Ranked Choice Voting And the Center Squeeze in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Methods Compare?
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The August 2022 special election for U.S. House Representative in Alaska featured three main candidates and was conducted by by single-winner ranked choice voting method known as “instant runoff voting." The results of this election displayed a well-known but relatively rare phenomenon known as the “center squeeze:" The most centrist candidate, Mark Begich, was eliminated in the first round despite winning an overwhelming majority of second-place votes. In fact, Begich was the Condorcet winner of this election: Based on the cast vote record, he would have defeated both of the other two candidates in head-to-head contests, but he was eliminated in the first round of ballot counting due to receiving the fewest first-place votes. The purpose of this paper is to use the data in the cast vote record to explore the range of likely outcomes if this election had been conducted under two alternative voting methods: Approval Voting and STAR (“Score Then Automatic Runoff") Voting. We find that under the best assumptions available about voter behavior, the most likely outcomes are that Peltola would still have won the election under Approval Voting, while Begich would have won under STAR Voting.
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