Voters' choice under STV - each major party runs a multiple-candidate slate in districts

The vote in STV goes to one candidate at a time. so the vote is not muddied. it just in some cases travels around before finding a final spot. But these movements are in accordance with directions pre-marked by the voter.

n many districts, the major parties do run more than one. the transferability of votes means you do not need to strategically nominate.

Ireland 2024              FF FG    SF GRN labor Solidarity Renua IFP libty nat. aontu     II  IND.

in Carlow Kilkenny     5 seats

candidates                 3    3       1    1        1        1            1            1    2

elected                        2    1      1    1

FF and FG had choices 

Thus 44,000 of 74,000 voters had choice of candidates of their chosen party.

Cavan 5 seats                                                                                                       

candidates                3    3            3    1                  1                          1  1       1          1       1 4 

elected                       2    1            2      

SF, FF and FG had choices 

Thus 56,000 of 69,000 voters had choice of candidates of their chosen party.

so much more often than not, the voters did have choice of candidates of the preferred party slate.

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Just as in FPTP or under any voting system other than approval voting, you cannot know how much the voter likes one option over another just by a single mark.

same as in STV's  series of stepped back-up preferences.

But STV does not force voter into any arbitrary stepping of opinion any more than others - it only reveals how the other systems show so little info. the others being being simply on/off choice

at least under STV you can tell if a voters marks a straight party ticket or votes along other criterion. 

there was case of three-corner contests where the sentiment of the voters concerning a war or something was revealed by whether voters mostly voted along  war or peace lines outside of the party labels. And that was useful to the government to better reflect voters' opinion.

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