this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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The headline doesn't need to mention previous elections because, in this election, 20% of voters skipped those lines while voting on other lines.
That's where the "20% drop" is coming from. Compared to other lines on the SAME ballot, not previous elections.
So, they voted for President, Congress, etc, but skipped the ranked choice lines resulting in a 20% undervote compared to the rest of the ballot.
Which still means absolutely nothing unless we have the context to judge it by. What if 25% of voters skipped over the city council part during the last election when ranked choice was not used? In that context is it still fair to blame ranked choice for the "disengagement"? Maybe people just naturally vote for congress and presidents a heck of a lot more than they do for city council. Maybe ranked choice actually increased the percentage of voters placing votes for city councilors. If that happens to be true, how could this headline be anything but intentionally misleading? And without last election's city cousel percentages this scenario i describe might as well be true.
If that were the case, then the 20% drop in this election would not be notable, but again, you can't compare to the previous election as it was not remotely the same kind of election (mayor + 1 city councilman, winner take all, vs. mayor + 12 council members, rank 6, 1 mayor + 3 council members per district win.)
But what you can do, as they did here, is note that of the ballots which were returned, 20% of active voters, chose to skip the ranked choice lines but not the other lines resulting in under votes for mayor and city council.
You can't even compare raw numbers between 2020 and 2024 because 2024 was ranked choice and 2020 was not.
Mayor 2020:
https://www.portland.gov/auditor/elections/city-election-results/2020-city-elections-results
Ted Wheeler - 167,260 - 46.07%
Sarah Iannarone - 147,964 - 40.76%
Write-In - 47,832 - 13.17%
Total Votes Cast - 363,056 - 100.00%
No notable skipped lines, but again, not the same kind of election.
Mayor 2024:
https://rcvresults.multco.us/Reports/a3df36c7-9b95-4614-a357-759ae2ca223f-City_of_Portland_Mayor
Initial results went through 19 rounds of counting and elimination before someone hit more than 50%.
Round 1:
Round 19:
If you assume the first round votes, which would have been all the #1 voted candidates, represents the total number of ballots for mayor, that means 170,050 people voted in round 1. 46.84% of the 363,056 ballots cast in 2020.
We should have done what was done in 2020... Primary to eliminate all the fringe candidates, then a general for the top 2.