Ranked Choice Voting And Condorcet Failure in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Systems Compare?

Abstract

The August 2022 special election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Alaska featured three main candidates and was conducted by the single-winner ranked choice voting system known as "Instant Runoff Voting." The results of this election displayed a well-known but relatively rare phenomenon known as "Condorcet failure:" Nick Begich was eliminated in the first round despite being more broadly acceptable to the electorate than either of the other two candidates. More specifically, Begich was the "Condorcet winner" of this election: Based on the Cast Vote Record, he would have defeated each 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 systems: Approval Voting and STAR ("Score Then Automatic Runoff") Voting. We find that under the best assumptions available about voter behavior, it is likely -- but not at all certain -- that Peltola would still have won the election under Approval Voting, while Begich would almost certainly have won under STAR Voting.