Agreed. The lived experience in Australia (which has now used "IRV" in national elections for 100 years) is that in almost every case, the IRV winner was also

Agreed. The lived experience in Australia (which has now used "IRV" in national elections for 100 years) is that in almost every case, the IRV winner was also the likely Condorcet winner (which certainly can not be said of first-past-the-post in practice). However, in close three-cornered races, tactical voting does sometimes come into play. The recent Wentworth by-election was an example of this: Liberal voters could have assisted their party to win the election by switching their first preference to the Labor candidate, because if the Labor candidate had beaten the eventual winner (Phelps, Independent) into second place, then Phelps' preferences would have been distributed and almost certainly given the win to the Liberal. Of course, this is a risky strategy, because if too many Liberal voters did this then they would have instead engineered a Labor win. And in reality, despite the possibility of tactical voting, the Condorcet winner Phelps won anyway. An example where the Condorcet winner may not have won is the seat of Rockhampton in the 2017 Queensland State election. The primary votes had Labor in first, independent Margaret Strelow in second, One Nation in third and the LNP in fourth. However preferences from the LNP candidate pushed One Nation into second, which gave Labor the win on Strelow's preferences. It seems likely that Strelow would have beaten any of the other three head-to-head, though. And as previously mentioned, this sort of situation is notable for its rarity.