After analyzing the US legislature elections in my previous article, it appeared that changing from a winner-take-all voting system to ranked-choice voting (RCV) would help improve several problems with US legislatures. Namely, it should reduce over-representation of the majority and increase the choice of candidates. In order to see if this is true, I analyzed how RCV performed in Ireland’s 2016 elections.

Members of Ireland’s lower legislative house, the Dáil, have been elected using RCV since 1921. The country is split into constituencies that elect 3 to 5 deputies each, depending on the population in each one. The variable size of constituencies allows for boundaries that better follow county borders rather than forcing voters into groups of equal population.

Greater Competition In Elections

The official results for the election can be found here. In the 2016 election, no single party won a majority of seats. The Fine Gael party ended up with the most, with 50 out of 157 seats. In all, eight parties won seats in the Dáil plus a further 19 deputies with no party affiliation. It’s no coincidence that there are so many more parties represented in the Dáil than in American legislatures. RCV allows a greater number of views a seat at the table.

Overall, the level of competition in this election was outstanding. Every single constituency in Ireland was competitive. There was not a single seat that one party was guaranteed to win. Even if all of the minor candidates (those who lost their election expenses) are not counted, there were still more than two candidates contesting each seat on average. Voters certainly took advantage of this additional choice as no single party swept the seats in any constituency.

Over-Representation Is Reduced

Now let’s look at how over-representation is affected. To compare with the US results from my previous article, I calculated the difference between the percentages of seats won by Fine Gael and first-preference votes the party received. A graph showing the full comparison is below.