[EM] IRV - how many candidates per party?

[Dave Ketchum]

> There are several IRV experts on the list. I am sure you are aware 

> of its practical use, too.
> 

I will respond for ranked ballots, for IRV and Condorcet use the
same ballots and my responses apply to both.

 
> I'd like to know, how many candidates are usually offered by the 

> same party in IRV? Only one? Two or more?
>  

I suspect most parties have not thought seriously on this.

A big reason for primaries in Plurality is that two similar candidates 
would split the votes available to their party - a painful punishment.

With ranked ballots this penalty disappears, since a voter can rank 
similar candidates near or at the same ranking - thus with the same chance 
to win or lose against the same competitors.

What makes sense from here:
       Maybe do away with primaries.
       Maybe have primaries only when there are more than X candidates for 
a party, to reduce this to a tolerable Y (more than one should be 
tolerable) candidates for the party for the general election.


> IRV is used in San Francisco and some other places. Since US has 

> two-party system, offering only one candidate per party makes the 

> total of two candidates. If there are two candidates, there is no 

> difference between FPTP and IRV, right?
>  

First, in this sense, the US is NOT "two-party", although there tend to be 
two MAJOR parties at any time (and major parties can and do lose their 
strength and get replaced):
      In Florida in 2000, I believe there were 13 candidates for US President.
      In New York a group demonstrating ability to attract at least ONE 
percent of the votes for governor gets officially called a "party", and 
assigned a line on the ballot for the next 4 years (til next election for 
governor).  NY often has 8 or 9 such parties.  And, with that, can have 
other wannbe parties that failed to attract required votes.
      In New York, and I believe in other states, a wannabe candidate can 
also petition to be on the ballot without being associated with a party.


> Does anyone know of any empirical study of practical use of IRV? Any 

> comment is welcome.
> Jurij

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  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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