Does party polarization affect the electoral prospects of a new centrist candidate? The paper investigates this question in the context of a laboratory experiment where a centrist candidate is added to the race between a left candidate and a right candidate. The experimental design varies the...

Countries that elect their policy-makers by means of Plurality Voting tend to have a two-party system. This observation can be explained by the strategic behavior of voters. The present paper derives two broad classes of voting procedures under which strategic voting behavior induces a two-party...