From taboo to tactic: How strategic voting could shake up this election

CBC

28-03-2025

West of Centre is a weekly podcast about the priorities, preoccupations and politics of Canadians living in the West. Listen here or wherever you find your podcasts.
Alvin Finkel still remembers the day he was kicked out of the NDP.
The lifelong New Democrat from Edmonton had been running a website during Alberta's 2012 provincial election to consolidate progressive votes behind certain Liberal, NDP and Alberta Party candidates.
His hope was that "strength in numbers" might help turn the tide against the then-dominant Progressive Conservatives and their rising rival, the Wildrose Party.
About 50 like-minded volunteers joined his cause, obsessing over polling data and fanning out across key ridings in Edmonton and Calgary to count lawn signs for each party, pinpointing non-conservative candidates with a real shot at victory.
The argument was simple: if left-of-centre urban voters concentrated their ballots behind one person, rather than splitting between three parties, they stood a better chance of winning.
It's a much-maligned practice known as strategic voting — and among smaller political parties, it's borderline heresy.
"All parties have this notion that you're supposed to park your brains at the front door and assume that your party could win," he said.
"It's a fairy tale."
For his efforts, Finkel was given the orange boot — for a while anyway. He was eventually let back into the party in 2016.
So imagine his bewilderment this month when he heard about Cheryl Oates's appearance on CBC Radio, where she openly mused about voting Liberal in the upcoming federal election.
Oates, who served as a top aide for Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley from 2015 to 2019, admitted during an Alberta at Noon call-in show that she'd consider voting strategically to block a Conservative win.
"I've been an NDP supporter for a really long time," she said on March 10. "But I really, really don't want Pierre Poilievre to be the next prime minister."
Finkel says he never expected that sentiment from hardcore party faithfuls like Oates because "those are the kinds of the people who threw me out of the NDP."
Yet as the federal campaign heats up, the perennial debate over strategic voting — choosing a less-preferred party to block a more-disliked one — has resurfaced. If current polling holds, it could loom larger on voting day.
Finkel believes his 2012 initiative helped the Alberta NDP narrowly capture two of its four seats that year. But some observers say a similar strategy might now boost Mark Carney's Liberals at the expense of the NDP on the federal stage.
Just this week, former federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair wrote an editorial in Bloomberg urging voters on the left —including those who normally vote NDP, Bloc or Green — to consider this election a two-party race.
"One thing is clear is this election is more and more shaping up to look like it's a binary choice," said Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown about the choice between Poilievre and Carney.
"The NDP has got to just focus on … saving the deck chairs, making sure they come out of this with official party status," she told CBC host Kathleen Petty on West of Centre.
In the last federal election, 217 of 338 ridings were won with less than 50 per cent of the vote. That suggests the numbers exist in many districts for strategic voting to make a difference.
Polarization, tight race and high stakes
Sometimes, voters don't choose the party they like best. They pick their second — or even third — preference if it helps defeat their least-favourite option.
While skepticism abounds regarding the practicalities of strategic voting, those who have studied the phenomenon in Canada agree this election might have set the right conditions for it to play a role in the outcome.
Razor-thin margins, polarization and concerns over U.S. policy are all potential motivating factors, said Jean-François Daoust, who teaches political science at the University of Sherbrooke.
He co-wrote a 2020 paper on the motivations behind strategic voting, using provincial survey data from Ontario in 2011, Quebec in 2012 and federal data from 2015.
His study suggests that while only around seven to 12 per cent of voters fit the "strategic" definition overall, that small group can tip close races.
"They tend to come from small parties. So even if it's a few percentage points, if it's a tight race, it can be important," he explained to West of Centre, adding that those voters are especially motivated if they severely dislike the alternative frontrunner.
In practice, the study suggests this could translate to a concentrated 20 to 35 per cent of "non-viable" party supporters engaging in strategic voting.
Daoust says when it's a close race — especially with two major parties at the top — strategic voting tends to rise because voters don't want to "waste" their ballot.
In the current election cycle, he said, a key question then becomes whether the NDP under Jagmeet Singh has become "non-viable."
Recent polling data suggests NDP support has dropped sharply since Justin Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader.
Already, the Liberals have recruited notable New Democrats, including former Vancouver mayor and NDP MLA Gregor Robertson and Alberta NDP MLA Rod Loyola, possibly signalling to NDP supporters they're free to switch parties.
Political strategist Jean-Marc Prevost, who worked as a staffer for NDP provincial governments in Alberta and Manitoba, says the move also allows the Liberal Party to evoke a sense of stability for voters.
"That's hearkening to a more stable time — remembering the faces that we used to see around the cabinet table or in politics at a time when things seemed more certain in the world," he said on the West of Centre podcast.
What about right-of-centre parties?
Those who switch between voting Liberal and Conservative go by many names: centrists, "red Tories," "blue Liberals," fiscal conservatives, pragmatists and so on.
They are, however, not typically considered the same kind of strategic voters as those on the farther ends of the political spectrum, since neither of their top choices — Conservative or Liberal — is generally viewed as "non-viable," except in a few historic blips and parts of the country.
In other words, though these "squishy middle" voters may feel they're making a strategic choice, they're simply voting for a party that best represents them at a moment in time.
Theoretically then, it's those who support a smaller party ranking in third place or lower who "strategically" park their vote with a different party.
However, choices are slimmer for conservative or farther right-of-centre voters following the "unite the right" merger between the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance in 2003.
A far-right voter might choose the Conservatives over the People's Party of Canada (PPC) to stop a Liberal or NDP candidate. Daoust said it comes down to "the ideological gap between my strategic option and the worst option I'm trying to block."
In 2021, the increase in support for the PPC, from 1.6 per cent to 4.9 per cent of the vote share, failed to win the party any seats in Parliament, but it didn't stop pundits from speculating that it may have cost the Conservatives a dozen or so ridings because of vote splitting.
In fact, during the campaign, former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole equated a vote for the PPC to a throwaway vote for Liberals — effectively asking PPC supporters to vote strategically for his more mainstream party.
But while strategic voting can help narrow the margin on either side, there is greater risk on the left for the move to backfire due to more fractured options, and therefore potential outcomes.
Public opinion researcher Mario Canesco, who runs Vancouver-based Research Co., points to several ridings in his jurisdiction — including Granville and Kingsway — where if enough NDP supporters decide to switch their vote to Liberal, it could contribute to their opposite desired outcome.
"So you could have a situation where if you're urging people to vote for a specific candidate or the other, the Conservatives could come through the middle and essentially win," Canesco said. "This was definitely more likely to be a factor when the Conservatives were riding significantly higher levels of public support."
Plenty of skeptics
Not everyone is convinced that strategic voting meaningfully alters election outcomes.
Trevor Harrison, a retired political sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, argues the efficacy of the practice can be overstated — especially when voters lack reliable, riding-level data to inform their choice.
"First, the people themselves who are voting aren't actually really sure," he said, noting that most Canadians only see national polling numbers, which can bear little resemblance to on-the-ground realities.
"They don't have great information about the accuracy of the polls," he said. "And they are also voting locally."
Without credible local surveys, voters can't reliably deduce which non-preferred candidate actually stands a better chance of beating the contender they dislike the most. That makes strategic voting a gamble — not a precise calculation.
"It's really complicated because you're trying to do all this in your head without actually having very much information," Harrison said.
In places where a party consistently dominates — such as many rural areas in Alberta that vote Conservative by wide margins — no amount of strategic voting can tip the scales.
Conversely, in a close three-way urban race, strategic balloting might matter, but only if voters can accurately guess which candidate is truly viable.
Malcolm Bird, who teaches political science at the University of Winnipeg, is similarly cautious about reading too much into dramatic polling shifts.
He points to the NDP's history of ups and downs — and questions the assumption that left-leaning voters will line up neatly behind the Liberals to block a Conservative win.
"I think for your average public sector, urban woman voter — OK, you're going to be able to convince her to vote [Liberal]," Bird said. "The bigger question for the progressives is actually getting working people to vote for them."
He says any "fear factor" around Poilievre or the Conservatives may not seal the deal.
Bird also points to the number of variables that are underrepresented in polling data, including the voting patterns of new Canadians living in suburbia.
"They tend to be more family-oriented ... more faith-oriented, and the Conservative Party is the only party that even has a place for people of faith," he said.
Poilievre says it's election day result that matters, not polling
12 hours ago
Duration 1:51
Divining one's own riding
Back in Edmonton, Finkel didn't let his NDP expulsion keep him from promoting strategic voting in the next provincial election.
He was back at it in 2015. That year, Notley's NDP unexpectedly formed government — ironically less from left-wing unity than a split in support between the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party.
Once those two parties merged into the United Conservative Party, it reclaimed a majority in 2019.
Finkel, a retired Athabasca University history professor, stayed dedicated to rallying votes against conservative candidates on all levels of government because, in his words: "I'm left-wing and want to preserve our social, environmental programs."
But he says anyone trying to make their ballot count strategically must focus on their own riding, especially in the final week of campaigning.
"This isn't like a [U.S.] presidential race," Finkel said. "We don't vote nationally in Canada."
This time, he's volunteering for the local NDP incumbent Heather McPherson, not the Liberals, because he believes the NDP is more viable in his riding of Edmonton Strathcona.
"There's a Calgary riding right now that has a Liberal MP. If I lived there I'd be tempted to vote for that fellow even though I don't think he's a great MP," he said. "But in my riding, the NDP has the best chance of winning here."
In other words, one of Alberta's best-known champions of strategic voting — and a one-time outcast from his own party for urging progressives to unite — won't be checking the Liberal challenger's box on April 28.