• FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Would those people have voted for him in a first past the post race? Or would they have been too afraid that someone worse than Cuomo would win, so they stick with him?

    • AliasAKA@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Well since he was selected as their first choice, presumably they would still choose their first choice when only given one choice. Ranked choice plays a role for everyone else down ballot and for automatic runoffs. People don’t put someone as their first choice that they don’t actually want as their first choice. So yes, they would have.

      • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Yes they do, all the time. I wanted to vote for Bernie in the 2016 election, but I actually voted for Hillary because I thought that splitting the vote would let Trump win. If we had ranked choice, I could have put Bernie on top while knowing that I wasn’t opening the door tor Trump.

        • AliasAKA@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          While I understand your statement here in the Hillary v Trump scenario, I don’t think it necessarily applies here, as if anything , I would think that Lander supporters would’ve instead put Mamdani as their first choice if they only had a single choice, given the announcement. The down ballot races would have been less successful.

      • HaiZhung@feddit.org
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        19 hours ago

        Well, the entire point of ranked choice is that you can do this. You can put unknown candidates up top without having to be afraid to „waste“ your vote, as you would have, with FPTP.

        I am pretty confident that this would not have happened were it not for ranked choice. People would have voted the „safe“ candidate instead.

        • AliasAKA@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Right, but the benefit of ranked choice in this election would have been “I’m gonna vote Lander or Michael Blake in 1 but put Mamdani second since I’d be happy with him”. Realistically who is the safe candidate that isn’t Cuomo? The only viable candidate is Mamdani. Cuomo is still going to be in the ballot as an independent, so you really would’ve only voted Cuomo here because you’re staunchly establishment dem, in which case you wouldn’t be putting Mamdani but you also would’ve put Cuomo in first.

          But I think this is all ridiculous. If the argument is “don’t vote in primaries unless they’re ranked choice”, that’s a defeating argument and we should absolutely abandon that as wise advice. The argument should be “vote in every primary, especially ranked choice, and vote for the furthest left candidate you can if you don’t want more of the same corporatist democrat melange”. I hope we can agree on that.