Yes it encourages bipartisan voting. It encourages 3rd party voting only when you know the 3rd party will be eliminated before the two major parties, otherwise

Yes it encourages bipartisan voting. It encourages 3rd party voting only when you know the 3rd party will be eliminated before the two major parties, otherwise you risk your lesser-of-two-evils choice being eliminated instead. IRV for single winner elections is nearly as awful as first past the post. Last time I brought up condorcet someone pointed out it has problems too, but they're not as bad. Switching all rep voting to multi winner, rather than one winner per district, solves some of the election problems (and makes gerrymandering a lot less significant), and for single winner like president or governor the ultimate solution is range voting which ends up strategically collapsing to approval voting. So basically people who want to can range vote, but practically everyone will vote Yes/max for all candidates they can stomach and no/0 for candidates they can't. That seems simple but the obvious effect is that good 3rd parties can be voted for without "wasting" your vote. Therefore a few good third parties would flourish and start winning city and state elections, not just in crazy districts or once in a blue moon, but regularly whenever Reps/Dems have lost touch.