Tim Scott is out, ranked choice polling is in
Tim Scott announced over the weekend that he is dropping out of the race for president. In an ever-changing field of candidates, ranked choice polling helps us make sense of the likely impacts of candidate withdrawals in real time.
Scott earned 3% of first-choice support in FairVote’s most recent poll, released in early October. Scott’s voters could be enough to give some of the remaining candidates a meaningful boost.
By simply measuring voters’ backup choices, ranked choice polling provides valuable insights on whom voters will support when their favorite candidate drops out. (CBS/YouGov and the NBC/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll also use this approach!)
To determine the impact of Scott’s departure, we simply eliminate him and assume that his supporters would vote for their highest-ranked choice who is still in the race.
Among Scott supporters, the most common second choice was fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, followed by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis.
Below are our updated projections for each candidate with Scott out of the race. Most candidates gain some supporters due to Scott’s withdrawal, but the biggest beneficiary is Haley.
Projected candidate vote totals, national poll
| New first-choice totals (projected) | Previous first-choice projections | Difference | |
| Trump | 48.4% | 48.0% | 0.4% |
| Ramaswamy | 14.2% | 13.4% | 0.8% |
| DeSantis | 13.8% | 13.7% | 0.1% |
| Haley | 10.2% | 8.9% | 1.3% |
| Christie | 9.5% | 9.2% | 0.3% |
| Hutchinson | 1.5% | 1.5% | 0.0% |
| Youngkin | 1.3% | 0.9% | 0.4% |
| Burgum | 1.2% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| Scott | — | 3.8% | — |
When we use the poll data to run full RCV tabulations, Scott’s withdrawal does not impact the final winners. In the national poll, Trump and Haley would advance to the final round of an RCV race and Trump would win by a large margin. In early states, DeSantis continues to eke out a narrow final-round victory over Trump, but it remains within the poll’s margin of error – making it effectively a toss-up.
As the field continues to shrink and pundits speculate on how it will impact the race, just look to the latest ranked choice poll for the answers!
Note: The projections also use voters’ ranked choices to account for other candidates who dropped out before Scott but after the poll was conducted (Mike Pence, Larry Elder, Will Hurd, and Francis Suarez).
