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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 voting method used to elect a single winner. In the United States, it is often called a jungle or nonpartisan primary. It is sometimes called plurality runoff,[2] although this term can also be used for other systems.
In a two-round system, both rounds are held using choose-one voting, where the voter marks their 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] It is closely related to exhaustive ballot and ranked-choice voting (which tend to produce similar results).
The two-round system first emerged in France, and has since become the most common single-winner electoral system worldwide.[3][1] The two-round system is widely used in the election of legislative bodies and directly elected presidents.
In the United States, the system is used to elect most public officials from Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, California, and Washington. Although it is hoped that two rounds will elect more moderate candidates and encourage independents to vote, the combination of a two-party system with partisan primaries used in the rest of the country can produce similar results,[4][5] and has even been described as an "unusual two-round system".[6][7]
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
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.
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.
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