This poll was born out of several discussions revolving around how we vote, and the relative benefits and drawbacks of various methodologies. Using the democratic primary as the backdrop, this report shows how the results would differ based on voting method used.

Some caveats:
1. Small sample size! We got 32 responses (thanks to everyone who filled it out!), but obviously more responses would do a better job in teasing out the nuanced differences in these methods.
2. Response bias! As you’ll soon find out, the race for the democratic nomination would look a lot different if it came solely from the responses of this poll. The poll was distributed among my friends and the friends of my friends. There was no concern of making this representative.
3. It’s important to note that almost every one of the votes in the poll were received before the flood of dropouts leading up to and immediately after Super Tuesday.

Alright, let’s get into it!

First Past The Post

The simplest one, First Past The Post (FPTP) is only concerned with each voter’s top choice. The table displays the number and percentage of votes each candidate received. Only candidates above the 15% threshold were eligible to receive delegates. That means Klobuchar and Bloomberg were shut out in our primary. Warren, with more than double second-place in terms of top votes, does very well here.
First Past The Post Results
Candidate Votes Percent Delegates
Warren 14 43.8 % 47
Biden 6 18.8 % 20
Buttigieg 5 15.6 % 17
Sanders 5 15.6 % 17
Klobuchar 2 6.2 % 0
Bloomberg 0 0 % 0

Ranked Choice

Ranked choice is a bit more complicated, as there are several steps to determining viability. The tables below show a couple different methods of determining delegates. Method 1 takes away any candidate that does not have at least 15% of first-place votes, and re-assigns their votes to the voter’s second-place candidate. So the Method 1 table is easy - Bloomberg is completely taken out of the equation, and then Klobuchar’s 2 votes go to Buttigieg since he was second-choice for those two voters. Warren wins this one again, with Buttigieg climbing to second place.

Method 2 is more extreme - the eliminiation process doesn’t end until a candidate has 50% or more of the top choice votes. After Bloomberg and Klobuchar are taken out of the running, we see that Biden and Sanders are tied for last place with 6 votes. They were both taken out at this stage and their votes re-assigned to Warren and Buttigieg*. This is a tighter breakdown of delegates than Method 1.

Note: I would imagine that a tie-breaker would be to look at Biden vs Sanders and see who has generally higher votes among those who didn’t vote them first - this would result in 3 candidates getting delegates.
Ranked Choice Results - Method 1
Candidate Top Votes - Initial Top Votes - Minus Bloomberg Top Votes - Minus Klobuchar Delegates
Warren 13 13 13 41
Buttigieg 5 5 7 22
Biden 6 6 6 19
Sanders 6 6 6 19
Klobuchar 2 2 0 0
Bloomberg 0 0 0 0
Ranked Choice Results - Method 2
Candidate Top Votes - Initial Top Votes - Minus Klobuchar and Bloomberg Top Votes - Minus Biden and Sanders Delegates
Elizabeth Warren 13 13 18 56
Pete Buttigieg 5 7 14 44
Joe Biden 6 6 0 0
Bernie Sanders 6 6 0 0
Amy Klobuchar 2 0 0 0
Michael Bloomberg 0 0 0 0

One thing that interested me in ranked choice was seeing where Sanders and Warren were ranked in relation to each other. As expected, 18 of the 32 voters ranked the two most liberal candidates right next to each other. On the other end of the spectrum, there were two voters who had Warren as top choice and Bernie as last.

Ranked Choice (Points)

I don’t think this methodology is in use anywhere, but it interested me enough to include in this poll, so here we are. The thinking here is to give every candidate points based on their ranking (6 points for 1st place and 1 point for last place) instead of putting the emphasis on top-choice votes as in traditional ranked choice. Anyway, the distribution using this method is pretty close (outside of Bloomberg). Without a guide to determine viability, we went with the median as being the cutoff. That resulted in Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg gaining delegates, with Sanders just missing out. The delegate distribution is very tight with this method.

The second chart shows a breakdown of how each candidate did. Sanders was the most polarizing, with 6 first-place votes but 8 last-place votes. Biden was the most neutral, with 16 total votes of 3 or 4. And Bloomberg, with 17 last-place votes, was the furthest candidate from viability.
Ranked Choice (Points) Results
Candidate Points Average Delegates
Warren 132 4.1 34
Biden 128 4.0 33
Buttigieg 126 3.9 33
Sanders 118 3.7 0
Klobuchar 105 3.3 0
Bloomberg 66 2.1 0
Ranked Choice Breakdown by Candidate (6 points for 1st place)
Rank Sanders Warren Biden Buttigieg Klobuchar Bloomberg
6 6 13 6 5 2 NA
5 10 2 6 7 5 2
4 4 3 8 7 5 5
3 NA 6 8 7 10 3
2 4 6 2 6 8 5
1 8 2 2 NA 2 17

Approval

Approval voting tries to assess everyone’s take on the question “Would you approve of this person getting the nomination?”. That was the only instruction given for this question, and voters could have made up their minds considering a few factors (among others):
- Would I vote for this candidate in the general election?
- Do I think this candidate would win the general election?
- Do I like this candidate?

And how did it turn out? Every candidate besides Bloomberg had a majority approval rate, with Warren and Biden leading the way. Using the median once again as the viability cutoff (including Buttigieg and Klobuchar), we see that just Sanders and Bloomberg miss out on delegates here.
Approval Results
Candidate Approval Percent Delegates
Warren 27 84.4 % 27
Biden 26 81.2 % 26
Buttigieg 24 75 % 24
Klobuchar 24 75 % 24
Sanders 21 65.6 % 0
Bloomberg 12 37.5 % 0

The chart below shows the breakdown of number of approved candidates in our poll. Over half of voters approved of either 4 or 5 of the candidates, while 5 people approved of each one and one person was ride-or-die with Sanders.

Approval (Points)

Last one! What happens to the approval methodology if we allow voters to be neutral about a candidate? Again, the only instructions for this question was to vote according to this rule:
1: I really want this candidate to be the nominee
0: This candidate would be an acceptable nominee
-1: I do not want this candidate to be the nominee

The table shows the sum for each candidate. Bloomberg brings up the rear once again, with an astounding -19 approval points. To assign delegates, we went with a positive-approval cutoff, so that means that Sanders gets dropped in this case. Warren does really well here, with half of the delegates going to her.
Approval (Points) Results
Candidate Points Delegates
Warren 10 50
Buttigieg 6 30
Biden 3 15
Klobuchar 1 5
Sanders -2 0
Bloomberg -19 0
This table shows the breakdown of approval points for each candidate. Just like in ranked choice, Sanders is the most polarizing here. Klobuchar was the most neutral, with 23 votes of 0. Warren had just 3 votes of -1. A quick glance at the Total column shows that over half of the votes were neutral, while a nearly equal number of votes went to the extremes.

Approval (Points) Breakdown by Candidate
Points Sanders Warren Biden Buttigieg Klobuchar Bloomberg Total
-1 12 3 5 5 4 19 48
0 10 16 19 16 23 13 97
1 10 13 8 11 5 NA 47

Overall Summary

So how does everything stack up in terms of delegates? Warren had a clean sweep of delegates across all methodologies. Biden and Buttigieg were viable in all 5 methodolgies. Biden did relatively better in FPTP while Buttigieg came out ahead of Biden in Ranked Choice and Approval (Points).

Sanders was viable in just FPTP and Ranked Choice, mainly due to his polarizing approval and rankings. It’s interesting to note here that since traditional Ranked Choice focuses on top-votes, Sanders isn’t punished for also having last-place votes.

Klobuchar was in the thick of it with Approval, and barely made viability in Approval (Points). Lastly, and probably not a surprise to anyone reading this, Bloomberg was not viable in any polling method.

What does this mean for the various methods themselves? It’s a bit tough to say, as obviously this is a small sample size and we’re a very specific demographic. The Ranked Chocie (Points) and Approval methods did not have a wide distribution of delegates, so this would lend itself to success for a candidate who is generally liked and comes in 2nd or 3rd on a lot of ballots.

Traditional Ranked Choice (below just shows Method 1) is more complicated than FPTP but allows for a bit more strategy. Klobuchar was the only candidate with first-place votes that was eliminated in Method 1, and Buttigieg was happy to benefit. In Method 2, the field narrowed even more and Buttigieg was able to make it a close race with Warren.

Lastly, Approval (Points) was probably the most interesting to me. It allows for ordering similar to Ranked Choice but allows for ties (e.g., if you’re neutral on several candidates). I think I like this one the most!

I’m curious to hear of other insights gained from this poll though. Let me know what you think! And again, thanks so much to everyone who participated! I found this to be a really fun exercise and it could not have been accomplished without so many people being willing to take this poll.
Delegate Summary
Candidate First Past The Post Ranked Choice Ranked Choice (Points) Approval Approval (Points) Viable
Warren 47 41 34 27 50 5
Biden 20 19 33 26 15 5
Buttigieg 17 22 33 24 30 5
Sanders 17 19 0 0 0 2
Bloomberg 0 0 0 0 0 0
Klobuchar 0 0 0 24 5 2

Demographics

We’ll end with a quick look at who took the poll! Demographic info was 100% optional, but a lot of people ended up indicating their age and location. We obviously have a big DC-area contingent, but also some nice California representation. Could have done better in the Midwest though! And as far as age breakdown, the poll skews mid/late-20s to mid 30s.