Five state Democratic parties used ranked choice voting (RCV) in presidential primary elections and caucuses in 2020 with great success. Despite a global pandemic, all five states had high rates of success with RCV and, especially in the four states where all voters used RCV, secured accurate and comprehensive election results.
This report examines the results from those states based on ballot data. Results show that voters overwhelmingly took advantage of the option to rank candidates on the ballot, made very few errors, and turned out in large numbers. In a year when millions of early voters in states without RCV cast ballots for presidential candidates who had withdrawn by the time they were counted, RCV made more votes count.