Selecting the Condorcet Winner: single-stage versus multi-stage voting rules

In this paper, I study elections where voters are strategic. I find that the commonly used voting rules, such as Plurality Rule, Majority Rule, Approval Voting, and Single Transferable Vote, do not always select the Condorcet Winner and suffer from multiple equilibria. Multi-stage voting rules offer a way to get around this problem. I introduce two voting rules—Multi-Stage Runoff and the Nominate-Two Rule—that select the Condorcet Winner as the unique equilibrium outcome under mild conditions. I show that a third class of voting rules—Binary Voting Trees—also select the Condorcet Winner.