The phrase "a first preference" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing someone's top choice or priority among options.
Example: "When it comes to vacation destinations, Italy is my first preference."
Alternatives: "my top choice" or "my primary selection".
She is one of roughly 134,000 who gave Hanson a first preference vote in Queensland.
In those three polls he scored a first preference of only 39 or 37 points.
In this system, voters pick a first preference, but can also choose a second.
Only 77 people actually voted for Roberts as a first preference but, thanks to the popularity of Hanson, he's in for three years.
This week the campaign Londoners on Bikes recommended a first preference vote for me and for the Greens on the London Assembly.
But the new international court gives the country of the accused, not the country making the accusation, the right to hold the trial itself as a first preference.
We Londoners have two votes for mayor, a first and a second preference.
Supplementary Vote Voters mark a second preference, also using a cross, in a second column on the ballot paper.
Jeffrey Richard de Corban Evans, grandson of the Antarctic explorer Teddy Evans, took a strong first round lead with nine first preference votes, and won on the fifth round after he had added a second preference vote to his tally.
It will, in other words, end up being of equal value to him in his head-to-head with Johnson – just as a second preference for Johnson will be to him in relation to Livingstone.
Len McCluskey, leader of Unite, will, over the weekend, be writing to his members who are signed up reiterating the union's official position, which is a vote for Corbyn and a second preference for Burnham.
