RCV in Hawaii's 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
Deb Otis |
The Hawaii Democratic Party use ranked choice voting (RCV) in the 2020 presidential primary. See below for results and analysis.
How RCV works in presidential primaries
In elections with a 15% threshold to earn delegates (like in Hawaii), RCV eliminates candidates below the 15% threshold and transfers those ballots to those voters’ next choice candidate. This process continues until all remaining candidates are across the threshold. Delegates are awarded proportionally among the active candidates.
RCV results in Hawaii
Find more visualizations of this result at RCVis.com
Top takeaways
- Hawaii conducted RCV tabulations separately in each of its two congressional districts. For convenience, we have combined them.
- Despite a global pandemic, turnout was greater than in the 2016 Caucuses.
- After the first round, Joe Biden had won 56% of votes, Bernie Sanders had won 30.8% of votes, Elizabeth Warren had won 4.8% of votes, Tulsi Gabbard had won 3.9% of votes, and 4.5% were dispersed among other candidates. By the end of the last round, Joe Biden won 63.2% of votes and Bernie Sanders won 36.8% of votes.
- More than 12% of ballots were cast for candidates other than Sanders or Biden and would not have counted in the final tally without ranked choice voting. Nearly three quarters (74%) of these voters had their ballot count for Sanders or Biden based on their rankings, helping make a choice on which candidates should gain delegates at this year’s convention.
- Hawaii voters handled their first use of RCV very well; 99.7% of ballots were valid in the first round.
Voter education materials from Hawaii
Further reading
Ranked Choice Voting in Presidential Primaries. A research report from FairVote about the five state Democratic parties who used RCV in 2020 presidential primaries.