Talk:Spoiler effect

Spoiler effect rhetoricSpoiler effect rhetoric was merged into this article. The discussion was closed on 16 June 2026 with a consensus to merge. The original page is now a redirect to this article. Its history now serves to provide attribution for the content in this article, and it must not be deleted as long as this article exists.

Spoiler campaignSpoiler campaign was merged into this article. The discussion was closed on 3 September 2024 with a consensus to merge. The original page is now a redirect to this article. Its history now serves to provide attribution for the content in this article, and it must not be deleted as long as this article exists.

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Spoiler effect (final version) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which was archived on 9 April 2025. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Alternative voting systems which avoid the spoiler effect include instant runoff voting, also known as single transferable vote.

This is wrong on two accounts:

1. IRV and STV are not the same thing. The first is a single-winner system; the second is a multi-winner system. The second reduces to the first in the case of a single district.
2. IRV and STV can suffer from the spoiler effect. For example, if the "p-ist" vote was split between 3 p-ists, the most popular and "major party" p-ist could be eliminated early, even though they would handily beat the winning q-ist.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by DanKeshet (talk • contribs)

I'm not a wiki editor, so I don't know the reference specifics. However, I noticed in the first reference it was incorrectly attributed to the editors. Specifically "A spoiler effect occurs when a single party or a candidate entering an election changes the outcome to favor a different candidate." Which is found on page 379 and according to page iv is in the section "Empirical examples of voting paradoxes" written by Marek M. Kaminski.

The original book is a collection from different authors and with MLA the specific author has to be stated. ~2025-35386-46 (talk) 19:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

As of 3/7/26, the article says, "Barry Burden argues that they have almost no chance of winning the 2024 election but are often motivated by particular issues." Should this be past tense? Also, to me at least it is unclear who he is talking about. ~2026-14872-60 (talk) 17:33, 8 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Moved to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spoiler effect rhetoric

 – FaviFake (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2026 (UTC)