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.
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.
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.