Run-Off Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Run-off electoral systems use two rounds of voting to select a single winner. The first round eliminates some of the candidates, while the second round chooses between the remaining candidates. Run-off elections are commonly used to elect presidents. Indeed, with the adoption of run-off systems by many South American and eastern European countries since 1980, most countries with directly elected presidents now use some kind of run-off electoral system. Run-off elections are used also in legislative and local elections in places such as France and Louisiana.

The most common form of run-off elections has the first round eliminate all but the top two vote-getters, who then compete in the second round (unless one candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round). There are variations, however. For example, in Argentina if any candidate gets 45 percent of the vote in the first round, or 40 percent with a 10 percent margin of victory over their nearest competitor, that candidate is elected without a second round.

It is possible to replace the two rounds of elections by having voters indicate their first and second choices on their ballot paper, and then automatically transferring the votes of voters whose preferred candidate is eliminated in the first round. This is known as alternative vote, preferential vote or, in the United States, instant run-off elections. This method is used in legislative elections in Australia and in municipal elections in a number of countries.

A related electoral system is sequential elimination, in which multiple rounds of voting eliminate the lowest vote getter in each round. This is commonly used to elect party leaders in legislatures.

The advantages claimed for run-off elections over simple plurality elections are that the results have more legitimacy because a majority has voted for the winning candidate, and that it is less likely that an extremist candidate will be elected with only narrow support because of a split opposition. Both of these claims are only partially true. While the run-off winner must win a majority of votes in the run-off, a majority may prefer some (or even all) of the candidates eliminated in the first round to the eventual winner. Even when there is a candidate clearly preferred by a majority, also known as a Condorcet winner, run-off elections will not necessarily elect the candidate. Indeed simulations suggest that run-off elections often will not select the preferred representative, although run-off elections seem to do better in this regard than simple plurality, as noted by political scientist Samuel Merrill in 1984.

It is also not the case that run-off elections necessarily will choose moderate candidates. It is possible for all the moderate candidates to be eliminated in the first round, and for the voters to be forced to choose between two relatively polarized candidates in the second round. Simulations suggest this outcome is likely, although once again plurality elections seem to produce more extreme outcomes, as observed by Anthony McGann and colleagues in 2002.

It has been observed since Maurice Duverger’s analysis of political parties in 1954 that plurality elections tend to reduce the number of serious candidates to two. There is no reason to expect run-off systems to have this effect, although systems that allow first round victory with less than 50 percent may promote some consolidation. Empirically it appears that runoff presidential elections are associated with a higher effective number of candidates than plurality elections, as argued by Matthew Shugart and Rein Taagepera in 1994.This is consistent with the hypothesis that plurality elections create incentives for candidate consolidation, although some, including the analysts Karen Remmer (2008) and Stephen Callender (2009), have suggested that the causation runs the other way. Others such as Matthew Shugart and John Carey (1992) prefer plurality elections for electing presidents in order to reduce the number of candidates and eliminate extremists, while others would consider increasing the choice available to voters a reason for preferring run-off elections.

Run-off electoral systems are not monotonic—it is possible that winning extra votes can harm a candidate. For example, if French President Jacques Chirac had won 195,000 extra first round votes in 2002 at the expense of Jean-Marie Le Pen (the Front National candidate), Le Pen would not have made the run-off, and Chirac would have faced a far harder challenge in the second round. In 1996, Dominique Lepelley and colleagues estimated that the probability of such situations is small but potentially influential.

Bibliography:

Callander, Steven. “Duverger’s Hypothesis, the Run-off Rule, and Electoral Competition.” Political Analysis 13, no. 3 (2005): 209–232.
Duverger, Maurice. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. London: Methuen, 1954.
Lepelley, Dominique, Frédéric Chantreuil, and Sven Berg. “The Likelihood of Monotonicity Paradoxes in Run-off Elections.” Mathematical Social Sciences 31, no. 3 (1996): 133–146.
McGann, Anthony,William Koetzle, and Bernard Grofman. “How an Ideologically Concentrated Minority Can Trump a Dispersed Majority: Nonmedian Voter Results for Plurality, Run-off, and Sequential Elimination Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 1 (2002): 134–148.
Merrill, Samuel, III. “A Statistical Model for Condorcet Efficiency Based on Simulations under Spatial Model Assumptions.” Public Choice 47, no. 2 (1984): 389–403.
Remmer, Karen. “Electoral Reform in Latin America, 1978–2002.” Party Politics 14, no. 1 (2008): 5–30.
Shugart, Matthew, and John Carey. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Shugart, Matthew, and Rein Taagepera. “Plurality versus Majority Election of Presidents: A Proposal for a ‘Double Complement Rule.’” Comparative Political Studies 27 (October 1994): 323–348.

This example Run-Off Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.