Virginia Primary Election Recap 2024

Last Tuesday, Virginians across the commonwealth showed up to vote in primary elections. While there was plenty of news (see VPAP's excellent coverage of election results here), we want to highlight two races where Ranked Choice Voting (or the lack thereof) played a significant role.

Let's talk about Arlington!

For the second year, the Arlington Democratic Primary for County Board of Supervisors was held using Ranked Choice Voting. This is in accordance with the ordinance passed last December, making RCV the permanent method for County Board primaries.

Here's how it went:

JD Spain Sr. won the nomination on the 4th round of tabulation, earning 55% of the vote - a clear majority.

A whopping 95% of voters ranked at least one of the two finalists on their ballots. That means minimal "wasted votes" and incredibly high engagement for the final round. 

Exit Polling Strategies conducted exit polls around this election and found that 88% of Arlington voters said RCV was easy and 67% want to use it again, with overwhelming majority support across demographic groups. This confirms what pollsters find across the nation - the more voters use RCV, the more they like it.

Compare that to the CD 10 Democratic Primary: 

On the other end of the spectrum, the very crowded Democratic primary for the 10th Congressional District (running to succeed Rep. Jennifer Wexton) was a race crying out for Ranked Choice Voting. Ultimately, the winner got just over 30% of the vote - not terrible considering the mathematical reality that someone could have won without breaking double digits. 

The top two candidates got a combined ~58% of the vote. 42% of voters cast a ballot for one of the other ten candidates – most of them likely had a preference between the two finalists, but they didn’t get a chance to weigh in. Compared to the 95% of Arlington voters who got to participate in the final head-to-head, this isn't nearly as representative.

While this race was the most egregious case of voters being punished by a crowded field of candidates, it certainly wasn't the only one. Both the Democratic and Republican primaries in CD 7 could have benefited from RCV.

To be clear, we are not advocating for fewer candidates - just the opposite! RCV allows a "more the merrier" mentality when it comes to talented, motivated people throwing their hats in the ring. More candidates means more choices, more perspectives, more brainpower focused on solving problems. But our current plurality election system isn't built to handle more than a binary choice. If we as voters want to continue to be presented with so many qualified and interesting choices, we need to upgrade to Ranked Choice Voting.