You stated it correctly, but I still have mixed feelings about our practice. We have elections in this way because we do not have primaries. In effect, Election Day is our primary, and we use runoffs to settle any races that aren't settled on election day. The good thing is that it does force a candidate to win with a majority and not to rely on like-minded opponents splitting their support.
The bad thing is that it led to the David Duke vs. Edwin Edwards debacle back in the early 90's. In this system, a crook or a kook who can put together a motivated group of supporters can reach the runoff with the support of only about 20% of the voters. This strategy depends on there being a fairly large field of weak candidates, but an open primary of this kind can often give a large field of weak candidates. As each one draws his little circle of voters, they keep any from being strong enough to beat the crook or kook.
In any case, I feel pretty good about tomorrow. I'm supporting Tony Perkins, and I think he's having a late surge. Even if he doesn't make the runoff, I'm very happy with the other two Republicans.
WFTR
Bill