Drag items or use the arrows to set your 1st through 7th preferences. Your personal ballot shapes voter affinity clusters in the simulation engine.
Visualizing the alluvial redistribution paths of ballots from eliminated bottom candidates into remaining front-runners:
Pairwise head-to-head comparison: percentages reflect row candidate preferred over column candidate across all 10,000 simulated ballots.
How Ranked-Choice Eliminates Vote-Splitting in Music Awards
In traditional First-Past-The-Post (plurality) voting, two similar artists (e.g., traditional radio powerhouses Luke Combs and Lainey Wilson, or viral TikTok breakouts Shaboozey and Tucker Wetmore) split their demographic base. A candidate with only 26% of passionate first-choice votes can win even if 74% of voters prefer someone else.
Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV) ensures the winner has genuine majority consensus (>50%). If no artist reaches 50% on first-choice ballots, the nominee with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their ballots transfer to each voter's next preferred candidate until a majority champion emerges.