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Electoral systems |
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The two-round system (TRS or 2RS), also called ballotage, top-two runoff, or two-round plurality (as originally termed in French[1]), is a single winner voting method. It is sometimes called plurality-runoff,[2] although this term can also be used for other, closely-related systems such as ranked-choice voting or the exhaustive ballot (which typically produce similar results). In a two-round system, both rounds are held under choose-one voting, where the voter marks a single favorite candidate. The two candidates with the most votes in the first round proceed to a second round, where all other candidates are excluded.[note 1]
The two-round system first emerged in France, and has since become the most common single-winner electoral system worldwide.[1][3] The two-round system is widely used in the election of legislative bodies and directly elected presidents. Despite this, the rule has received substantial criticism from social choice theorists, leading to the rise of electoral reform movements seeking to abolish it in France and elsewhere.
In the United States, the system is often called a jungle or nonpartisan primary. It is used to elect most public officials in Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, California, and Washington, with a variant in Alaska using a ranked-choice runoff between 4 candidates. In the rest of the country, the use of partisan primaries paired with the two-party system is structurally similar and is often described as a de facto two-round system.[4][5][6]
Although advocates hoped the two-round method would elect more moderates and encourage turnout among independents, research has shown the method has little to no effect when compared to partisan primaries,[7][8] or with systems that only require a single round such as ranked-choice voting.[9][10] Research by social choice theorists has long identified all these systems as vulnerable to center squeezes, a kind of spoiler effect favoring extremists in crowded elections.[11][12][4]
Finally, we should not discount the role of primaries. When we look at the range of countries with first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections (given no primaries), none with an assembly larger than Jamaica's (63) has a strict two-party system. These countries include the United Kingdom and Canada (where multiparty competition is in fact nationwide). Whether the U.S. should be called 'FPTP' itself is dubious, and not only because some states (e.g. Georgia) hold runoffs or use the alternative vote (e.g. Maine). Rather, the U.S. has an unusual two-round system in which the first round winnows the field. This usually is at the intraparty level, although sometimes it is without regard to party (e.g. in Alaska and California).
American elections become a two-round run-off system with a delay of several months between the rounds.
In effect, the primary system means that the USA has a two-round runoff system of elections.
The idea was that by opening up primaries to all voters, regardless of party, a flood of new centrist voters would arrive. That would give moderate candidates a route to victory .. Candidates did not represent voters any better after the reforms, taking positions just as polarized as they did before the top two. We detected no shift toward the ideological middle.
Two groups that were predicted by advocates to increase their participation in response to this reform—those registered with third parties or no-party-preference registrants (independents) who were not guaranteed a vote in any party's primary before the move to the top-two—also show declines in turnout
However, squeezed by surrounding opponents, a centrist candidate may receive few first-place votes and be eliminated under Hare.
the 'squeeze effect' that tends to reduce Condorcet efficiency if the relative dispersion (RD) of candidates is low. This effect is particularly strong for the plurality, runoff, and Hare systems, for which the garnering of first-place votes in a large field is essential to winning
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