Strategic Voting by Trudeau in the 2015 Federal Election

TerryT, have you not read ( or understood) anything anyone else has said on this thread?

Winston wrote:

 You are absolutely free to make that choice, however much I believe it to be a false choice.

Whatever,we can agree to disagree and I believe your choice is misguided at best. Good luck.

Winston wrote:

alan smithee wrote:

Winston wrote:

 You are absolutely free to make that choice, however much I believe it to be a false choice.

Whatever,we can agree to disagree and I believe your choice is misguided at best. Good luck.

My choice to vote NDP is misguided? Then enjoy the new security measures Harper and Trudeau are both pushing through the House, brother.

Could you point me to where Trudeau has approved the new security measures Harper wants?

A_J wrote:

The problem with a lot of these conversations about strategic voting is that people start to blame it for everything. People didn't vote the way you wanted? Strategic voting! Your candidate lost? Strategic voting!

Case in point:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

In the name of strategic voting, people in Regina Qu'apelle voted for the third-place Liberal even though their incumbent MP was an NDP MP, and wound up electing a Conservative. In the name of strategic voting, voters in Trinity-Spadina voted Liberal to stop a PC candidate who couldn't even make back the deposit. In the name of strategic voting, people in Oshawa voted for the third-place Liberals to stop the Conservatives from winning. In the name of strategic voting, voters in Huron-Bruce voted Liberal and Conservative to stop the other party, and paved the way for that riding to become a Conservative stronghold. In the name of strategic voting, people in Bramalea-Gore-Malton voted for the third-place Liberals to block a Conservative.

The worst is this notion that there is a correct, or natural, way for voters to vote - and strategic voting steers them away from this. So Stockholm believes that the NDP are entitled to Trinity-Spadina, voters there are supposed to vote NDP and the only reason Adam Vaughan won was ... strategic voting and nothing else.

In my portion of the quote, what I implied was that in each case, the primary reason for people voting for the Liberals in each case was to stop the Conservatives, even though there turned out to be other options available. In the Huron-Bruce case, people voted strategically to keep the Liberals and Conservatives out.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence as well. In the last federal election, I talked to 4 voters in Winnipeg South Centre who felt they had to vote Liberal to fend off the Conservative surge even though they wanted to support better options and the MP in question hadn't done much for that riding.

terrytowel wrote:

“Strategic voting had a lot to do with it,” said a disappointed Bob Biderman, a retired teacher wearing a “It’s Chow Time” t-shirt. “I heard over and over again from people that they prefer Olivia but voted John Tory because they didn’t want to see the Fords. We couldn’t stop that.

“Tory positioned himself as the one to vote for if you wanted to get rid of the Fords.”

Asked what lost her the election, Chow agreed strategic voting was her downfall.

“There was a big movement to say ‘No’ to Ford and John had a very strong, simple message about his transit plan,” she told the media after her concession speech. “I think there was a lot of noise from the anti-Fords.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/27/strategic-voting-was-olivia-chows-d...

Terry towel. This is anecdotal. Where is your academic, peer-reviewed study that supports your opinion? Its an opinion, Terry towel. Well?

Secondly, are you prepared, right now, right here on these pages, to say that any Liberal in any riding where the NDP is clearly the only one who can beat a Tory that the Liberal and Green supporters MUST vote for the New Democrat? Its yes, or, no.

Well?

ETA: in YOUR riding, where you said you were going to vote Green, is the New Democrat number two? If so, how do you justify voting Green?

janfromthebruce wrote:

Strategic Failure

 

As the designated curmudgeon against Strategic Voting in numerous news stories throughout this election, readers might not be surprised to see me comment on its poor success rate afterwards.

I fully expected to do so, noting the disappointment of the various groups at their incorrect calls and the evident reelection of the Conservative government with a majority mandate.

However, now I'm being told that the groups view their efforts as being a success, and that they're planning to repeat them all over ahead next time. Oh brother. I think we need to be really clear on their record in that case.

The problem with the strategic voting websites is that their electoral analysis was incompetent and utterly wrong in most of the ridings where it could be said to have mattered — leading to incorrect recommendations in many cases where it would have made a difference, and no recommendations in others that were overlooked.

Largely the reviews of the sites' performance have concentrated on whether they made the right calls or not in their "key ridings" (an example from the "Data Journalism" blog expanded that a bit; here's another from Erin Weir at Progressive-Economics.ca, UPDATE: and one I missed earlier from the Jurist at Accidental Deliberations).

But the issue also needs to be raised about their calls in the ridings that wound up being key, but which they missed identifying; or in the ridings where they declared the seats to be safe that actually turned over.

Because strategic failure is the reason!

They failed because they really were about electing only Liberals.

This whole SV talk is nonsense. Its ONLY about electing Liberals. Same as ABC. Its ONLY about electing Liberals.

Terry towel, just like we on the left demand of the right, I'd like your link to a peer reviewed study that confirms  your opinon. SV is ONLY about electing Liberals. You know that.

ETA: OK, i'l amend that slightly. In 2011 Liberals voted Conservative to ensure Harper got elected over Jack Layton. OK, its about electing anyone but New Democrats. It really ought to be called ABN.

terrytowel wrote:

Arthur when Kyle Rae said in 2003 to vote David Miller to STOP John Tory, was that to vote Liberal?

When Judy Wasylycia-Leis supporters urged Winnpeg to vote for her to STOP Brian Bowman, was that to Liberal?

Terry Towel, its about voting in Liberals. Liberals could have voted in the NDP in Ontarion in 2011; they didn't. It doesn't matter what you argue, its clear Libs want Libs or NOT NDP. I don't know why you insist otherwise. That is the ONLY reason that this has become such a prominent topic. The Libs NEVER talked abut this when they could win without it. SV means acting out of fear. I don't do fear. I do concience.

terrytowel wrote:

That is great, however I do fear because I don't another four years of ...

Hear, hear.

Use your smarts, people.

jas wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

That is great, however I do fear because I don't another four years of ...

Hear, hear.

Use your smarts, people.

Translation, "VOTE LIBERAL".

jas wrote:

Arthur Cramer wrote:

Translation, "VOTE LIBERAL".

In some ridings, yes. Vote NDP in others. You have to do some research. You have to use your brains a little bit.

Just walking into the polls with a glowing orange or red heart in a riding where your candidate has no chance in hell of winning, and has only stepped forward to be a placeholder, giving them that vote when the other candidate has a much better chance is allowing the Conservative to win with a minority of votes.

There's NO difference between the Libs and the Tories. I've had many years to arrive at this conclusion, having experienced it first hand. Don't tell me about using my brians. Anyone who uses their brain NEVER votes Liberal, EVER. You know nothing about me, stop being so dismissive and patronizing.

I know what SV is. I am suspicious of the manner in which it has become so prominent. I am suspcious of its advocates and their motivations. That is why I keep talking about voting out of fear. I have NEVER done anything as an Adult out of fear. I'm not planning on starting now. At least the Tories are honest about being Assholes. I'll give them that.

I really just wanted to express that, in our case, I think there is a lesser of two evils, and my feeling that we are at a desperate point in history right now with Harper, and this requires desperate measures.

Arthur Cramer wrote:

There's NO difference between the Libs and the Tories.

They just have 2 different parties in order to justify the existence of Strategic Voting websites, right? I suspected as much...

Stephen Harper, Stéphane Dion, identical, right? Same first name?

Thank God Jack Layton never subscribed to such simplistic partisan idiocy.

Quote:

I've had many years to arrive at this conclusion, having experienced it first hand.

As opposed to the rest of us?

By the way, you've also experienced decades of NDP rule at "first hand".

One NDP premier got rewarded by the Liberals, who appointed him Governor-General the very year after he lost his election.

Another NDP premier just couldn't wait to lose an election. He got appointed ambassador to the U.S. by Stephen Harper, while he was still serving as head of the elected NDP government.

Notwithstanding that, there are significant differences between the NDP and the others, and between Liberals and Conservatives, and much depends on when and where and in which domain. To activists and progressives, these differences are vital in evaluating where to put pressure, how to mobilize, how to influence policy shifts. To cheerleading partisans, the only difference that matters is who wears orange and who doesn't.

Quote:

Don't tell me about using my brians.

Mulroney or Bowman?? I don't understand.

jas wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence as well. In the last federal election, I talked to 4 voters in Winnipeg South Centre who felt they had to vote Liberal to fend off the Conservative surge even though they wanted to support better options and the MP in question hadn't done much for that riding.

Winnipeg South Centre had been Liberal for over 20 years, and for large chunks of time before that. It has been mostly a Liberal riding. It has never been NDP. The strategic vote there was Liberal, and the stats bear that out. Dennis Lewycky, while a great community activist, was still politically unknown.

You're right, Winnipeg South Centre HAD been a Liberal seat, but it isn't any more. You totally missed what I was saying. These anti-Conservative voters I was talking about were thinking that a non-Liberal candidate would be more in line with their views, but they felt they had to vote Liberal to stop the Conservatives without the Liberals doing anything in return. If the Liberals and Anita Neville had actually done a good job representing that riding, then Anita Neville would still be the Liberal MP. They didn't, and they deserved to lose. This particular constituency gets even more ironic when you note that Joyce Bateman was a Liberal before, and had she won a Liberal nomination everyone would have rallied around her to stop Harper. So how is it that the same person people could have rallied around as a Liberal is the same person who had to be stopped as a Conservative?

jas wrote:

Winston wrote:

All this talk of strategic voting and uniting "progressives" is self-serving and intellectually lazy. The Tories keep winning for one reason alone: they repeatedly succeed in collecting the most votes. 

Wrong. Good lord.

How is that wrong?

jas wrote:

Quote:

The only way to get rid of them is to convince people to stop voting Tory.

That's exactly what ABC is. Stop voting Conservative. Stop letting them slide through the divide.

Actually, no. Strategic voting ignores Conservaive voters and assumes that you can play around with the opponent's votes and add them up to stop the Conservatives. It doesn't work that way. There are just as many reasons for voting as there are voters, and as Winston said, you cannot assume that if you remove the NDP candidate in the riding, that these voters would automatically go Liberal. Some would go Conservative. Conversely, there are enough anti-NDP Liberal supporters who would go Conservative to stop the NDP, and that's why a majority of Toronto's MPs are now Conservative.

jas wrote:

But you keep misrepresenting strategic voting as some kind of Liberal conspiracy so I thought maybe you really didn't understand what it was.

The Liberals keep relying on this more than anyone else, and regardless of the intent, the effect is that it elects Conservative MPs. I listed a few examples in my post above where the Conservatives benefitted from strategic voting. Can you give one specific example of where strategic voting actually stopped a Conservative from being elected?

jas wrote:

We have seen radical, mostly not beneficial economic restructuring in Canada and a sharp decline in our standards and quality of life. I don't think we have or would see this so drastically with a Liberal government.

Let's review the record of the last Liberal government. They slashed social services, social assistance, and education transfers. It was in this time period that unemployment benefits were gutted, where post-secondary tuitions took off dramatically, and when BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia at various times experimented with privatization of health care because the Canada Health Act was gutted. While making the rounds at the think tanks, Harper himself praised the moves away from universailty that the Liberals were making. None other than Stephen Harper himself praised the last federal health accord that the Liberals negotiated with the provinces because that accord had no restrictions on privatization of health care. As for child care, yes the Conservative's cash incentives for families make little difference while costing the federal treasury dearly, but it's more than what parents received for their child care needs under the Liberals.

Winston wrote:

The Tories won because they won the most votes and the most seats. Simply put, they did a better job of convincing Canadians to support them. Here's a novel idea: why don't the other parties propose something different and convince Canadians (including those who voted Tory last time) to choose them, and stop relying on their pedigree and strategic voting arguments to win the day?

Exactly. Unless you live in a complete bubble, Conservative voters are among your friends, families, neighbours, and relatives, and only by doing the hard work of listening to people you don't always agree with do you have a chance to convince them to support a different party.

I have to agree with Terrytowel on two out of three points:

1) People will do strategic voting with or without a Liberals or Liberal friendly campaign

2) The NDP do have to improve their narrative-- they have to make a case for why they are the better option to defeat the "nasty" party and they have to bring ocnfidence to their campaign. That is politics. New Democrats have to have a better understanding of how voting rationales work among Canadians. Pretending it works another way only leads to disapointment. The NDP can get out in front with target seats, claims to be the one to beat and express reasons. They have to do this side of campaigning better in order to win.

3) I will challenge the point that SV works. It limits options to the point of discouragement, it is unpredictable and often can backfire, it is antidemocratic, it leads to a result that does not reflect even in a meaningless way the intentions and true desires of voters. It leads to disgust and a lack of respect for the winners of elections. It creates false majorities and damages accountability. I would say it is not successful-- but I would never deny that it exists. BTW: I don't consider Tory an improvement over Ford at all so good luck with that.

The Liberals and the Conservatives are different -- to suggest othersie is a doomed argument. To explain the differences and show how the NDP is better than either of them is a better argument. People will simply not listen to those so partisan as to be unable to see the difference between Trudeau and Harper. To claim there is no difference effectively takes you out of the equation of convincing anyone -- NDP doe this too often and are simply turned off for doing so by anyone that might be a swing voter. the NDP is better off explaining how they are different from the Liberals than wasting time with the Liberal-Tory same old story meme. The more radical Harper is the less that meme is credible.

The NDP needs to put all its eggs in the basket of giving people reasons to vote for them and not spend precious enrgy, money and time on saying the Liberals and Conservatives are the same. We never seem to learn this lesson. Except in 2011 Layton did-- he did not issue any of that crap and focuissed on a positive reason to vote NDP. In 2015 the NDP must do the same and with a weaker Conservative government could win that way.

The NDP trippled its seats in 2011 with a new strategy of postive campaigning. Because that did not lead to a win I am hearing some want to go back to the strategies that got the NDP barely over 30 seats.