2023/06/09 by Mallory Dickerson, Dickerson, Mallory, Erin Martin +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #FOS: Economics and business #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth #Game Theory and Voting Systems #General Economics (econ.GN)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.05966
openalex publication_date 2023/06/09 · openalex created_date 2023/06/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In ranked-choice elections voters cast preference ballots which provide a voter's ranking of the candidates. The method of ranked-choice voting (RCV) chooses a winner by using voter preferences to simulate a series of runoff elections. Some jurisdictions which use RCV limit the number of candidates that voters can rank on the ballot, imposing what we term a truncation level, which is the number of candidates that voters are allowed to rank. Given fixed voter preferences, the winner of the election can change if we impose different truncation levels. We use a database of 1171 real-world ranked-choice elections to empirically analyze the potential effects of imposing different truncation levels in ranked-choice elections. Our general finding is that if the truncation level is at least three then restricting the number of candidates which can be ranked on the ballot rarely affects the election winner.