Hi, I'm from Australia, where we actually use IRV and STV. I dislike IRV's lack of monotonicity too, but for STV, which is the top-of-chain proposal, your objection
> Unpopular first vote candidates will be eliminated, even if they're extremely popular second vote candidates.
doesn't seem to be a major problem. Groups do well on second and subsequent choices from a combination of being popular in their own right and more-popular groups saying "put us first and then them second".
Our federal electoral commission publishes every ballot ordering for our Senate elections now. A guy named David Bahry has a "preference explorer" which lets you get a high-level overview for yourself: https://pappubahry.com/pseph/aus_2019/
> Unpopular first vote candidates will be eliminated, even if they're extremely popular second vote candidates.
doesn't seem to be a major problem. Groups do well on second and subsequent choices from a combination of being popular in their own right and more-popular groups saying "put us first and then them second".
Our federal electoral commission publishes every ballot ordering for our Senate elections now. A guy named David Bahry has a "preference explorer" which lets you get a high-level overview for yourself: https://pappubahry.com/pseph/aus_2019/