Impact On Factions and Candidates
Runoff voting encourages candidates to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters. This is because, in order to win an absolute majority in the second round, it is necessary for a candidate to win the support of voters whose favourite candidate has been eliminated. Under runoff voting, between rounds of voting eliminated candidates, and the factions who previously supported them, often issue recommendations to their supporters as to who to vote for in the second round of the contest. This means that eliminated candidates are still able to influence the result of the election. This influence leads to political bargaining between the two remaining candidates and the parties and candidates who have been eliminated, sometimes resulting in the two successful candidates making policy concessions to the less successful ones. Because it encourages concilliation and negotiation in these ways runoff voting is advocated, in various forms, by some supporters of deliberative democracy.
Runoff voting is designed for single seat constituencies. Therefore, like other single seat methods, if used to elect a council or legislature it will not produce proportional representation (PR). This means that it is likely to lead to the representation of a small number of larger parties in an assembly, rather than a proliferation of small parties. In practice runoff voting produces results very similar to those produced by the plurality system, and encourages a two party system similar to those found in many countries that use plurality. Under a parliamentary system it is more likely to produce single party governments than are PR systems, which tend to produce coalition governments. While runoff voting is designed to ensure that each individual candidate elected is supported by a majority of those in their constituency, if used to elect an assembly it does not ensure this result on a national level. As in other non-PR systems, the party or coalition which wins a majority of seats will often not have the support of an absolute majority of voters across the nation.
Read more about this topic: Two-round System
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