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  Fri, Feb 08, 2019
The Second Preferences in the 2018 Maine CD-2 Election
As I previously noted on The 2018 Ranked Choice Voting Election in Maine's Congressional District No. 2 over at Fruits and Votes, the cast vote record data published by Maine's Secretary of State indicates 140,325 of 289,624 voters casting a valid first preference in the election gave valid rankings to at least two different candidates. However, that data also allows a tally of the second preferences in these ballots, cross-tabulated by first preference in the table below.

    Candidate 
 Names 
   First Preference      Second  
  Preference  
  Total  
  
     
     
        Bond        Golden        Hoar        Poliquin        
    Bond, Tiffany L.      -      53,118      2,621      15,211      70,950    
    DEM Golden, Jared F.      4,835      -      1,203      9,315      15,353    
    Hoar, William R.S.      5,639      18,344      -      19,429      43,412    
    REP Poliquin, Bruce      1,632      8,089      889      -      10,610    
    Total      12,106      79,551      4,713      43,955      140,325    

Interestingly enough, one or other of the two independent candidates emerged as the second choice of all voters who indicated a valid second preference, irrespective of their first preference choice. A plurality of Poliquin and Bond first preference voters chose Hoar, while a majority of voters selecting Golden or Hoar as their first preference went for Bond, who obtained the largest overall second preference total. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the second preferences of Poliquin and Golden voters had no bearing on the election outcome, which was determined by the elimination of independent candidates Bond and Hoar after the first preference count, and the addition of their second preferences to the first preference votes cast for continuing candidates Golden and Poliquin, including 6,615 of the 8,260 ballots with first and second preferences for the two independents plus valid third preferences for Golden or Poliquin.

An overwhelming majority of voters indicating valid preferences for at least two different candidates - 136,895 out of 140,325, or 97.6% - cast valid first and second rankings. Of the remaining 3,430 ballots, a total of 2,604 had valid first rankings, an undervote (that is, blank) second ranking, and a valid third ranking for another candidate. Following Maine's RCV counting rules, single skipped rankings were ignored, and the third ranking was counted as the second preference; the same logic was applied to 259 ballots with an undervote on the first ranking, but valid preferences for different candidates in the second and third rankings (which were counted as first and second preferences).

The statistics presented here were obtained from CSV-format data available in State of Maine 2018 Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Election Data, which has additional information and links pertaining to the election.


posted by Manuel Álvarez-Rivera : 02/08/2019 10:26 | permanent link