Ranked choice voting debuts in Portland: Vast majority ranked their ballots and elected a candidate of choice
This post was last updated on April 28, 2025.
Portland, Oregon used ranked choice voting (RCV) for the first time this November after voters overwhelmingly approved comprehensive city charter reform in 2022. Portlanders used RCV to elect all city officials – including a new mayor and City Council. The new Council will have 12 members, elected from four 3-member districts using the proportional form of RCV.
The City of Portland followed best practices by releasing the cast vote record, an anonymized record of how each voter ranked their ballot in each RCV race. The cast vote record allows researchers to independently analyze how voters used their ranked ballots, and this piece analyzes the cast vote record data.
Key findings include:
- High voter engagement: Voters took advantage of the ability to rank candidates, with 85% ranking multiple candidates in the mayoral race and an average of 91% ranking multiple candidates for City Council.
- High voter “buy-in”: The vast majority of voters saw at least one candidate of their choice elected to office – 70% ranked Mayor-elect Keith Wilson on their ballot, and an average of 84% ranked a winning council member from their district.
- Strong consensus behind winning candidates: Most council members-elect were ranked by about half of voters, even though they each only needed 25% of the vote in their district to win.
Related resources include:
- Exit poll finding that Portland voters prefer RCV to their previous voting method
- Study by the Data and Democracy Lab finding Portland’s elections performed “extremely strong… on measures of proportionality”
- FairVote analysis of how RCV impacted campaign dynamics and representation as well as voter engagement and turnout
- Exit poll conducted by the Portland City Auditor’s Office
- Cast vote record analysis from the Multnomah County Elections Division
- The Choice, a short film following candidates in Portland’s RCV election
Voters ranked multiple candidates and 80%+ ranked a winner
In the mayoral and City Council races, the vast majority of voters ranked multiple candidates and had their ballot count for a winner.
Proportional RCV in 3-member districts ensures both majority rule and minority voice. At least 75% of voters in each district get representation on the City Council, by electing three candidates who each earn at least 25% of the vote.
In practice, even more Portland voters have a seat at the table in the city’s historically representative Council. 70% of voters ranked Mayor-elect Keith Wilson on their ballot. For city council, 85% of voters had one of their choices elected, although it varies between districts as shown below.
| Average # of candidates ranked | % who ranked multiple candidates | % who ranked at least one winner | |
| Mayor | 3.2 | 85% | 70% |
| City Council District 1 | 3.3 | 87% | 80% |
| City Council District 2 | 4.0 | 92% | 84% |
| City Council District 3 | 4.0 | 93% | 87% |
| City Council District 4 | 3.8 | 93% | 85% |
Winners have broad consensus
Most winners were ranked by about half of voters, even though council members only needed 25% in order to win. This suggests that while each Portland council member represents a distinct group of voters, most of them also have broader appeal beyond their base.
The mayor’s race and District 3 offered the most visible examples of voter consensus. Mayor-elect Keith Wilson was ranked on 70% of ballots, though he only needed 50% to win.
In District 3, Steve Novick was ranked on 60% of ballots, Angelita Morillo was ranked on 55% of ballots, and Tiffany Koyama Lane was ranked on 54% of ballots – though all only needed 25% of the vote to win.
Collaborative campaigning paid off, and voters followed candidate cues and endorsements
In District 3, Angelita Morillo and Tiffany Koyama Lane campaigned together and encouraged supporters to rank them first and second. Morillo and Koyama Lane were by far the most popular second choice for voters who ranked the other first, with 43% of Morillo voters ranking Koyama Lane second and 45% of Koyama Lane voters ranking Morillo second. It appears that these two candidates’ positive, collaborative campaign style paid off.
In District 2, fewer voters ranked Sameer Kanal first than did Elena Pirtle-Guiney and Dan Ryan. However, Kanal overtook the other candidates and earned the first seat when candidate Michelle DePass was eliminated. The Portland Mercury had endorsed Kanal as its first choice and DePass as its second choice in the district. Many voters appear to have listened – Kanal was the most common backup choice for those who ranked DePass first, ranked as a backup choice on 37% of those voters’ ballots.
In District 4, the Willamette Week, the Oregonian, and several business and labor groups endorsed both Olivia Clark and Eric Zimmerman. Both Clark and Zimmerman were elected. Notably, 43% of Clark voters ranked Zimmerman second, and 48% of Zimmerman voters ranked Clark second – by far the most popular second choice for each other’s voters.
Research shows that RCV leads to more positive campaigning and coalition-building, sometimes including formal “cross-endorsements” and joint campaigning as practiced by Koyama Lane and Morillo. Local organizations and newspapers can also endorse multiple candidates or issue ranked endorsements and many did in Portland – modeling how voters fill out their ballots on election day.
Proportional RCV has even more incentives for cross-endorsements and joint campaigning than single-winner RCV, because multiple candidates with shared values or platforms can be elected to office.
Ranked choice voting made more votes count
RCV made more votes count meaningfully, and so did Portland’s election administration decisions. In Portland’s RCV elections, roughly half of voters ranked a finalist (defined as the winner or the first runner-up) as their first choice. However, most other voters ranked a finalist as a later choice, meaning their ballot still counted meaningfully toward the outcome, even in elections with large numbers of candidates.
In the mayor’s race, 28% more ballots counted for the finalists as a result of RCV. In the City Council races, that number ranged from 23% to 36%.
| Ballots in round 1 | Votes for winner(s) + runner-up in round 1 | Total ballots ranking winner(s) + runner-up (contributed in final round) | % additional meaningful ballots | |
| Mayor | 309,963 | 56% | 84% | 28% |
| Council D1 | 42,871 | 53% | 86% | 33% |
| Council D2 | 77,157 | 54% | 90% | 36% |
| Council D3 | 84,515 | 69% | 92% | 23% |
| Council D4 | 76,717 | 60% | 90% | 30% |
These additional meaningful ballots in the final round amount to over 80,000 Portlanders in both the mayoral and city council races.
Portland’s election administration decisions also made more votes count. All voting methods have some ballot error, but cities and states have different rules about how to count ballots when errors occur. Portland’s rules mean that an error is far less likely to invalidate a ballot. If one ranking contains an error (like ranking multiple candidates at the same rank), the error is skipped and the ballot counts for the next valid ranking.
In the mayor’s race, in addition to RCV making 31% more ballots count meaningfully, 99.6% of ballots were valid. Though 0.7% of ballots in the mayoral race included a first-round overvote, meaning the voter selected multiple first choices, 38% of these included at least one valid ranking and counted for a candidate of the voter’s choice. (The typical first-round overvote rate in RCV is 0.2%, but Portland’s ballot had a crowded field of candidates, which makes error more likely in both single-choice and RCV contests.)
These results – paired with our findings on high voter engagement and strong consensus behind winners – show how Portland’s new election system supports more voter power. In several ways and across several measures, RCV in Portland is maximizing each voter’s impact in choosing their elected officials.