Citizen Data: Most Voters Want to Rank Their Presidential Primary Choices

image
Published: 02 May, 2023
Updated: 18 Jun, 2025
3 min read

Six Republican candidates have launched campaigns for the 2024 presidential primary, and there are still over a dozen potential candidates that could enter the race. Citizen Data asked voters, “in such a crowded field would you like to rank your choices?”

61% of poll respondents said they were at least “somewhat interested” in the option, including the same percentage of Republican respondents.

“Ranked choice voting (RCV) solves problems in presidential primaries – it’s no surprise that voters are interested in ranking candidates by more than a two-to-one margin,” said Deb Otis, Director of Research and Policy at FairVote.

FairVote, a nonpartisan better elections advocacy group, is the nation’s largest supporter of RCV. .The group collaborated with Citizen Data to conduct the poll of 1,001 registered US voters.

“RCV is a better way for voters to unite behind strong nominees in crowded primaries,” continued Otis.

“And in 2020, over three million early voters cast ballots for Democratic presidential candidates who then withdrew by their state’s primary day; the same thing happened to 600,000 Republican voters in 2016. With RCV, if a voter’s first choice drops out, their ballot simply counts for their next choice.”

RCV gives voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference and if a candidate does not have a majority of voters’ first choices, an instant round of runoff is held that eliminates the last place candidate and their voters’ next selection is applied to the vote tabulation.

This process continues until a candidate has crossed over 50% of the vote. The voting method has been adopted in over 60 jurisdictions, including areas dominated by Republicans and Democrats. Alaska uses it for state elections, as does Maine.

It has also been used by both parties in a handful of states to select their nominees for general elections and party leadership. The Democratic Party used RCV in 4 presidential primary contests in 2020.

IVP Donate

RCV advocates say the reform offers several benefits to presidential primaries:

It can address the millions of wasted votes each election cycle for candidates who have dropped out of the race, it gives voters more freedom to express their true preferences, and it can result in more representative allocation of party delegates.

In crowded candidate fields it is likely that in several contests the winner of the primary doesn’t need to get a majority of the vote to be declared the winner and take the lion's share of delegates.

Donald Trump, for example, garnered 45% of the total 2016 primary vote and several states were declared for him despite not winning majority support (sometimes not even close). The same can be said for other candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

This would not happen under RCV.

Not only would RCV guarantee a winner crosses 50 percent of the vote, but it could also boost more candidates above the vote threshold needed to be allocated delegates (typically 15%<), ensuring more voters affect the outcome and are heard.

Critics and opponents of RCV reform say the voting method is too complicated for voters to understand, but evidence points to the contrary. In case after case after case, exit polling shows voters have found voting under RCV to be simple, fair, and easy.

Citizen Data’s polling shows that interest in RCV not only exists across party lines, but social demographics as well, including age, ethnicity, and education level.

Let Us Vote : Sign Now!

Related articles

Ranked Choice Voting Ballot and People
Beyond Ranked Choice Voting: How We Count The Votes Matters
Ranked choice voting keeps winning headlines. New York City uses it in primaries, Maine uses it stat...
24 Jul, 2025
-
5 min read
Vote sign with New York City skyline in the background.
Don’t Blame Mamdani for Closed Primaries in New York City
The NYC Charter Revision Commission (CRC) will hold its final meeting on July 21 to decide what reforms to city policy will appear on the November ballot. However, one proposal will not be on the commission’s docket – open primaries....
21 Jul, 2025
-
10 min read
vote here sign with people standing in line to vote.
Why Are Democrats in DC Failing to Implement an Initiative Passed by 73% of Voters?
Back in November, DC voters overwhelmingly approved Initiative 83, a measure that called for semi-open primaries and ranked choice voting (RCV) in all city elections. The problem – the DC City Council has yet to fully fund it....
15 Jul, 2025
-
4 min read

Latest articles

Wall St. sign.
Americans Want Congress to Stop Playing the Market — So Why Won’t Lawmakers Listen?
Americans have spoken, again and again — and the message is crystal clear: members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stocks while in office. Yet, despite bipartisan legislative proposals and national scrutiny, Congress continues to stall....
05 Aug, 2025
-
3 min read
stacks of cash.
From Relief to Rage: $100M FireAid Concert Engulfed in Political Scandal
LOS ANGELES, CA – It seems we can’t even have a $100 million benefit concert without inviting partis...
05 Aug, 2025
-
10 min read
One hand holding a blue California and another holding a red Texas in front of the US Capitol Building.
The Redistricting War Is Here — One CA Republican Says It’s Time to Call It Off
Texas Republicans have threatened to redraw their maps to protect their party’s majority in Congress. California Democrats have, in turn, threatened to respond with their own mid-decade redistricting to “fight fire with fire.”...
05 Aug, 2025
-
4 min read