Talk:Instant-runoff voting

Typo in Participation criterion section?

The participation criterion section says, "a set of ballots that all rank A>B should not switch the election winner from B to A." Shouldn't it instead say, "a set of ballots that all rank A>B should not switch the election winner from A to B"? Mariachiband49 (talk) 02:49, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, please feel free to edit! – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 22:50, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Clone-proofness of IRV?

Is IRV clone-proof? I was unable to find a source for this when I looked. 2A00:23C6:BB08:2D01:6C5F:7EA3:D9B6:2038 (talk) 18:29, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes. See Instant-runoff_voting#Independence_of_clones_criterion and the links therein. meamemg (talk) 20:32, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Misconception in comparison to FPP

We say this:

Often instant-runoff voting elections are won by the candidate who leads in first-count vote tallies so they choose the same winner as first-past-the-post voting would have. Such similarity between the two systems means the disproportionality of IRV is about same as results under first-past-the-post.

Of the Australia federal elections, the 1972 election had the largest number of winners who would not have won under first-past-the-post, but still only 14 out of 125 seats filled were not won by the first-count leader. In the Australian federal election in September 2013, 135 out of the 150 House of Representatives seats (or 90 percent) were won by the candidate who led on first preferences. The other 15 seats (10 percent) were won by the candidate who placed second on first preferences.

This repeats a common misconception: that FPP would have elected the same candidate as IRV in cases where the first-choice IRV candidate wins. This fallacious argument ignores the voting system's effect on people's voting choices; almost the entire reason for using IRV in the first place. Specifically, the argument makes the unstated assumption that people who ranked a candidate first in IRV would have voted for that person in FPP, which is definitely not true: FPP is known to lead to widespread strategic voting. Doradus (talk) 23:14, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

This is a very well constructed point, putting aside my bias for preferential voting, the system is clearly not as disproportionate when it comes to elections for single-member constituencies, as the result is more of accurate voters' true preferences. You do not see the same level of controversy or challenges to elections in Australia than in the U.S., for example, and this is a very huge difference. Politics are also more moderated under this system, which is more accurate to the average citizen's true opinions. I fully agree we should get rid of this paragraph, it is clearly inaccurate. Vereted (talk) 01:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Article break

@Joeyconnick could you clarify why {{Break}} is supposed to be there? On my screen, this messes up the article formatting and introduces a large empty block. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:05, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Oh I see... you have your table of contents collapsed? For me, with the default Vector classic skin with ToC expanded, it fixes this where the IRV counting flowchart smushes the next section ("Properties and pathologies").

Ah... since the default skin has the table of contents in a left sidebar where it doesn't push down the start of the body (i.e. after the lead), I guess it makes sense to take that out. I've removed it! —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:47, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

That makes sense, thank you! – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:52, 13 April 2026 (UTC)