269,000 Republicans cast “zombie votes” in the Super Tuesday primaries. Ranked choice voting could solve this problem.
Yesterday, voters across 17 states cast ballots in presidential primaries or caucuses for Super Tuesday.
A whopping 269,586 Republican voters voted for candidates who already dropped out of the race, but whose name was still on their state’s ballot. Ron DeSantis was the top “zombie candidate,” with over 140,000 voters casting their ballot for him on Tuesday. (This data was updated on March 26, with states still counting ballots.)
Below are the five states with the most zombie votes as of March 26:
| State | Zombie Votes | Top Inactive Candidate |
| California | 73,718 | Ron DeSantis (35,588 votes) |
| Texas | 61,407 | Ron DeSantis (36,233 votes) |
| Colorado | 28,461 | Ron DeSantis (12,671 votes) |
| North Carolina | 22,967 | Ron DeSantis (14,740 votes) |
| Virginia | 14,234 | Ron DeSantis (7,494 votes) |
Three million Democratic primary voters cast these “zombie votes” in 2020, and 700,000 Republicans did so in 2016. States finalize their primary ballots early, so it’s common for withdrawn candidates’ names to remain on the ballot.
Zombie votes are often highest among early or mail-in voters, who may send in a ballot for an active candidate who then drops out before their state’s primary day. This was particularly the case around Super Tuesday in 2020, when several candidates dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary in short succession; in Washington state, for example, one out of every four Democrats cast their vote for a withdrawn candidate.
States and territories that use ranked choice voting (RCV) for presidential primaries – like the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2024 and five state Democratic parties in 2020 – eliminate this problem.
If a voter’s first choice drops out, their vote simply counts for their next choice!
The primaries are far from over for many voters
In addition to presidential primaries, five states held congressional primaries on Super Tuesday. Four of those states (AL, AR, NC, and TX) require runoffs if the leading candidate fails to reach a certain threshold.
As things stand, at least five different congressional districts in North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas will be forced to hold primary runoffs. These additional elections will occur in April or May, with Texas’s May 28 runoff nearly a full three months away.
One example is Alabama’s newly drawn 2nd congressional district, where a whopping 11 candidates sought the Democratic nomination and nine candidates sought the Republican nomination. On the Democratic side, Shomari Figures finished first with 43% of the vote. On the Republican side, Dick Brewbaker leads with just under 40%. (Notably, the second- and third-place finishers in the Republican primary were separated by fewer than 700 votes.)
But voters’ job isn’t done here – if they want their vote to count toward the final nominee, they’ll have to come back to the polls in six weeks on April 16. Yet many simply won’t – despite the cost of holding a second election, 96% of primary runoffs dating back to 1992 see a drop in voter turnout, with an average 40% decline.
In fact, in a majority of runoff elections, the dropoff is so precipitous that candidates win with fewer total votes than they received in the first round – completely defeating the purpose of finding a winner with broader voter support.
RCV offers a faster, cheaper, better alternative – an “instant runoff” that identifies the candidate supported by a majority of voters, without the need to hold two separate elections. If Super Tuesday states like North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas simply let voters rank their ballots with RCV, low-turnout primary runoffs would be a thing of the past.