Ranked Choice Voting and Incumbent Success

September 24, 2021

This short report from FairVote examines whether RCV impacts the success rate for incumbent candidates who run for re-election. The analysis compares 8 RCV cities to 12 non-RCV cities to identify which factors contribute to an incumbent’s chance of winning reelection, and finds that RCV is not a significant contributing factor.

The results align with past FairVote work which found that four Bay Area cities saw no change in incumbent success rate before and after they switched to RCV.