Zohran Mamdani has made the NYC mayoral primary competitive. But ranked choice voting may shut out the very compromise choices it was supposed to facilitate.
Personally, I’m in the anyone but Mamdani camp. I lived in NYC for 15 years and now I’m in Santa Monica. Cuomo is like Gavin Newsom - pure politician, but you could do worse. Mamdani is really extreme. I think he would be really dangerous for NYC.
What do you find dangerous about Mandani? I don’t know if I agree with things like making the bus free or city-run stores, but hearing him on the Odd Lots podcast he sounded reasonable/humble. Ie for his the city-grocery idea he called it an experiment, not a revolution. He also started working in politics by volunteering on the Obama campaign, not exactly a radical dangerous guy. Meanwhile Cuomo abused women and lied about his role in the deaths of nursing home residents. IMO Cuomo is the more dangerous candidate; I would not feel physically comfortable near him.
100%. This article bizarrely ignores that there are a fair number of "Anyone But Mamdani" voters, including "Silk Stocking" district voters and labor voters.
1) I think Cuomo has run a thoroughly mediocre campaign. Specifically his arrogant "Rose Garden" strategy is letting Mamdani skate away without facing any real questions for his many questionable policy positions. Specifically as it relates to RCV I think Cuomo has missed a huge opportunity to hammer him on Israel. My instinct is that many older liberal Jews who are likely to rank Lander first could be persuaded to include Cuomo on their ballots to prevent the election of an outspokenly anti-Israel candidate.
Mamdani should also be a more polarizing candidate than he appears to be...another missed opportunity by Cuomo to activate a small but possibly significant group of "Anybody but Mamdani" voters (full disclosure: I consider myself to be one of these rare birds). His massively well funded super PAC seems to be doing this now, but early vote starts Sat so who knows if it will be effective.
2) Remember there is still a general election in Nov. Remember that NY allows for fusion voting and we always have a profusion of ballot lines. Regardless of the outcome on 6/24 Cuomo will appear on the November ballot (he has already secured a line...I can't remember what his silly fake party is called). If the WFP has a ballot line and I assume they'll nominate Mamdani.
AND there is NO ranked choice voting in the general...its a first past the post race. So you potentially have Cuomo, Mamdani, Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa all on the same ballot. With Sliwa, Adams and Cuomo all appealing to similar voters it isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that Mamdani could win a very narrow plurality (in a very low turnout election).
3) On RCV...not a huge fan. Its too complicated and opaque. Remember that the BOE already f***ed the calculations during the 2021 tabulation. We'll see if they have their house in order this time (I wouldn't bet on it). And can you imagine what the reaction would have been in 2021 if the Black candidate who was well ahead on election night ended up loosing to the white woman who started out a distant 3rd? Do we really think in our low information, low trust, hyper polarized political environment that rank and file voters would have accepted her win as legitimate??
**And as a personal note I am a NYC voter who has worked in and around NYC govt for 20+ years. I am ranking some combination of Stringer, Myrie, Adams and Cuomo.***
I think this is disingenuous: "Both Cuomo and Mamdani are polarizing candidates, however, Cuomo for his scandals and Mamdani for his progressivism."
Andrew Cuomo, sure. A standard moderate blue-state Democrat with a major scandal that some people consider absolutely disqualifying and others are willing to overlook. But Mamani is a garden-variety blue-state progressive. He is polarizing solely due to his positions he describes as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, but that look to many people like pro-terrorist and anti semitic.
This when 16% of the people able to vote in the primary are Jewish, and many of the rest have lots of Jewish friends and acquaintances, and many have what used to be the standard liberal support for Israel (certainly not for the current administration in Israel, nor Israeli territorial expansion, nor the conduct of the Gaza War, nor the treatment of Palestinians; but support for a liberal democracy under constant terrorist and military assault).
I'm not trying to argue either way about whether Mamdani is anti semitic, but things like condemning Israel but not Hamas on October 8--the day after the outrage and ten days before any Israeli military response--and denying that Israel had a right to exist (a position he has quietly walked back on, but not convincingly) are what makes him polarizing, not free bus service or rent freezes.
There are a lot of Jewish Americans who are appalled at the ethnic cleansing israel is committing in Palestine. Don’t assume no Jews are pro-Palestinian.
I know many pro-Palestinian Jews. The Upper West Side is full of them and many are protesting aggressively. You can’t live here and be unaware of them.
However pro-Palestinian does not mean pro-Hamas or anti-semitic. Mamdani is polarizing because he has said and done things, and associated with people, that suggest his views are based on dislike of Jews and Israel rather than concern for Palestinians. I don’t say this is true—I can’t read his mind—but it’s not his progressive politics that are polarizing.
Most American Jews I know are quite critical of the Netanyahu administration, settler expansion, Gaza war tactics and treatment of Palestinians. But few support Hamas or call for the destruction of Israel.
I really don't want to get into that, my comment is only that his position on Israel is what makes him polarizing.
In theory, a New York City mayor needs no opinion on Israel and Palestine. Most New York Democrats manage to play both sides--denouncing terrorism and anti-semitism at the same time as criticizing Israeli actions, Islamophobia and Palestinian suffering. Mamdani makes his pro-Palestinian positions salient and is less careful than his fellow New York Democrats to avoid hints of supporting terrorism and hating Jews; and he associates with open anti semites and Hamas supporters.
New York Democrats split over the October 8th pro-Palestinian rally that many blasted as anti semitic--as it praised Hamas while the bodies from October 7 were still warm and blasted Israel over a week before there was a significant Israeli military response:
Other Democrats saw the rally as a legitimate celebration of a revolt against colonialism, and protests against long-standing Israeli oppression of Palestinians. That makes it polarizing, whichever side you choose.
Another issue is Mamdani's recently changed position that Israel has no right to exist and should be eliminated--with no suggestion of how that could be accomplished without killing or dispossessing millions of Jews. His walk back was not convincing--a change to the website rather than a major public announcement with a rabbi or two by his side. Moreover he didn't add anything about how he thinks it's possible for Israel to exist while observing his positions on treatment of Palestinians.
Any New York mayor candidate who chooses to make Israel a major issue and has a one-sided position (either no killing in Gaza without specifying how Israel can get its hostages back or even survive, or no peace until Hamas surrenders unconditionally and returns all the hostages without specifying how many innocent Palestinians will be left alive by the time that is accomplished) will be polarizing.
I think it’s a little column A and a little of column B. Mamdani’s progressivism isn’t beyond the Overton window for a NYC politician, but NYS and NYC don’t behave the same way as other “blue” states/cities and very progressive candidates, with the exception of de Blasio (who benefitted from being anti-Bloomberg and then became widely reviled himself by the end of his term), haven’t performed especially well in recent mayoral elections (I.e Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Adams were the other most recent mayors). The Democratic coalition in NYC is more diverse in its viewpoints and it may well be that the extent of his progressivism, which goes far beyond de Blasio,(DSA membership, for example) does, in fact, make Mamdani controversial compared to the politics of a more pragmatic liberal like Cuomo
I’ll give you “controversial,” but not “polarizing.” Moving left along the spectrum wins some votes and loses others, but it doesn’t drive voters apart from each other. Moving off the spectrum in another dimension can shatter a coalition of voters who have similar left/right views, but passionate differences in the new dimension. That’s why New York City pols mostly strike positions on Israel calculated not to drive any Democrats away and don’t make it a central issue.
The Democratic coalition in New York City (and nationally, and Republican) is a coalition of unrelated groups that agrees to work together to win elections. Candidates can emphasize some issues or others, and have varying opinions on them. They can win or lose, but they don’t threaten the coalition. Introducing a new issue that a sizable minority considers disqualifying endangers the coalition.
Respectfully, if your argument is hinging on the nuance between “polarising” and “controversial” you’re missing the forest for the trees. If ideas are controversial they definitionally cause sharply differing opinions among people. That strikes me as definitionally polarising too (different groups with strong opinions on either side). His Israel policy may also be polarising, but if you’ll concede controversial I think you’re making a distinction without a difference.
Thank you for the respect, but I don't see it as nuance. "Polarizing" drives voters into two different camps. It's something candidates do to voters. "Controversial" is something voters argue about, but not necessarily into two different camps, and not necessarily causing any realignment. It's something voters do on their own.
In the context of the original post, controversial issues don't affect ranked-choice strategy. You put first the candidate whose positions average closest to yours. You put second the second-closest, and so on.
Polarizing issues cannot be weighted with other positions. You might say, "Mamdani's plans are a bit too radical and ill-considered, but he's closer to me on the issues than Cuomo." But it's much harder to say, "I think Mamdani will allow pogroms like David Dinkins did and appoint anti-semites in important city administrative posts, but I like free busses and rent freezes." Or with Cuomo to say, "He'll run a competent liberal administration, and we'll just buy suits of armor for all the women in City Hall."
For that reason, a polarizing issue tempts voters to pick candidates strategically, to block the unacceptable candidate. I doubt many voters actually do this, or do it effectively, but it does influence campaign strategy.
Mamdani with conventional NYC Democratic views on Israel and Jews wouldn't split Democrats into two camps. Cuomo without the sexual harassment scandal would likewise not cause any kind of realignment. The election would be fought along conventional lines of right/left positioning, personal characteristics and specific issues actually relevant to being a good NYC mayor.
I think your view is too simple. Different issues can be polarising to different voters. I agree it’s hard to imagine voters weighing a mayor enshrining anti-Semites in their administration with rent control, but that’s a somewhat extreme fear and a voter that doesn’t believe that Mamdani’s election will lead for that may be polarised on other issues.
Different things can be polarising to different people, you may have an argument that the Israel issue is *more* polarising, I don’t know what the public sentiment is, but to say that progressive candidates aren’t polarising in the NYC Democratic Party seems wrong. There seems to be substantial subsets of voters that feel strongly for and against electing mayoral candidates with very progressive policies and will rank members of their wing of the party with some amount of baggage over members of the other wing without any baggage
I agree there's no bright line between the most polarizing possible issue--one that splits all voters into two camps overwhelming all other issues--and the least polarizing one--one that has many nuanced camps that isn't a litmus test for anyone. But I think Cuomo's sexual harassment and Mamdani's attitude toward Jews are by far the most polarizing ones relevant to the NYC mayor's race.
In the context of the original post, a polarizing issue is one that makes a significant fraction of voters concentrate on blocking candidates from the wrong pole, rather than electing their first choice from the right pole.
I know a lot of feminists--including many men--who absolutely refuse to consider supporting Cuomo. I know a lot of Jews and non-Jews strongly concerned about anti-semitism who absolutely will not support Mamdani.
I don't see other polarizing issues in this election.
Portland Oregon uses RCV. No centrists elected. Choices are between ultra lefties who are affiliated with different baskets of interest groups.
When I lived in the Boston area, Cambridge had RCV. People doing 'standouts' at busy roads would hold up 7 ft poles, with multiple campaign signs affixed. I assumed they were in RCV order?
RCV is great in the faculty lounge, but it assumes voters have the luxury of time, and that's a bad assumption.
A utilitarian would note that for the individual voter, the trade-off in time spent puzzling over the choices isn't worth it, as the value to a voter of one vote is small, and there are other more pleasurable or profitable uses of one's time.
Side note: the Marquis de Condorcet lost his head (literally) during the French Revolution.
Subscribed just so I can get this message out there.
IDGAF about RCV in terms of whether it's the "perfect" or "best" system. I want it to succeed because it's a) MUCH better than first past the post, which MUST DIE ASAP and b) to start breaking the systems that lock us into 2 parties.
So while I found this post academically interesting, even a bit milquetoast, I was quite alarmed to see it, and other commenters, critiquing RCV without any discussion whatsoever of our current system's entrenchment of 2 parties. Nor, by the way, would it make sense to say that RCV, in a largely 2 party existing system, would immediately fix all problems and encourage centrist candidates. From what I've read, it's a rather milquetoast tweak on first past the post that only impacts something like a low-single digit percentage of elections that are extraordinarily close, because the vast majority of the time, the round 1 vote winner is also the RCV winner. RCV is basically the least amount of change that we can probably mostly agree on... However, critically, it also unlocks a multi-party system where voting for a 3rd party is no longer throwing away a vote. THAT is the real magic of RCV. The very very mild incentives to aim for more centrist votes are almost just a nice side effect.
Great article. But I still don't understand why people prefer RCV to approval voting? There are no (as far as I am aware) Condorcet issues with Approval Voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting.
Because approval voting has its own flaws. For example: If you approve of two candidates but you really want Candidate A to win, you may still not approve of B even if you are fine with them just so that A will beat B.
No because how much more do you approve of A than B? Maybe I just barely think B is tolerable but I think A is a star candidate who should trounce every other competitor. Or maybe I think A is only a shade better than B. I may vote the same way in these two cases and approval voting would have no idea I felt this way.
A true Condorcet winner would be ideal but most elections with a lot of candidates don't have one (they'd maybe have a Copeland winner but not a Condorcet). Even if they did, the calculation for it is intensive, maybe when we have real quantum computing we can check that first then do instant runoff. It also doesn't provide significantly more voter satisfaction than instant runoff- if Manchin had won in the hypothetical in the article it's still possible that 80% of voters would be unhappy.
Approval voting can be very similar to FPTP when people are voting strategically, and in general has weird inventives. RCV aligns incentives with true preference better.
Why? What is the strategy in that case? Why would you vote for someone you do not approve of? I don't see it but as I said, maybe I am missing something?
I hate the Democrats. But I voted for the Democrats for the past three elections because I could read the writing on the wall. Ranked Choice allows the electorate to send that message to people.
I would have LOVED to have the democrats see the statistics in 2020 and seen that they had one only after it had been reduced down to it's third or fourth choice. I would have enjoyed sitting in the room and explaining to them 'You don't have a mandate, you have a chance.'
Meanwhile, Approval just gives a false impression of mandates, since they were 'approved' of by the voters.
I'll be honest, as a libertarian, Approval voting feels like super soft non-confrontational BS. Like, "Oh, it's too hard for people to say who is the favorite, that person might not feel like they are popular-"
and suddenly Trump is still president but with 60% approval because there's about 20% of the population that just seem to want to vote for the name they recognize, and thus voted 'approve' on both Harris and Trump so they could say they voted for the winner.
Meanwhile, ranked choice sends the message "You were the compromise candidate, deal with it," And give people someone they can live with.
What you're talking about is revealing the intensity of your preferences. Which I get. So, how about this? Why not have a straight up approval voting system with a "none of the above". If none of the above wins a plurality, guess what? You have to rerun. My issue with your hypothesis is that I don't think either political party cares how they win as long as they win. Which is the fundamental problem. If the public wants to send a very strong message, then "none of you useless characters" is the strongest message they can send.
Say there's a left, middle, and right candidate. If I approve of the middle candidate but really want the left candidate to win, I might leave the middle candidate off my ballot if I think the left candidate has better chances in a H2H against the right candidate, in order to avoid the middle candidate winning in place of my preferred candidate.
Sure seems like approval voting would make more sense. Alternatively, RCV, but in the general, not the primary. Remember, we'll still have a plurality vote for mayor in November!
Lots of RCV people are quite sophisticated economists. But, for whatever reason, I never see them talk about Approval Voting. I remain mystified as to why. Maybe RCV is better, but again, *why*? Maybe I should make approval voting my next Substack post...
An important clarification about the hypothetical MTG vs Manchineel vs Omar election: With the most common form of ranked choice voting (single transferable vote), the candidate who receives the least number of first-choice votes is eliminated first, and then their second-choice votes are transferred to the other candidates. So in your example, Manchin would be eliminated first since he only received 20% of first-choice votes, and the winner would be either MTG or Omar, depending on who won more second-choice votes.
Was the article edited? Because that's what it says.
".....However, assume that all Greene voters would prefer Manchin to Omar, and likewise, all Omar voters would prefer Manchin to Greene. In a head-to-head matchup, Manchin would defeat both Omar and Greene 60-40 for a landslide win.
This makes Manchin what political scientists call the Condorcet winner: the candidate who would prevail in every head-to-head matchup in the race if there were only two candidates.......
Under RCV, the lowest-ranking candidate in any given round of the automatic runoff is eliminated and his or her votes are redistributed until one candidate gets an outright majority. So in this example, Manchin’s 20 percent in the first round puts him on the chopping block. The election would then come down to whether more of his voters list Greene or Omar as their second choice, adding to their 40 percent from the first round."
I think the paragraph would be clearer if the final sentence read, "In a head-to-head matchup, Manchin would defeat either Omar or Greene 60-40 for a landslide win.
However if you used Single Transferable Vote as in Australia then once eliminated in third Manchin can’t gain any more votes, his preferences would be distributed between Omar and MTG, one of whom would prevail. The example also fails because it doesn’t follow through on the Nader example, the votes of Green and Libertarian candidates (and anybody else) may be higher because they’re not wasted if they preference others.
Frankly, that’s why I stopped reading the article there. A basic misunderstanding of how RCV works right at the top left me reluctant to spend the time
The author is extremely clear on this point in the piece though: they say exactly what Emily says about RCV in the hypothetical Manchin example. Unless it was edited in the last few minutes, I can’t say I understand the distinction.
That’s what he was saying. While on straight head to head Manchin would win, under RCV he is first eliminated. He says that as a negative. I see it as a positive.
You should read a book called "Making Democracy Count" by Ismar Volic. It details the different types of voting systems (such as instant runoff and Condorcet aka Copeland)- their benefits and drawbacks- and American Democracy's relationship with mathematics.
I personally liked Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It). I'm a mathy person but I recall the book being more historical and anecdotal with asides to the math, which made it easy to read.
There’s no mention in the article of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem which shows that no ranked-choice procedure for group decision-making can satisfy the requirements of rational choice.
Score voting was once the hill I would die upon (I've since given up, but still think it's the best).
It's so simple, just score candidates on a scale of 1-5 or A-F like we do in schools, movies, Olympic figure skating, etc. and the highest score wins. The person who wins might not have "50% approval" which is nice but RCV is a "fake 50%": if the person got your vote for being fifth on your ballot you might not like (or even know) them that much. Plus, a candidate could lose with more than 50% approval if they got all Bs but the top vote getter got all As, so it's a race to the top!
Love seeing the support for Zellnor in the footnote. I know he's going to be an also-ran at this point, but having gone to law school with him, I can vouch for him being a genuinely decent fellow who thinks hard, works hard, and listens well to people who disagree with him. Plus, his moonshot housing plan is exactly the sort of ambitious goal NYC needs.
Cool. Very interesting. To me, that is a risk you are taking, by design. You really are choosing that risk. And you are not really expressing your true preferences by not voting for the middle candidate. Whereas with RCV, even when you express true preference, you can get the perverse outcome that you never wanted nor expected, and one that the majority of voters would absolutely not want.
Personally, I’m in the anyone but Mamdani camp. I lived in NYC for 15 years and now I’m in Santa Monica. Cuomo is like Gavin Newsom - pure politician, but you could do worse. Mamdani is really extreme. I think he would be really dangerous for NYC.
What do you find dangerous about Mandani? I don’t know if I agree with things like making the bus free or city-run stores, but hearing him on the Odd Lots podcast he sounded reasonable/humble. Ie for his the city-grocery idea he called it an experiment, not a revolution. He also started working in politics by volunteering on the Obama campaign, not exactly a radical dangerous guy. Meanwhile Cuomo abused women and lied about his role in the deaths of nursing home residents. IMO Cuomo is the more dangerous candidate; I would not feel physically comfortable near him.
A. Don’t worry you aren’t getting close enough to Cuomo for him to squeeze your clenched cheeks.
B. Mamdani campaigning on freezing rents. Wait I thought NYC needed more housing??? Guess not.
C. Mamdani is a less pompous version of BdB who thinks he did a great job. Nuff said.
100%. This article bizarrely ignores that there are a fair number of "Anyone But Mamdani" voters, including "Silk Stocking" district voters and labor voters.
Anybody but Mamdani or Cuomo must be a faction too right? AMCers unite behind Adams or Lander (sheds a tear for Myrie)!
Several thoughts here:
1) I think Cuomo has run a thoroughly mediocre campaign. Specifically his arrogant "Rose Garden" strategy is letting Mamdani skate away without facing any real questions for his many questionable policy positions. Specifically as it relates to RCV I think Cuomo has missed a huge opportunity to hammer him on Israel. My instinct is that many older liberal Jews who are likely to rank Lander first could be persuaded to include Cuomo on their ballots to prevent the election of an outspokenly anti-Israel candidate.
Mamdani should also be a more polarizing candidate than he appears to be...another missed opportunity by Cuomo to activate a small but possibly significant group of "Anybody but Mamdani" voters (full disclosure: I consider myself to be one of these rare birds). His massively well funded super PAC seems to be doing this now, but early vote starts Sat so who knows if it will be effective.
2) Remember there is still a general election in Nov. Remember that NY allows for fusion voting and we always have a profusion of ballot lines. Regardless of the outcome on 6/24 Cuomo will appear on the November ballot (he has already secured a line...I can't remember what his silly fake party is called). If the WFP has a ballot line and I assume they'll nominate Mamdani.
AND there is NO ranked choice voting in the general...its a first past the post race. So you potentially have Cuomo, Mamdani, Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa all on the same ballot. With Sliwa, Adams and Cuomo all appealing to similar voters it isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that Mamdani could win a very narrow plurality (in a very low turnout election).
3) On RCV...not a huge fan. Its too complicated and opaque. Remember that the BOE already f***ed the calculations during the 2021 tabulation. We'll see if they have their house in order this time (I wouldn't bet on it). And can you imagine what the reaction would have been in 2021 if the Black candidate who was well ahead on election night ended up loosing to the white woman who started out a distant 3rd? Do we really think in our low information, low trust, hyper polarized political environment that rank and file voters would have accepted her win as legitimate??
**And as a personal note I am a NYC voter who has worked in and around NYC govt for 20+ years. I am ranking some combination of Stringer, Myrie, Adams and Cuomo.***
3)
I think this is disingenuous: "Both Cuomo and Mamdani are polarizing candidates, however, Cuomo for his scandals and Mamdani for his progressivism."
Andrew Cuomo, sure. A standard moderate blue-state Democrat with a major scandal that some people consider absolutely disqualifying and others are willing to overlook. But Mamani is a garden-variety blue-state progressive. He is polarizing solely due to his positions he describes as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, but that look to many people like pro-terrorist and anti semitic.
This when 16% of the people able to vote in the primary are Jewish, and many of the rest have lots of Jewish friends and acquaintances, and many have what used to be the standard liberal support for Israel (certainly not for the current administration in Israel, nor Israeli territorial expansion, nor the conduct of the Gaza War, nor the treatment of Palestinians; but support for a liberal democracy under constant terrorist and military assault).
I'm not trying to argue either way about whether Mamdani is anti semitic, but things like condemning Israel but not Hamas on October 8--the day after the outrage and ten days before any Israeli military response--and denying that Israel had a right to exist (a position he has quietly walked back on, but not convincingly) are what makes him polarizing, not free bus service or rent freezes.
There are a lot of Jewish Americans who are appalled at the ethnic cleansing israel is committing in Palestine. Don’t assume no Jews are pro-Palestinian.
I know many pro-Palestinian Jews. The Upper West Side is full of them and many are protesting aggressively. You can’t live here and be unaware of them.
However pro-Palestinian does not mean pro-Hamas or anti-semitic. Mamdani is polarizing because he has said and done things, and associated with people, that suggest his views are based on dislike of Jews and Israel rather than concern for Palestinians. I don’t say this is true—I can’t read his mind—but it’s not his progressive politics that are polarizing.
Most American Jews I know are quite critical of the Netanyahu administration, settler expansion, Gaza war tactics and treatment of Palestinians. But few support Hamas or call for the destruction of Israel.
And what has Mamdani said that supports Hamas or the destruction of Israel
I really don't want to get into that, my comment is only that his position on Israel is what makes him polarizing.
In theory, a New York City mayor needs no opinion on Israel and Palestine. Most New York Democrats manage to play both sides--denouncing terrorism and anti-semitism at the same time as criticizing Israeli actions, Islamophobia and Palestinian suffering. Mamdani makes his pro-Palestinian positions salient and is less careful than his fellow New York Democrats to avoid hints of supporting terrorism and hating Jews; and he associates with open anti semites and Hamas supporters.
New York Democrats split over the October 8th pro-Palestinian rally that many blasted as anti semitic--as it praised Hamas while the bodies from October 7 were still warm and blasted Israel over a week before there was a significant Israeli military response:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/08/nyc-palestine-rally-democrats-israel-00120533
Other Democrats saw the rally as a legitimate celebration of a revolt against colonialism, and protests against long-standing Israeli oppression of Palestinians. That makes it polarizing, whichever side you choose.
Another issue is Mamdani's recently changed position that Israel has no right to exist and should be eliminated--with no suggestion of how that could be accomplished without killing or dispossessing millions of Jews. His walk back was not convincing--a change to the website rather than a major public announcement with a rabbi or two by his side. Moreover he didn't add anything about how he thinks it's possible for Israel to exist while observing his positions on treatment of Palestinians.
Any New York mayor candidate who chooses to make Israel a major issue and has a one-sided position (either no killing in Gaza without specifying how Israel can get its hostages back or even survive, or no peace until Hamas surrenders unconditionally and returns all the hostages without specifying how many innocent Palestinians will be left alive by the time that is accomplished) will be polarizing.
I think it’s a little column A and a little of column B. Mamdani’s progressivism isn’t beyond the Overton window for a NYC politician, but NYS and NYC don’t behave the same way as other “blue” states/cities and very progressive candidates, with the exception of de Blasio (who benefitted from being anti-Bloomberg and then became widely reviled himself by the end of his term), haven’t performed especially well in recent mayoral elections (I.e Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Adams were the other most recent mayors). The Democratic coalition in NYC is more diverse in its viewpoints and it may well be that the extent of his progressivism, which goes far beyond de Blasio,(DSA membership, for example) does, in fact, make Mamdani controversial compared to the politics of a more pragmatic liberal like Cuomo
I’ll give you “controversial,” but not “polarizing.” Moving left along the spectrum wins some votes and loses others, but it doesn’t drive voters apart from each other. Moving off the spectrum in another dimension can shatter a coalition of voters who have similar left/right views, but passionate differences in the new dimension. That’s why New York City pols mostly strike positions on Israel calculated not to drive any Democrats away and don’t make it a central issue.
The Democratic coalition in New York City (and nationally, and Republican) is a coalition of unrelated groups that agrees to work together to win elections. Candidates can emphasize some issues or others, and have varying opinions on them. They can win or lose, but they don’t threaten the coalition. Introducing a new issue that a sizable minority considers disqualifying endangers the coalition.
Respectfully, if your argument is hinging on the nuance between “polarising” and “controversial” you’re missing the forest for the trees. If ideas are controversial they definitionally cause sharply differing opinions among people. That strikes me as definitionally polarising too (different groups with strong opinions on either side). His Israel policy may also be polarising, but if you’ll concede controversial I think you’re making a distinction without a difference.
Thank you for the respect, but I don't see it as nuance. "Polarizing" drives voters into two different camps. It's something candidates do to voters. "Controversial" is something voters argue about, but not necessarily into two different camps, and not necessarily causing any realignment. It's something voters do on their own.
In the context of the original post, controversial issues don't affect ranked-choice strategy. You put first the candidate whose positions average closest to yours. You put second the second-closest, and so on.
Polarizing issues cannot be weighted with other positions. You might say, "Mamdani's plans are a bit too radical and ill-considered, but he's closer to me on the issues than Cuomo." But it's much harder to say, "I think Mamdani will allow pogroms like David Dinkins did and appoint anti-semites in important city administrative posts, but I like free busses and rent freezes." Or with Cuomo to say, "He'll run a competent liberal administration, and we'll just buy suits of armor for all the women in City Hall."
For that reason, a polarizing issue tempts voters to pick candidates strategically, to block the unacceptable candidate. I doubt many voters actually do this, or do it effectively, but it does influence campaign strategy.
Mamdani with conventional NYC Democratic views on Israel and Jews wouldn't split Democrats into two camps. Cuomo without the sexual harassment scandal would likewise not cause any kind of realignment. The election would be fought along conventional lines of right/left positioning, personal characteristics and specific issues actually relevant to being a good NYC mayor.
I think your view is too simple. Different issues can be polarising to different voters. I agree it’s hard to imagine voters weighing a mayor enshrining anti-Semites in their administration with rent control, but that’s a somewhat extreme fear and a voter that doesn’t believe that Mamdani’s election will lead for that may be polarised on other issues.
Different things can be polarising to different people, you may have an argument that the Israel issue is *more* polarising, I don’t know what the public sentiment is, but to say that progressive candidates aren’t polarising in the NYC Democratic Party seems wrong. There seems to be substantial subsets of voters that feel strongly for and against electing mayoral candidates with very progressive policies and will rank members of their wing of the party with some amount of baggage over members of the other wing without any baggage
I agree there's no bright line between the most polarizing possible issue--one that splits all voters into two camps overwhelming all other issues--and the least polarizing one--one that has many nuanced camps that isn't a litmus test for anyone. But I think Cuomo's sexual harassment and Mamdani's attitude toward Jews are by far the most polarizing ones relevant to the NYC mayor's race.
In the context of the original post, a polarizing issue is one that makes a significant fraction of voters concentrate on blocking candidates from the wrong pole, rather than electing their first choice from the right pole.
I know a lot of feminists--including many men--who absolutely refuse to consider supporting Cuomo. I know a lot of Jews and non-Jews strongly concerned about anti-semitism who absolutely will not support Mamdani.
I don't see other polarizing issues in this election.
Portland Oregon uses RCV. No centrists elected. Choices are between ultra lefties who are affiliated with different baskets of interest groups.
When I lived in the Boston area, Cambridge had RCV. People doing 'standouts' at busy roads would hold up 7 ft poles, with multiple campaign signs affixed. I assumed they were in RCV order?
RCV is great in the faculty lounge, but it assumes voters have the luxury of time, and that's a bad assumption.
A utilitarian would note that for the individual voter, the trade-off in time spent puzzling over the choices isn't worth it, as the value to a voter of one vote is small, and there are other more pleasurable or profitable uses of one's time.
Side note: the Marquis de Condorcet lost his head (literally) during the French Revolution.
And so the utilitarian can just vote among the top candidates, possibly ranking a couple.
I don't know If I'm in the utilitarian camp, but that is what I do in SF.
I rank the people who are most likely to win. No need to dig into a dozen fringe candidates who don't have a chance.
Subscribed just so I can get this message out there.
IDGAF about RCV in terms of whether it's the "perfect" or "best" system. I want it to succeed because it's a) MUCH better than first past the post, which MUST DIE ASAP and b) to start breaking the systems that lock us into 2 parties.
So while I found this post academically interesting, even a bit milquetoast, I was quite alarmed to see it, and other commenters, critiquing RCV without any discussion whatsoever of our current system's entrenchment of 2 parties. Nor, by the way, would it make sense to say that RCV, in a largely 2 party existing system, would immediately fix all problems and encourage centrist candidates. From what I've read, it's a rather milquetoast tweak on first past the post that only impacts something like a low-single digit percentage of elections that are extraordinarily close, because the vast majority of the time, the round 1 vote winner is also the RCV winner. RCV is basically the least amount of change that we can probably mostly agree on... However, critically, it also unlocks a multi-party system where voting for a 3rd party is no longer throwing away a vote. THAT is the real magic of RCV. The very very mild incentives to aim for more centrist votes are almost just a nice side effect.
Great article. But I still don't understand why people prefer RCV to approval voting? There are no (as far as I am aware) Condorcet issues with Approval Voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting.
Because approval voting has its own flaws. For example: If you approve of two candidates but you really want Candidate A to win, you may still not approve of B even if you are fine with them just so that A will beat B.
But isn't that in some sense "a better flaw?" At least you don't "mind" the other winner that you approved of.
No because how much more do you approve of A than B? Maybe I just barely think B is tolerable but I think A is a star candidate who should trounce every other competitor. Or maybe I think A is only a shade better than B. I may vote the same way in these two cases and approval voting would have no idea I felt this way.
Sure. I agree actually. But that's still better than the option where you elect a non-Condorcet winner.
A true Condorcet winner would be ideal but most elections with a lot of candidates don't have one (they'd maybe have a Copeland winner but not a Condorcet). Even if they did, the calculation for it is intensive, maybe when we have real quantum computing we can check that first then do instant runoff. It also doesn't provide significantly more voter satisfaction than instant runoff- if Manchin had won in the hypothetical in the article it's still possible that 80% of voters would be unhappy.
Approval voting can be very similar to FPTP when people are voting strategically, and in general has weird inventives. RCV aligns incentives with true preference better.
Why? What is the strategy in that case? Why would you vote for someone you do not approve of? I don't see it but as I said, maybe I am missing something?
I hate the Democrats. But I voted for the Democrats for the past three elections because I could read the writing on the wall. Ranked Choice allows the electorate to send that message to people.
I would have LOVED to have the democrats see the statistics in 2020 and seen that they had one only after it had been reduced down to it's third or fourth choice. I would have enjoyed sitting in the room and explaining to them 'You don't have a mandate, you have a chance.'
Meanwhile, Approval just gives a false impression of mandates, since they were 'approved' of by the voters.
I'll be honest, as a libertarian, Approval voting feels like super soft non-confrontational BS. Like, "Oh, it's too hard for people to say who is the favorite, that person might not feel like they are popular-"
and suddenly Trump is still president but with 60% approval because there's about 20% of the population that just seem to want to vote for the name they recognize, and thus voted 'approve' on both Harris and Trump so they could say they voted for the winner.
Meanwhile, ranked choice sends the message "You were the compromise candidate, deal with it," And give people someone they can live with.
What you're talking about is revealing the intensity of your preferences. Which I get. So, how about this? Why not have a straight up approval voting system with a "none of the above". If none of the above wins a plurality, guess what? You have to rerun. My issue with your hypothesis is that I don't think either political party cares how they win as long as they win. Which is the fundamental problem. If the public wants to send a very strong message, then "none of you useless characters" is the strongest message they can send.
Say there's a left, middle, and right candidate. If I approve of the middle candidate but really want the left candidate to win, I might leave the middle candidate off my ballot if I think the left candidate has better chances in a H2H against the right candidate, in order to avoid the middle candidate winning in place of my preferred candidate.
Sure seems like approval voting would make more sense. Alternatively, RCV, but in the general, not the primary. Remember, we'll still have a plurality vote for mayor in November!
Lots of RCV people are quite sophisticated economists. But, for whatever reason, I never see them talk about Approval Voting. I remain mystified as to why. Maybe RCV is better, but again, *why*? Maybe I should make approval voting my next Substack post...
agreed, instant runoff for all elections not just primaries
Ugh. That’s depressing that elections with many candidates would not have a Condorcet winner. Double ugh. Actually triple Ugh!!! Sigh.
Yeah, agreed. There is no perfect voting system unfortunately but there are a lot of good ones that aren't plurality to choose from.
How about: plurality means a do over? Once everyone is heartily sick of voting maybe there will be a good winner! 😀
lol, that's what we do with regular runoffs but usually we only allow the top 2 to participate again.
also, that's literally how they elect the pope
An important clarification about the hypothetical MTG vs Manchineel vs Omar election: With the most common form of ranked choice voting (single transferable vote), the candidate who receives the least number of first-choice votes is eliminated first, and then their second-choice votes are transferred to the other candidates. So in your example, Manchin would be eliminated first since he only received 20% of first-choice votes, and the winner would be either MTG or Omar, depending on who won more second-choice votes.
Was the article edited? Because that's what it says.
".....However, assume that all Greene voters would prefer Manchin to Omar, and likewise, all Omar voters would prefer Manchin to Greene. In a head-to-head matchup, Manchin would defeat both Omar and Greene 60-40 for a landslide win.
This makes Manchin what political scientists call the Condorcet winner: the candidate who would prevail in every head-to-head matchup in the race if there were only two candidates.......
Under RCV, the lowest-ranking candidate in any given round of the automatic runoff is eliminated and his or her votes are redistributed until one candidate gets an outright majority. So in this example, Manchin’s 20 percent in the first round puts him on the chopping block. The election would then come down to whether more of his voters list Greene or Omar as their second choice, adding to their 40 percent from the first round."
I think the paragraph would be clearer if the final sentence read, "In a head-to-head matchup, Manchin would defeat either Omar or Greene 60-40 for a landslide win.
However if you used Single Transferable Vote as in Australia then once eliminated in third Manchin can’t gain any more votes, his preferences would be distributed between Omar and MTG, one of whom would prevail. The example also fails because it doesn’t follow through on the Nader example, the votes of Green and Libertarian candidates (and anybody else) may be higher because they’re not wasted if they preference others.
Frankly, that’s why I stopped reading the article there. A basic misunderstanding of how RCV works right at the top left me reluctant to spend the time
The author is extremely clear on this point in the piece though: they say exactly what Emily says about RCV in the hypothetical Manchin example. Unless it was edited in the last few minutes, I can’t say I understand the distinction.
That’s what he was saying. While on straight head to head Manchin would win, under RCV he is first eliminated. He says that as a negative. I see it as a positive.
Fun fact - Mamdani is the son of Mira Nair, the legendary Indian film director (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake).
You should read a book called "Making Democracy Count" by Ismar Volic. It details the different types of voting systems (such as instant runoff and Condorcet aka Copeland)- their benefits and drawbacks- and American Democracy's relationship with mathematics.
I personally liked Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It). I'm a mathy person but I recall the book being more historical and anecdotal with asides to the math, which made it easy to read.
The most relevant method you don't address is Borda, which is the method that best rewards candidates placed second on a ballot.
Cuomo was a terrible governor and would be a terrible mayor. It’s sad that he is in the lead.
There’s no mention in the article of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem which shows that no ranked-choice procedure for group decision-making can satisfy the requirements of rational choice.
Score voting was once the hill I would die upon (I've since given up, but still think it's the best).
It's so simple, just score candidates on a scale of 1-5 or A-F like we do in schools, movies, Olympic figure skating, etc. and the highest score wins. The person who wins might not have "50% approval" which is nice but RCV is a "fake 50%": if the person got your vote for being fifth on your ballot you might not like (or even know) them that much. Plus, a candidate could lose with more than 50% approval if they got all Bs but the top vote getter got all As, so it's a race to the top!
I may be ready to die on this hill again...
RCV resulting in the Condorcet candidate losing is a feature, not a bug of RCV.
Love seeing the support for Zellnor in the footnote. I know he's going to be an also-ran at this point, but having gone to law school with him, I can vouch for him being a genuinely decent fellow who thinks hard, works hard, and listens well to people who disagree with him. Plus, his moonshot housing plan is exactly the sort of ambitious goal NYC needs.
To what extent do these problems extend to Approval voting? STAR voting?
Cool. Very interesting. To me, that is a risk you are taking, by design. You really are choosing that risk. And you are not really expressing your true preferences by not voting for the middle candidate. Whereas with RCV, even when you express true preference, you can get the perverse outcome that you never wanted nor expected, and one that the majority of voters would absolutely not want.