“every vote leaked from Murphy counts. It will be down to the order of those eliminated and transfers”
does ‘leaked’ mean ballots without Murphy on them at all or only as lower preferences to Smith (and assuming no intervening third candidate)?
what I’m trying to get at, and what others have mentioned, is to what extent does PR/STV actually work, as it should ideally, to alleviate these situations of conflicts? genuine question aimed especially at the people here with lots of experiences following counts and candidates – is it a case of the human influence in a fallible system (e.g. voters ‘plumping’ for Smith alone), actually an inherent limitation (the general rule of thumb that a good placing in the first preferences is needed to make any use of transfers, even though technically the system ought to be open to greater movement – that, even if not eliminated together, the split of the first preference vote means that even the higher candidate is still has an increased likelihood of early elimination, which I’m guessing is actually what’s meant here) or is it something that has not actually occurred too often, where left candidates run against each other for an essentially undifferentiated constituency (i.e. without more obvious ideological differences, such as historically around republicanism).
sorry for the complexity, it’s just I’m fairly familiar with the topic from the political science side but I’m curious as to how exactly people understand the problem closer to the action.