Title: Politics Transformed? Electoral Competition under Ranked Choice Voting

 Abstract: We compare multi-candidate elections under plurality rule versus ranked choice voting (RCV). In our framework candidates choose whether to pursue a narrow campaign that targets their base, or instead pursue a broad campaign that can appeal to the entire electorate. We find that RCV generally intensifies candidates’ incentives to target their base at the expense of a broader appeal. We also unearth circumstances in which RCV increases the probability that a candidate who would lose any pairwise contest nonetheless wins a multi-candidate contest.