Advancing to a runoff means you didn’t win outright in the first election, but you did well enough to move on to a second, head‑to‑head round to decide the final winner.

What “advancing to runoff” means

  • In many elections, a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote to win in the first round.
  • If no one reaches that threshold, the top two vote‑getters “advance to a runoff,” which is a separate follow‑up election held later.
  • In that runoff, voters choose between just those finalists, guaranteeing that one of them gets a majority and becomes the winner.

So if you see a result saying “Candidate X advanced to a runoff,” it means they’re still in the race and will face the other top candidate in a final deciding election.

Quick example

  • Imagine three candidates: A, B, and C.
  • First round result: A gets 40%, B gets 35%, C gets 25% — no one is over 50%.
  • A and B, as the top two, advance to a runoff where voters pick between only A and B to decide the winner.

TL;DR: “Advancing to runoff” = you’re one of the top finishers in the first round and move on to a final, separate election where the winner is decided between the remaining leading candidates.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.