There are 16 Canadian political parties registered with Elections Canada, with at least six of them expected to run candidates in the Beauséjour riding. But voters could be forgiven for thinking there are only two parties that really matter in this election.
According to pre-election polling, third parties like the NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Greens are bleeding potential voters, and the two largest parties in the country–the Liberals and the Conservatives–are dominating, with projections saying they could together take 318 of the 343 seats in the House of Commons. Part of the reason for that domination is the phenomenon of strategic voting.
Professor Mario Levesque teaches Mount Allison students about strategic voting in his Political Parties & Elections in Canada course. CHMA called up Levesque to find out more about strategic voting, why people do it, and how it’s connected to the way we organize elections.
“Strategic voting is when we do not vote according to our preferred political party,” says Levesque, but instead cast a vote aimed “to block another large party from trying to win office.”
Levesque gives the example of a voter aligned with the NDP, who may choose to vote Liberal instead, in order to help make sure a Conservative candidate doesn’t take the seat in question. But strategic voting can also happen at the other end of the political spectrum, with smaller right wing parties losing out to voters aiming to bolster Conservative candidates, and block Liberals.
In Beauséjour, however, Levesque says he doesn’t think strategic voting will play a major role. “I don’t think there’s going to be that much strategic voting in this riding in this election,” says Levesque, “simply for the reason that Dominic LeBlanc is here.”
Liberal MP and minister Dominic LeBlanc has held the Beauséjour riding for 25 years now, and Levesque says it’s likely “his riding for as long as he wants it.”
A better example of strategic voting in Atlantic Canada is in ridings around Halifax, says Levesque. “They do tend to elect NDP MPs, but you’re seeing right now that they may not even elect one NDP MP from Halifax, which is shock actually,” says Levesque. “What’s happening there is people are looking at things and saying, we don’t want Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives to get in,” says Levesque. “They’re saying we’re not going to vote for the NDP right now, but we’re going to go with the Liberals to make sure we block out the Conservative candidates.”
‘First past the post’ encourages strategic voting
Levesque says Canada’s electoral system lends itself to strategic voting at the expense of smaller political parties.
Canada’s ‘first past the post’ or single member plurality system means that candidates don’t need a majority of the vote in their ridings to win. “You don’t need 50% plus one extra vote,” says Levesque, “you just need one more vote than the next person.”
“So I may win the riding with 36% of the vote, but then that means that 64%—so almost two thirds—of the people did not vote for me,” explains Levesque. In riding where there’s two candidates who are close in the race, voters who would normally be inclined to vote for third parties may decide instead to vote strategically for their preferred of the two leading parties in their riding.
The single member plurality system “increases people’s perception that we need to vote strategically, to block this other person from getting in,” says Levesque. “It really punishes our small parties.”
A proportional system, on the other hand, would give more representation to smaller parties, by allocating seats according to the percentage of party votes across the country. If the NDP were to win 17.8% of the votes (as they did in the 2021 federal election) then they would get 17.8% of seats, instead of the 7% of seats they actually won in 2021.
A pure proportional representation system “would be fairest to all the parties,” says Levesque, “because there’s no wasted vote or anything. And you would also get people voting their conscience, for the party of their own preference, the most.”
Levesque cites one example of a “perverse outcome” related to the first past the post system: the 1987 sweep of all seats in New Brunswick by the McKenna Liberals. While the Liberals got a a whopping 60% of the vote, they ended up with 100% of the seats in the legislature.
“So that means 40% of the population in New Brunswick did not vote for him, but got no representation,” says Levesque. Under a proportional system, the Liberals would have still held a majority of seats, but the Progressive Conservatives and NDP would have also held seats, which ”would have been more reflective of the voters’ wishes overall,” says Levesque.
Levesque points out there are downsides to proportional representation as well. Because majorities become rare under proportional representation, there can be delays in forming governments as multiple parties negotiate agreements or coalitions. And under pure proportional representation, constituents would lose local representation.
A third option combines systems to include proportionality and local representation, says Levesque. Mixed member proportional representation involves electing some MPs or MLAs in ‘first past the post’ ridings, and some via proportional representation party lists.
“The advantage with the mixed member proportional representation system is that we still retain a local MLA or local MP that we’d like to connect with to address our issues,” says Levesque.
