Talk:Supplementary vote

2019 comments
This description:

Under supplementary vote, voters express first and second ranked choices of candidate only, and, if no candidate receives an absolute majority of first-choice votes, all but the two leading candidates are eliminated and the votes of those eliminated redistributed according to their second-choice votes to determine the winner.

Is accurate for those UK elections held using it.

The article would benefit from a discussion of some related variants:

1). That candidates are eliminated one at a time, with those having the least votes so far eliminated first. For a mainly 3 way contest, this could give a different result.

2). All first and second preference votes are counted and tabulated, along with spoilt, or otherwise non-included votes. Today, this is a simple exercise using SW, even if, as in the UK, voting still uses paper. This information would give political groups a better understanding of where their support lies, including the second preference of the two final candidates. This could be very helpful for becoming more aware of simmering discontent.

I would welcome discussion here of these aspects before updates to the main article takes place.

Source missing
Source missing for never elects representatives by only a minority of a district's voters? This assumes that the majority of second-choices is among two leading candidates, which only sometimes happens. HudecEmil (talk) 17:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Yep, it's incorrect. (Even for IRV it's completely wrong though. IRV can easily reach more than 50% wasted votes, just like FPP.) Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Merge needed
This page is a duplicate of contingent vote (and both should probably be a subsection of instant-runoff voting, honestly, given they're both minor variations on IRV).

For now I'll nominate this for deletion, but if there's any useful information on here not on the other pages, it should be moved. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 02:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Having seen no objections, I'm making this page a redirect to contingent vote. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 22:31, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * User:Closed Limelike Curves, I disagree that they're variations of IRV, but agree that supplementary is a variation of contingent. Was there any content in this article that needs to be merged into contingent, though?  It looks like you just made a redirect without merging anything?  — Omegatron (talk) 14:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I took a look, and I don't think there was much important information here, although you're free to transfer some if you'd like.
 * They're both very clearly variations of IRV, but it's arguably OK to have an article on variations of IRV. Contingent/alternative vote is just IRV limited to the top 2 candidates. (Top 3, top 4, and top 5 are popular variants as well. Which, you might be seeing the problem now--top-k for every natural number k implies infinitely many articles.) Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:42, 1 March 2024 (UTC)


 * There was actually a bunch of information about real-world usage of SV that isn't covered in the Contingent Vote article. That kind of information is important, too.  When merging articles, make sure to preserve all the content.  I don't agree that these are variations on IRV.  Top-four primary and Final Five are covered in another article. — Omegatron (talk) 17:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)