1998 MN gubernatorial general election:

PARTY CANDIDATE NAME                  VOTES CAST % OF VOTES
===== ============================== ========== ==========
RP    JESSE VENTURA AND MAE SCHUNK    773713    37.0
R     NORM COLEMAN AND GEN OLSON      717350    34.3
DFL   HUBERT H "SKIP" HUMPHREY III    587528    28.1
GPM   KEN PENTEL AND SUSAN JASPER       7034     0.3
LIB   FRANK GERMANN AND MICHAEL C. S    1932     0.1
GRP   CHRIS WRIGHT AND D.G. PAULSEN     1727     0.1
SWP   THOMAS FISKE AND JOHN HAWKINS      787     0.0
TPC   FANCY RAY MCCLONEY AND (MOM) T     919     0.0
NP    WRITE IN                           776     0.0

The people advocating Instant Runoffs (IRV) have used this election as an example of why IRV is necessary. They complain that 63% of the voters did NOT want the candidate who won.     

What they conveniently leave out is that 66% didn't prefer Coleman and 72% didn't prefer Humphrey.

If this had been IRV and Humphrey received enough 2nd and 3rd choice votes to win, we'd have had a winner that received only 28% of the original “1st choice” votes!   This would represent only a artificial majority, not a true majority, as 72% of the voters preferred other candidates! 

Moreover, in IRV, the entire dynamics of the election changes once the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. Voters might have selected a different ‘second choice’ if they had known their ‘first choice’ candidate would be eliminated, but with IRV they don’t have this chance. A primary-type system alleviates this problem and helps ensure the voters a distinct choice among visible candidates.

The fact that IRV makes it possible for the candidate with the one of the lowest totals of "first choice" votes to win shows the absurdity of this convoluted election format.