RCV in Kansas's 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
The Kansas 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 Kansas), 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 Kansas
Find more visualizations of this result at RCVis.com
Top takeaways
- Voter turnout was three and a half times the turnout from the 2016 caucuses, with nearly 147,000 ballots cast in the Democratic primary compared to 39,230 cast in 2016.
- After the first round, Joe Biden won 70% of the vote, Bernie Sanders had won 18.1% of the vote, Elizabeth Warren had won 7.8% of the vote, Tulsi Gabbard had won 1.1% of the vote, and 3.0% were uncommitted. By the end of the last round, Joe Biden won 76.9% of the vote and Bernie Sanders won 23.1% of the vote.
- 17,489 ballots listed candidates other than Biden or Sanders as their first choice, but nearly all of them helped make a choice between which candidate should gain delegates at this year’s convention.
- Kansas Democrats handled their first use of RCV very well, with more than 99.8% of ballots indicating a candidate or uncommitted counting as a valid first choice.
- Voters handled the Kansas Democratic primary consistently compared to Wyoming and Alaska, two other states to implement ranked choice voting in 2020. A visualization of these comparisons can be found below:
Voter education materials from Kansas
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.
