While this may sound impossible, we contend that approval voting is fairer to both major and minor parties. Under the current system, popular major party candidates sometimes lose when a strong minor party or independent candidate draws some of the support that would have otherwise been theirs. Approval voting addresses this by allowing supporters of alternative candidates to also support a more electable frontrunner as a compromise.

Additionally, alternative candidates get an accurate level of their support. One alternative voting experiment surveyed voters at polling places in Manhattan’s 69th State Assembly District. The group was granted credentials from the NYC Board of Elections to conduct the exit-poll style experiment inside the city’s official polling places. The experiment compared plurality voting (traditional “vote for one” method) with approval voting, score voting and instant runoff voting. Below are graphs revealing the totals for these four systems.

Let’s first look at the plurality voting results, to establish a baseline.

While this district was clearly not representative of the overall American electorate, note the relative strength of the minor party candidates compared to the major party candidates. For instance, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received one vote for about every 27 votes for Obama. (The study authors note that their results were consistent with the official election results.)

Now compare to approval voting.

The Green Party now receives 58% as much support as the Democratic Party. This is over a 15x improvement in the Green Party’s strength relative to the Democratic Party, compared to where they were with plurality voting. The other minor party and write-in candidates also fared dramatically better.

See our in-depth article on approval voting and independents/third parties. See how approval voting plays in with Duverger’s Law.