 10 of them) — and also by just offering the current top five candidates (Biden, Warren, Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg) as options. The end results were quite similar for both versions, so this article will focus on the five-candidate version for simplicity’s sake. (The more extensive results for both versions are available at FairVote’s website.)

In an initial tally counting only voters’ top-ranked choices, Biden leads the Democratic field with 33 percent, and is followed by Warren with 29 percent, Sanders with 20 percent, Harris with 10 percent, and Buttigieg with 8 percent, per the poll.

But it turns out that respondents who initially favored Sanders and Harris prefer Warren over Biden, by about a two-to-one ratio. So once the field is narrowed to a head-to-head matchup of just Biden and Warren, and votes for the eliminated candidates are to whomever each voter ranked higher, Warren would lead Biden by 6 points.

The results are an interesting indication of how an outcome can change due to a different tallying system. But they could also be indicative of something bigger.

Though voters theoretically can choose among many of candidates, we are still months away from a day when primary voters will cast votes. So how voters rank their options in a smaller field could tell us a lot about what the race might look like in the future, and what might happen were the field to winnow further. These results, at least, suggest that Warren would benefit more than Biden would.

Walking through the ranked-choice results

To the uninitiated, ranked-choice voting (sometimes called “instant runoff voting,” or IRV) might seem like a confusing and convoluted system. Our respondents were asked to rank Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders, and Warren by preference — from first choice, to second, to third, to fourth, to fifth. (If they wouldn’t vote for some of these candidates at all, they could notate that as well.) The graphic below walks through the tally.

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Continued here with graphics - [link:https://www.vox.com/2019/9/12/20860985/poll-democratic-primary-ranked-choice-warren-biden|

[zentrum]

1. Great news! Thanx.

[Bradical79]

2. I just don't get what's confusing or convoluted about ranked choice...

Seems the most effective way to get someone acceptable to the most people.

[HelpImSurrounded]

3. Well, it doesn't surprise me that YOU aren't confused...

Warren and her supporters can all do math!

[LiberalLovinLug]

4. I'm hoping that Sanders or Warren supporters will transfer their votes over to the other

If their candidate looks like they won't win near the end of the primaries.

And it looks like Sanders supporters are more likely to switch to Warren than the other way around. Which I don't get if policy is one's #1 reason for support, and not something else like gender.

But I don't care. One or the other. I hope that if Bernie remains behind Elizabeth, at some point he will bow out and implore his followers to vote for Warren. I think he would bow out earlier this time, simply because there is some other candidate that shares his vision this time.

And the Warren/Sanders progressive voting block will win out in the end.

[HelpImSurrounded]

5. I would ignore the #neverNevers

My experience is the exact opposite of yours, that Warren supporters are far more likely to embrace Sanders than vice-versa so I wouldn't take either of our experiences as solid data.

What I do believe is that there are a lot of trolls out there using NeverNever as a fear tactic. True supporters of Warren/Bernie have their preference set around 51/49. There are a lot of "true democrats" that swear up one side and down the other that they will never never support Bernie because he isn't a "true" democrat but I believe that is a lot of bluff. "True democrats" will back whoever the party endorses. A lot of Bernie supporters swear its Bernie-or-bust, too but I have to discount their support if it is truly conditional. I've met a few claiming they'll support Trump if they can't have Bernie and those are just misogynist trolls. Anyone who can actually embrace that dichotomy can't be trusted or argued with.

[LiberalLovinLug]

6. I agree. the nevernevers as you call them are non factors

I have to confer with you about Warren to Sanders voters. I last got my information on that on this website primary tracker:

https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

You can scroll down to see second choices for voters. When I read it, a few weeks ago, Warren supporters had both Biden and Harris as second choices ahead of Sanders. Now it seems Sanders has risen up as their second choice. While Sanders supporters, who had Warren as their second when I read it, now have her below Biden. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Still it's very close, with Warren just behind.

And I still believe that there is great potential that the vast majority of Sanders supporters will go to Warren, and vica versa depending on what pans out. Especially if the one losing late in the campaign encourages it when they drop out. Its time for a new progressive direction, enough of the failed Third Way, which has only pushed BOTH parties to the right.