There is a persistent myth amongst some political commentators that strategic voting actually plays a big role in the outcome of elections. There are some commentators that even state that strategic voting is the reason why the Liberals won the last election and the election before. The argument goes something like this: Progressive voters voted for the Liberals instead of the more progressive NDP because they wanted to prevent a Conservative government. That assertion is silly. Although strategic voting certainly does happen its impact on the overall result of elections is negligible.
There are three types of voters. Note that I am only including those voters who vote regularly and I am ignoring the approximately 35% of eligible voters who do not bother to vote on a regular basis.
The first type are the ones that vote for a given party out of habit (I have always voted for the NDP.) or out of tradition (My grandfather voted Conservative and my father voted Conservative. What's good enough for them is good enough for me.). These voters pay little attention to what their parties are doing in between elections or the direction their party would like to take the country. Many of these voters are unaware of the fact that the parties their parents and grandparents supported back in the day no longer exist. They are completely different but that does not concern them.
This is the largest block of voters. They make up the base of each of the political parties. They are not all partisans of those parties. Most do not think about politics in between elections but when it comes time to mark their X on the ballot paper, on election day, they will vote for the party they have always voted for, regardless of what happened in between elections and what happened during a given election campaign.
The base of each party is approximately:
- 30% for the Conservatives
- 30% for the Liberals
- 15% for the NDP
- 5% for the Greens
- 5% for other parties
The Bloc really does not have a base. It is a political fact that francophone Quebecers are the most fickle voters in Canada. You never know which way they will jump so you cannot depend on them to always support your party. Contrast that to anglophone Quebecers who are a dependable part of the Liberal base. It was anglophone Quebecers that prevented the Liberals from losing Official Party status in 2011.
So if you look at the base of each of the parties it adds up to around 85% of the electorate.
The next largest portion of the electorate are what I call the unaligned voters. They are the voters that will vote for a party during a given election or vote against a party during a given election and how they vote next time may be totally different. These voters are only slightly more informed than the base voters for each party. These voters will switch their vote but that switch is usually the result of feelings as opposed to logic and research of the platforms of each political party. These voters only trust the Conservative and the Liberals to govern the country and they will break for either party on election day in sufficient numbers to hand either one the victory. They broke for the Liberals in 2015 and for the Conservatives in 2011. That is not to say they will all vote for the winner but enough of them will vote for a party to push them over the top. There are exceptions, the 2019 election being one of them, where this non-aligned vote will split evenly making the election about vote efficiency for the parties over the number of votes they receive.
Of the 15% of the non-aligned vote probably around 14% of that will vote for the party they believe will be the best one to govern the country or against the party they do not want to govern.
That leaves about 1% who will decide to vote strategically. They will have a party they absolutely want to prevent from forming a government and they will attempt to find out which of the parties in their riding has the best shot at preventing a candidate from that party they do not want to form government from winning. Of course, this is a hit and miss proposition because most voters do not know which party is leading in their riding as riding polls are hopelessly unreliable. The result, in most cases, of strategic voting is failure in preventing the party you do not want to win from winning.
Strategic voting exists but it is not as prevalent as some would believe and its impact on elections is not as large as those same people would hope.
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