Ranked choice voting has gained a bit of a bad reputation in Republican circles recently as a result of a contentious 2022 congressional election in Alaska where their specific implementation[1] resulted in a Democratic candidate winning in the final round of a 4-way race despite the state historically leaning heavily Republican prior to RCV's implementation[2][3], and there being a clear majority of Republican voters in the previous round[4].

Looking into the details it seems the results can't be blamed on voter exhaustion, as the Democratic candidate would have won even if all exhausted votes in the second-to-last round would have gone to the remaining Republican candidate, so I'm open to the idea that this wasn't a failure of ranked choice voting, but rather a genuine shift in Alaskan politics. Still, it doesn't seem very likely. Alaska went for Donald Trump by a comfortable margin in the 2020 elections, and a Republican hasn't lost a statewide race there since 1972 - until now. But on the other hand, it's hard to look at the election results and see how the Republican candidate could have beat the Democrat candidate in a head-to-head first-past-the-post election.

So... I don't know. Maybe people just vote differently when forced to pick between two candidates than they do when ranking candidates on a ballot with multiple choices? Perhaps the 2024 election results will bring more clarity...

[1]: https://www.elections.alaska.gov/RCV.php

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska%27s_at-large_congressio...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

[4]: https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22GENR/US%20REP.pdf