Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems: * Ranked voting methods, all election methods that involve ranking candidates in order of preference (American literature) * Optional preferential voting * Instant-runoff voting, referred to as "preferential voting" in Australia and as "ranked choice voting" in United States, is one type of ranked voting method. * Contingent vote (the top-two variant of IRV) * Single transferable vote (referred to as "preferential voting" in Australia) * Positional voting * Borda count (the most common form of positional voting) * Bucklin voting, which was sometimes known as "preferential voting" when used in the United States * Open list proportional representation, sometimes known