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John M. Avery, legislative reference librarian. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The top-two primary recently approved in several states in the U.S. eliminates the closed party primaries and creates instead a single ballot in which the Örst and second place winners pass to the general election. We conduct a theoretical analysis to compare the electoral consequences of the top-two primary with those of the closed primaries. Each primary procedure induces a sequential game with three stages: candidate-entry stage, primary election, and general election. We analyze the equilibria of these games and show that the top-two primary contributes to political moderation. In particular, when the median voter is an extremist, the closed primaries always generate an extreme winner and yet the top-two primary can generate an equilibrium with a moderate winner. Further- more, when the median voter is a moderate but his/her partyís median partisan is an extremist (and some additional mild conditions hold), the closed primaries always generate an extreme winner while the top-two primary always generates a moderate winner. We also show that the top-two primary may increase the number of swing states since, in certain cases, the party-affiliation of the winner under the top-two primary may not coincide with the party affiliation of the median voter