I’ve also seen people who speak out very strongly against IRV on the grounds that they prefer other electoral systems like STAR or approval voting. IMO those are just worse systems than IRV, but I also think that if you do prefer them but campaign against IRV because of a vain hope to arrive at something you consider better in the future, you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and undermining genuine democratic change.

The people who vote against ranked choice are either too stupid to learn what it is and how it would objectively be better for democracy, people who are smart enough to know how it works and don’t support it because it will be bad for their political party, or people who were told what to vote for by an authority figure

“People are stupid” is rarely the best explanation. I’m just surprised that it was so close to 50%. Voting reform isn’t usually such a wedge issue.