Strategic Voting (Part 1)
Influence of polls, examining the election process, and the lost vote
Chris
Oct 31, 2019
Be warned, this is a longer blog. My inspiration to write swelled when someone close to me said that they vote strategically in order to avoid having another party take leadership. I started thinking about the idea of strategic voting and how polls influence voters to vote strategically. I wanted to explore how Canada can promote sincere voting and why Canadians choose to cast a strategic vote. I ask many questions along the way because I strive for us to evolve our election process together, democratically.
Strategic voting and the influence of polls
Strategic voting (or tactical voting) is “the practice of casting one’s vote not for the party of one’s choice but for the second strongest contender in order to defeat the likeliest winner” (thefreedictionary.com). Also referred to as insincere voting, it “occurs in elections with more than two candidates, when a voter supports another candidate more strongly than their sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome” (Robin Farquharson, Theory of Voting, 1969).
Tactical voting relies on knowing how others are likely to vote. Lucky for us we have polls available on every medium telling us who Canadians want to vote for. Do polls alter voters’ individual decisions regarding who they want to vote for becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, and should they be prohibited?
The primary benefit of polls is to tell candidates and the political parties what the voter intention is, at a snapshot in time, so they can optimize their campaigns appropriately. This advantage only benefits the politicians themselves and provides them with data that can be used to manipulate Canadians. Polls predict the outcome of an election which serves no purpose to the people. Is this not the ultimate form of disinformation produced by media outlets and polling organizations?
Understanding the effectiveness of polls, they can be altered by providing false results or by structuring poll questions in such a way to provoke the desired result, referred to as the leading option. Polls influence voters in a negative way, and some say they can discourage voting altogether. Poll sample randomness can be constructive, but not conclusively, and more, you must consider the margin of sample error, conflicting sample populations, or the high possibility for people to change their minds.
Media outlets can perform polls but usually broadcast results from one of few major Canadian Polling Organizations as listed by country on Wikipedia:
Canadian polling and market research firm in Ottawa, founded by University of Calgary graduate (Ph.D., Political Science)
Canadian social and economic research company founded by Carleton University graduate; specialize in market research, public opinion research, strategic communications advice, program evaluation, and performance measurement
Canadian polling and market research firm based in Toronto and offices in Ottawa and Calgary
Canadian polling and market research firm based in Toronto, offices worldwide
Research company founded in Winnipeg, formally Angus Reid and now named Ipsos as the Canadian arm of the global Ipsos Group
Largest Canadian-owned polling and market research firm founded by former Minister of Environment, Marcel Leger
The question Canadians should ask is, are pollsters partisan? I won’t dig into these organizations in this article but will investigate this information for future posts and encourage you to do the same. If they have an end goal, they can be subject of confirmation bias, “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one’s prior beliefs or hypotheses” (Scott Plous, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, 1993). This can lead to the biased gathering or interpreting of political polls by polling organizations that have a partisan position.
Polls ruin the authenticity of our election process. They are examined so seriously and broadcast so often that it encourages voters to join the ‘groupthink’ bandwagon. The bandwagon effect is “a psychological theory where individuals will do something primarily because other individuals are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they will ignore or override” (businessdictionary.com). Side note: please read the remainder of the definition (link below) because ‘bullseye’.
Isn’t voting supposed to be an individual practice? Why do we even allow polling in our process when its sole purpose seems to be to manipulate undecided voters to vote for the presumed “leading candidate”.
Exit polls are especially dangerous because they can influence voters with real-time information in other time zones of the country with the shortest time between hearing the information and casting their ballot. In advertising, the closer to point of purchase you can affect the consumer with an ad, it is worth its weight in GOLD.
How do you think the outcome of the election would have changed if there were no polls to tell us that the LPC was leading or neck-in-neck with the CPC? Were Canadians gently pushed to vote for a Prime Minister with proven ethics violations, frivolous tax-payer spending, and scandals obsessively centered around race, in order to try and keep themselves in the “winning” majority?
How are we supposed to see real progress in this country when many Canadians believe we don’t have a road out of this “two-party system” so they vote to certify that their least desired party is beaten, by any means? There are perspectives that suggest that strategic voting is a form of lying on your ballot. If a vote is cast for a candidate other than the one the voter truly thinks is best for Canada, is this a “false” vote, and should we be concerned with a system that promotes this behaviour?
How do we encourage sincere voting?
A change to our election process is required. Mathispower4u (link below) explains three different election methods whereby three candidates could each win the same election depending on the method used. The Plurality method is the current method of the Elections Canada process and is also used in the US, UK, and India. This method asks each voter to vote for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins.
The Condorcet method provides the opportunity to rank each candidate and then determines how each candidate performs over the other two. I encourage you to watch the video to understand how an alternate candidate could win an election this way, even if they do not receive the highest number of first-rank votes.
The third method, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is also referred to as Plurality with Elimination, a modification of our current system addressing the insincere voting problem. In this method, candidates are ranked using a preference ballot and the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. Those that voted for the eliminated candidate have their vote redistributed to the candidate they ranked next highest. This process continues until a candidate has at least 50% of the vote or a majority. This method eliminates the strategic need to vote for a candidate you don’t believe in because if one’s first choice loses, their vote will simply be assigned to their next preferred option.
It is important to note that depending on the outcome you are trying to achieve, the method you choose to adopt can permit you to arrive at the desired result. However, regarding the urge for strategic voting, (the point of this discussion) it is best handled with the method of Instant Runoff Voting.
In future posts, I hope to discuss other issues like First Past The Post (FPTP or FPP) and its influence on creating a two-party system (Duverger’s Law) as experts say that strategic voting is a result of our FPTP system. I also plan to discuss other brainstorming ideas on how to evolve our election and voting process.
Why do Canadians feel the need to vote strategically?
“Many Canadians believe voting for a fringe party is a ‘lost vote’, because fringe parties will not win. Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact votes are lost when they’re cast for people other than your first choice.” (Randy Hillier, Quebecoislibre.org)
Lost votes are a sad reality of our current political climate where two parties tag-team our government. Since the inception of Canada’s elections, there has only ever been Prime Ministers elected from these two parties (or a modified version: see Liberal-Conservative Party, Unionist Party, and National Liberal and Conservative Party). To cast your vote is a seat at the table. For one day, you get to contribute to how our government protects our rights as Canadians. To use that voice to play a strategic game instead of standing up for what you believe in, is a waste and a tragedy.
“There is another consequence of strategic voting; electing second-rate candidates from “mainstream” parties lowers democracy’s overall standard and the quality of elected politicians” (Randy Hillier, Quebecoislibre.org)
How important is democracy to you? If you want to cast your vote, and your vote diminishes the standard by which we favour democracy, why cast a vote is the first place? Whether you believe in the party values or not, the reality that Canada re-elected a politician with as many violations and embarrassments as have been discovered, should wake up Canadians to the second-rate government we can expect from a strategic voting system.
“When people deny their first choice of a fringe party and choose an alternate, the perception arises that there are few people who share the values and principles of the fringe.” (Randy Hillier, Quebecoislibre.org)
Perception is created and exaggerated by few, powerful media cliques when they are armed with results of strategic votes reaffirming what the polls told them in the first place. It is a savage cycle. When voters break free from the need to vote insincerely and pay attention to their local candidates and party platforms, democracy will thrive.
In a supposed “two-party system”, if you vote Liberal to ensure Conservatives don’t get power, then next election you vote Conservative so Liberals don’t get power, you will never break the two-party system. It’s not their fault they keep disappointing Canadians, because you tell them you agree with their policies with your vote.
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Mathispower4u, Voting Theory: Insincere Voting / Strategic Voting
Mathispower4u, Voting Theory: Instant Runoff Voting
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