"The smart candidate (or party) will realise they can get more votes overall by wooing two separate factions"

In Aus here that game was played for decades - The Liberals (mostly city based) and the Nationals (mostly country based) - but in Qld only they joined to form the LNP (and seems to have largely stuck its head up its bum...). The Mayor of Brisbane recently resigned to become 'the leader of the State LNP'- pretty weird since he had no seat in parliament - election maybe 2 years away! Surely a ground breaking move for Westminster system style governments! (Yes, Qld is 'special' even for us Aussies!)


Then there was the DLP, that split the looney (and largely catholic) Right off the labor party, and worked with the lib/nat coalition to frustrate Labor for ages...