Since 2004, San Francisco has used an instant
runoff
process to elect its mayor, board of supervisors, and other officers. This way,
voters rank their choices on one ballot,
rather than vote for one candidate in one election and then another in a
separate runoff election. Here, you can see past results and try Ranked Choice practice polls.
Rank the candidates you support, in order of preference.
Candidate
1st choice
2nd choice
3rd choice
Lou
Bob
Kim
Your vote will count for your highest-ranked candidate, but some candidates
may be eliminated.
Your vote counts for Bob, your first choice. Nobody has a majority mandate from voters.
50%
Kim
Lou
Bob
So we eliminate Bob, and recount.
Kim gets enough of Bob's second choices to get a majority.
50%
Kim
Lou
In this count, because Bob was eliminated, your vote counted for Kim, your second choice.
Try practice polls for the competitive 2024 San Francisco RCV contests!
This year there are competitive RCV contests (with more than two candidates) in all odd-numbered supervisorial districts and the mayoral contests. Districts 3, 9, and 11 have
open seats (with no incumbent running).
Try voting in the practice polls here to learn about the candidates and how ranked-choice voting works. The real-world ballots will be limited to 10 rankings, but here, you
can rank all 13 of the mayoral candidates if you want!
This page shows results of multi-round ranked-choice elections in San Francisco since 2004, as an independent
and unofficial interpretation
of cast vote records released by the Department of Elections.
The total number of votes countable in at least the first
round of the 34 multi-round elections shown here from 2004 to 2022 is 2,233,672.
The results released by the Elections Department separate out all "overvotes" (more than one vote in the same column), whereas the DemoChoice
software treats second- or third-choice overvotes as votes for "none of these". Ballots with no rankings or with first-choice overvotes do not appear
in the DemoChoice results.
Improvements to the city's vote-counting software and released ballot data have provided greater transparency regarding how some
strange cases are treated. If a ballot gives one listed candidate and an unqualified write-in the same ranking, or one eliminated candidate and one continuing candidate the
same ranking, should these each be an overvote, so that ranking and lower rankings are uncountable? Currently, that is what happens.
** indicates contests where the winner overcame the leading first-round candidate in later rounds.
* indicates contests where a candidate who was not one of the top two in the first round was in the top two in the final round.
