Duverger's Law holds that plurality elections will give you two parties. Washington uses a top-two primary system which means our insurance commissioner, who has held the office since 2001, is running against this guy. (He's 36) Note that the dude who channels the ghost of Nixon won a slot in the top two because he's Republican. The Libertarian guy was actually more qualified but I mean... he's a Libertarian.
There were a couple of these in our election this year, but this entry definitely won the Weirdo Award. I can't even comprehend what he is offering... that he's going to abdicate his elected role and divest the decision making power to a group of 168 college students? And why 168? And... oh never mind.
Back when the way you swapped samples for your sampler was mailing CDRs across the country, I ended up befriending a dude about 15 miles away. He loved k-pop back before BTS was born. Interesting guy. Anyway I'm leafing through the voter guide and there he is, the libertarian candidate for lieutenant governor. So I call him up despite the fact that it was 10:30 at night. "Dude - you're running for lieutenant governor?" (yawns) "Uhm... I think so?" "No dude you're right here in the voter guide." "Oh yeah. yeah, I am." "As a libertarian?" "Yeah dude I go to their meetings. Someone's gotta run for everything. We draw straws." "You drew the short straw so now you're the libertarian candidate for lieutenant governor?" "Yeah!" "Uhm... okay. So why should I vote for you?" "'cuz we're buddies!" "Yeah but do you have like, policies in mind or anything?" "Well we're against big government." "...gotcha. Lemme think about it." He was not elected lieutenant governor.
Yeah I think you'd need a transition period. It's still a winner-take-all election, so people will generally split along the two party lines. Multi-member districts with rank-choice voting (at least in theory) break the winner-take-all approach. That dude is awesome though. I might vote for him anyway, since he has many of the powers of Jefferson.