These coalitions still happen with ranked choice but only if a minor party is popular in a district.
Except for Tasmania in Australia where minor parties have an even better chance. It has only 5 districts for state elections and each district has 5 seats. Greens often get a seat because their candidate is 5th most popular in a district.
In other states they are now winning seats but fewer than Tasmania.
It’s still a winner-takes-it-all system, just on a lower scale. The UK has a similar system, but it still means that if you are living in a district/county/… with e.g. 70% of the people voting for party A, then your vote doesn’t count.
Ranked choice at least favours compromise candidates over extreme candidates, but it still discounts most of the votes. Same as with FPTP, a ranked choice system with districts mean that most votes won’t count and gerrymandering or accidental grouping of voters means that even a party with low popular votes can score much higher than they should.
Ranked choice is only good if the outcome of the vote can only be a single choice. E.g. “which of these 5 mutually exclusive proposals should be implemented” or “who should be the one singular person occupying office X”. And for these choices, having districts can actually cause even more harm than good, as seen e.g. in the USA.
If you can have a system where a plurality can be in government and where every seat in parliament actually matters, than ranked choice is just as bad as FPTP.
For example, have a look at the 2025 elections in Australia:
In the primary vote, Labour and Coalition were almost head-to-head (<3% difference). In two-party preferred vote, the difference was bigger, but still not a lot (55% vs 45%). But Labour got more than twice as many seats as Coalition.
That’s massively skewed. Even though the difference is tiny, Labour got almost a 2/3 supermajority.
In a more proportional system, Labour would have had to form a coalition, potentially even with two other parties if they wanted to avoid a coalition with the Liberal National Coalition. But here they are really close to being able to push through constitutional changes without help from another party.
That’s massively skewed. Even though the difference is tiny, Labour got almost a 2/3 supermajority.
One way to remedy this would be to retain ranked choice but make the electorates/districts three times as large and elect three members in each. Just like how Tasmania does but with 5 members and 5 huge districts.
The Australian Senate voting does roughly what both houses of the Tasmanian state voting do and what you are calling for.
The Senate still has ranked choice but also proportional representation because of the multiple members in each district (in the Australian Senate the “district” is the entire state, with 6 members elected each time).
Federal Labor currently cannot pass any laws without Greens support in the senate (unless the conservatives support the bill).
Districts are fair because the member can be accessed by local constituents (in theory anyhow). US Gerrymandering is unfair. Australian Gerrymandering is nowhere near as bad.
Tbh, at that point you can just drop the ranked choice and go with a regular proportional system.
It’s just trying to shoehorn proportionality into ranked choice.
Another option is to send at least one representative from each party and weight their voting power based on the popular vote. But I haven’t seen that implemented anywhere so far.
These coalitions still happen with ranked choice but only if a minor party is popular in a district.
Except for Tasmania in Australia where minor parties have an even better chance. It has only 5 districts for state elections and each district has 5 seats. Greens often get a seat because their candidate is 5th most popular in a district.
In other states they are now winning seats but fewer than Tasmania.
It’s still a winner-takes-it-all system, just on a lower scale. The UK has a similar system, but it still means that if you are living in a district/county/… with e.g. 70% of the people voting for party A, then your vote doesn’t count.
Ranked choice at least favours compromise candidates over extreme candidates, but it still discounts most of the votes. Same as with FPTP, a ranked choice system with districts mean that most votes won’t count and gerrymandering or accidental grouping of voters means that even a party with low popular votes can score much higher than they should.
Ranked choice is only good if the outcome of the vote can only be a single choice. E.g. “which of these 5 mutually exclusive proposals should be implemented” or “who should be the one singular person occupying office X”. And for these choices, having districts can actually cause even more harm than good, as seen e.g. in the USA.
If you can have a system where a plurality can be in government and where every seat in parliament actually matters, than ranked choice is just as bad as FPTP.
For example, have a look at the 2025 elections in Australia:
In the primary vote, Labour and Coalition were almost head-to-head (<3% difference). In two-party preferred vote, the difference was bigger, but still not a lot (55% vs 45%). But Labour got more than twice as many seats as Coalition.
That’s massively skewed. Even though the difference is tiny, Labour got almost a 2/3 supermajority.
In a more proportional system, Labour would have had to form a coalition, potentially even with two other parties if they wanted to avoid a coalition with the Liberal National Coalition. But here they are really close to being able to push through constitutional changes without help from another party.
One way to remedy this would be to retain ranked choice but make the electorates/districts three times as large and elect three members in each. Just like how Tasmania does but with 5 members and 5 huge districts.
The Australian Senate voting does roughly what both houses of the Tasmanian state voting do and what you are calling for.
The Senate still has ranked choice but also proportional representation because of the multiple members in each district (in the Australian Senate the “district” is the entire state, with 6 members elected each time).
Federal Labor currently cannot pass any laws without Greens support in the senate (unless the conservatives support the bill).
Districts are fair because the member can be accessed by local constituents (in theory anyhow). US Gerrymandering is unfair. Australian Gerrymandering is nowhere near as bad.
Tbh, at that point you can just drop the ranked choice and go with a regular proportional system.
It’s just trying to shoehorn proportionality into ranked choice.
Another option is to send at least one representative from each party and weight their voting power based on the popular vote. But I haven’t seen that implemented anywhere so far.