Strategic (sic) Voting

[c9]

Everybody in Canada goes on and on about strategic voting, which is actually misnamed. It should be called tactical voting, since it's a single tactic contrary to your overall interests, exercised individually, not an overarching strategy commanded centrally and consistently over time.

But anyway. The gist is this: You like Party A, then party B second, then Party C third. A has no chance of winning, so you vote B to ensure that C doesn't win. Most commonly, A=NDP, B=Liberal, and C=Conservative.

The problem is most people forget that a Canadian election is really 308 little elections, and the national polls don't matter. So Joe Canadian thinks A has no chance *nationally*, so he votes B, even though in his riding A would have won if they had his vote. This happened all over last time, to the NDP's detriment (and the Liberals' amusingly, since a stronger NDP would have meant they could form a stable coalition).

So if you must vote "strategically," please make sure you know what you're doing. Learn more here.

Comments

[c9.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand. Like A bribing people to vote differently? Or more like federal subsidies?

[rostin79.livejournal.com]

Either or both, i'd guess. I hear of it happening here (though I haven't seen actual proof, but it woudln't shock me). In whatever legal ways possible, if the race really is between A and B, yet C is competing, where either group B will indirectly help out group C to pull away votes from A. Basically the dirty politics that becomes some sort of misrepresentation of what people actually want (since it is easy to sway people when you have nough money).

[c9.livejournal.com]

Well, very indirect stuff happens sometimes. It's so tricky though, since every riding is different. Probably it's one of those under the table things in isolated ridings.