First and foremost, the Two-Round System (TRS) allows voters to have a second choice for their chosen candidate, or even to change their minds on their favoured choice between the first and the second rounds. It thus shares some features with preferential systems like the Alternative Vote (AV) (see Alternative Vote), in which voters are asked to rank candidates, while also enabling voters to make a completely fresh choice in the second round if they so desire. Secondly, it encourages diverse interests to coalesce behind the successful candidates from the first round in the lead-up to the second round of voting, thus encouraging bargains and trade-offs between parties and candidates.
TRS also enables the parties and the electorate to react to changes in the political landscape that occur between the first and the second rounds of voting. In addition, TRS systems lessen the problems of 'vote splitting', the common situation under First Past the Post (FPTP) elections where two similar parties 'split' their combined vote between them, thus allowing a less popular candidate to win the seat. Finally, because electors do not have to rank candidates with numbers to express their second choice, TRS may be better suited to countries with widespread illiteracy than systems which use preferential numbering like the AV or the Single Transferable Vote (see Single Transferable Vote).
