Regular voters will basically always prefer ranked choice over approval imo, because they really want to be able to rank their preferences. A leftist who wants a green party candidate but will hold their nose for a Democrat doesn't want them to be "equal" in how they vote.

Approval voting makes much more sense to me. Consider ranked-choice if it were applied to the presidency: Given that some states are slow to report their results, there are scenarios where you can't fall back to people's second choices until all the votes are in and finalized to determine who lost the first round.

With approval voting, you can declare a victor without running a state machine.

Ironically, although no individual would want it, it is probably a good thing that it is hard to tell what a ballot's effect will be.

If the situation is close the best outcome may be a somewhat random outcome. Having 1,000 extra votes determine the outcome is just as arbitrary as anything else.