How Often Does Ranked Choice Voting Produce Plurality Winners? (Updated)

Redefining what constitutes an electoral majority has nonetheless resulted in plurality winners in nearly half of Minnesota municipal elections that triggered ranked choice voting since 2009

Minneapolis’ high profile 2025 mayoral election was ultimately won by Jacob Frey by 8,346 votes over State Senator Omar Fateh in a 15-candidate field. All told, Frey received 50.03 percent after the final round of ranked choice voting (RCV) tabulation – just 45 votes more than a plurality.

It was the first time Minneapolis elected a mayor with a majority of the vote since 2009 – the first cycle utilizing RCV when incumbent R.T. Rybak received 73.6 percent in a blowout victory.

Minneapolis was the first of five municipalities in the state to have adopted RCV for select offices along with St. Paul, St. Louis Park, Bloomington, and Minnetonka.

One of the stated selling points of RCV in Minnesota is that it is a corrective measure for the purported deleterious effects of plurality-winning elected officials on our democracy.

To this day, FairVote Minnesota – the leading advocate of Ranked Choice Voting in the state – still maintains on its website home page that the root cause of divisiveness and polarization in Minnesota and the nation is an “antiquated plurality voting method.”

FairVote believes that a system that permits plurality winners:

“(L)imits voter choice, creates “spoiler” candidates, fuels negative campaigns, discourages candidates with diverse backgrounds and perspectives from running, and frequently elects winners opposed by a majority of voters.”

But even if one accepts FairVote’s premise – how does RCV measure up to its own standards?

The data suggests not very well.

Smart Politics examined the results of the more than 50 single-seat elections in Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Louis Park, Bloomington, and Minnetonka in which no candidate received a majority of the vote after calculating first choice preferences and found that almost half of these contests still did not produce a majority winner despite triggering the ranked choice voting process.

There is a flaw in the execution of FairVote’s desired goal of RCV and that is plurality winners can nonetheless result due in part to ‘exhausted’ ballots – ballots cast by voters who choose not to rank the full number of candidates for which they are allowed (or are not aware of their ability to do so due to not comprehending the voting system). Voters can rank up to six choices in Bloomington and St. Paul and up to three choices in Minneapolis, Minnetonka, and St. Louis Park.

From 2009 through 2025, there were 175 general and special elections for single-seat offices in Minneapolis (mayor, city council member, park and recreation board district commissioner), St. Paul (mayor, city council), St. Louis Park (mayor, city council), Bloomington (mayor, city council), and Minnetonka (mayor, city council).

In 122 of these 175 elections (69.7 percent), the RCV tabulation process never came into play because one candidate had enough first-place votes to meet the threshold for an outright majority on the initial ballot.

In the remaining 53 contests, 25 candidates were nonetheless elected with a plurality, or 47.2 percent of the time.

The two cities in Minnesota that have had the longest history with RCV in the state – Minneapolis (in effect since 2009) and St. Paul (2013) – have seen the highest percentage of plurality victories.

In Minneapolis, 18 of the 35 contests triggering RCV ended up with a plurality winner (51.4 percent):

• Three mayoral: 2013, 2017, 2021
• 11 for city council: Ward 1 (2017), Ward 2 (2021), Ward 4 (2017), Ward 5 (2021, 2023, 2025), Ward 6 (2020 special, 2023), Ward 8 (2023), Ward 9 (2013), Ward 13 (2013)
• Four for park board commissioner: District 2 (2021), District 5 (2009), District 6 (2017, 2021)

In St. Paul, five of eight contests resulted in plurality winners (62.5 percent):

• One mayoral: 2025
• Four for city council: Ward 1 (2013), Ward 2 (2015), Ward 6 (2019), Ward 7 (2023)

Additional plurality winners were elected in Minnetonka in 2023 (Ward 3) and Bloomington 2025 (Ward 1) out of four and three elections triggering RCV in those municipalities respectively. [None of the three elections in St. Louis Park that went to RCV resulted in a plurality winner].

It should also be noted that of the 53 elections that triggered RCV, nearly all were won by the candidate who had the most votes after the first round.

In fact, just five elections saw a candidate with the most first-place votes ultimately lose the contest during the RCV process:

• 2017, Minneapolis City Council (Ward 3): Ginger Jentzen (ahead by 588 votes) lost to Steve Fletcher by 1,017 votes
• 2017, Minneapolis City Council (Ward 4): Incumbent Barb Johnson (ahead by 118 votes) was defeated by Phillipe Cunningham by 175 votes
• 2021, Minneapolis Park Board (District 6): Risa Hustad (ahead by 115 votes) was eliminated in the third round in a race won by Cathy Abene
• 2023, Minneapolis City Council (Ward 8): Soren Stevenson (ahead by 106 votes) lost to incumbent Andrea Jenkins by 38 votes
• 2025, St. Paul Mayor: Incumbent Melvin Carter (ahead by 1,727 votes) was defeated by State Representative Kaohly Her by 1,877 votes

In other words, in just five of the 175 municipal elections (2.9 percent) held for single-seat offices across these five municipalities did RCV alter the outcome of who would have been victorious had RCV never been adopted in the first instance. [Provided, of course, the same candidates would have run for office and voters selected their highest preference as their first choice in the RCV system].

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