[alextheparrot]

The second vote was still counted, though. It just happened that Bernie had 49% (35 + 14) of the vote vs Trump's 51% (45 + 6) in this example? Just because I don't like the hypothetical results of the vote doesn't mean it is wrong.

[heintje_ghulam]

The point I was trying to make is that the system doesn't fully reflect peoples' full set of preferences, it chooses some voters' and takes their second choices into account while ignoring others.

[alextheparrot]

Can you help me validate this assumption I've formed based on what you said: The only time this seems to be impactful is when you rank two candidates with the same preference [0].

It seems that otherwise this just creates a roughly equivalent ranking structure. I think that's interesting in a system with many candidates or very similar ideologies, but in this example I would probably expect the same result.

Edit:

[0] After reading more, I now realize that the initial selection is also the sum of preference votes, so someone could rank Bernie 5, Hillary 4, Trump 0 which could create changes in who the run-off candidates are.