You confuse AV (‘Instant Runoff’) with STV (AV in multi-member constituencies). The incentives for STV and AV are very different.
“The Liberal Democrats, who were perpetually stuck in the same third-place situation as Nader in the States, supported a change to a form of instant runoff voting which would have made voting Lib Dem a much more palatable option; the two major parties opposed it probably for exactly that reason.”
Actually, most studies showed that if anything the support for the Lib Dems would drop slightly rather than rise under AV (the system that was voted on, which is different from STV, which is the system that the Lib Dems actually support), because there’d be less tactical voting. While electoral reform is tempting for the Lib Dems in part because the current system is biased against them and any other small parties, there’s also the fact that a lot of people joined the Lib Dems because they are the only major party supporting electoral reform—for a lot of Lib Dems getting the party into government is at least in part a means to the end of getting the electoral system changed, rather than changing the electoral system being a means to the end of getting the party into government.
You confuse AV (‘Instant Runoff’) with STV (AV in multi-member constituencies). The incentives for STV and AV are very different.
“The Liberal Democrats, who were perpetually stuck in the same third-place situation as Nader in the States, supported a change to a form of instant runoff voting which would have made voting Lib Dem a much more palatable option; the two major parties opposed it probably for exactly that reason.”
Actually, most studies showed that if anything the support for the Lib Dems would drop slightly rather than rise under AV (the system that was voted on, which is different from STV, which is the system that the Lib Dems actually support), because there’d be less tactical voting. While electoral reform is tempting for the Lib Dems in part because the current system is biased against them and any other small parties, there’s also the fact that a lot of people joined the Lib Dems because they are the only major party supporting electoral reform—for a lot of Lib Dems getting the party into government is at least in part a means to the end of getting the electoral system changed, rather than changing the electoral system being a means to the end of getting the party into government.