Tag: voting

Strategic Voting in 2025 – what you should know

Canada flag on brick wall

I am still a supporter of strategic voting in Canada. My thoughts on it haven’t changed much since I wrote this in 2019: Strategic Voting in Canada – some thoughts.

What has changed is the site you should go to if you  also want to vote that way. It doesn’t look like this site, strategicvoting.ca, is working any more. However this site SmartVoting.ca, seems up to date, at least for the Ontario election this week. And it looks like they are preparing to work on the soon to come Federal election.

It’s good to check out regardless of how you plan to vote.

On voting Against, as opposed to voting For


After an election, people may wonder: how could people vote for that candidate? Many people believe a vote is for a candidate, and someone’s vote means they favor that candidate.

I don’t believe that. I believe that for many voters, the logic they employ is this:

  1. has the incumbent done a good job in their last term in office? If they have, vote FOR them so they win.
  2. has the incumbent done a bad job in their last term in office? If that’s true, vote AGAINST them so they lose.

I believe this is why many incumbents hold on to power for a long period of time. Voters feel they are doing the job well enough and they don’t want to fire them from and take the risk of bringing in someone who can’t do the job.

It also explains why people can vote for someone who others think is a bad candidate. They are voting for the bad candidate because they want to vote against someone they consider a worse candidate. To them, the best way to defeat the worse candidate is to vote for the bad candidate.

The assessment of who is a good, bad or worse candidate will depend on how much information you bring into the equation. For low information voters, they might think candidate A has done a bad job managing the economy, so they will vote against candidate A by voting for a candidate who can cause the defeat of candidate A. If candidate B has the best chance of beating candidate A, they will vote for candidate B. They may dislike candidate B in numerous ways, but that is the candidate most likely to prevent candidate A from remaining in office.

Many high information voters will look at an election results and say most voters voted for candidates running on issues X, Y, and Z. That may be the case for a percentage of voters. Many voters, though, are not voting for a candidate, they are voting against a candidate, and they will vote for someone who can defeat that candidate, regardless of many of the issues.

P.S. I thought of this when I read many such posts like this on social media:

jamelle‬ ‪@jamellebouie.net‬ (on Bluesky -b):

Also, if anyone is looking for someone to blame, it should be focused on the people who looked exactly at what Trump was selling and said “yes.”

No doubt there were some percentage of voters who voted for Trump because they wanted to see him in office. Those voters said “yes”. But I think there were many more voters who wanted to vote against Biden/Harris and thought the best way to remove them from office was to vote for Trump. To them, Harris was the worst candidate to vote for, even if Trump was a bad candidate. I don’t agree with that at all, but I am trying to understand how some voters could vote for Trump without assuming they are simply terrible people.

On low information voters


High information voters believe that voters should understand many of the issues of an election and the stances of the candidates on those issues before they vote for someone. High information voters also believe that most voters should be like that.

I am a high information voter who believes something different. I believe that most voters are not like that and never will be. I believe most information are low information voters.

Low information voters vote for or against a candidate based on one or two pieces of information. This limited information could be:

  • Party affiliation: they vote for a candidate because they belong to a party they like. Or they vote against one candidate of a party they hate by voting for a  less hateful candidate.
  • One overriding issue: they vote for a candidate because that candidate supports the issue they care about more than any other candidate
  • Character: they vote for a candidate because they consider them the strongest or the least corrupt or the most forthright about matters.
  • Alignment: they vote for the candidate that is most aligned with them, however they see themselves. Or they vote for the candidate they see as most aligned with being a leader, whatever that is.

Once a low information voter has this information, they will make their choice.

As a high information voter, you might have a hard time understanding why someone chooses to be a low information voter. But there are many reasons why someone chooses to be this way, such as:

  • The voter votes on one issue because they feel that nothing is more important than this issue. Once they know how the candidates stand on this issue, they can cast their vote without discovering much more.
  • The voter votes for one party and their candidates consistently. They believe that  members of that party govern best.
  • The voter doesn’t have the ability to find out about all or most of the candidates. This is especially true of candidates for minor offices.
  • The voter doesn’t feel they have the ability to understand the issues at stake in an election. The information is at hand, but they can’t process it.
  • The voter has important or difficult things to deal with in their lives and so they lose their ability to focus on the issues.
  • The voter feels the responsibility of voting but they dislike politics and politicians and would prefer not to think too much about it.
  • The voter feels the system is wrong somehow and wants to limit their involvement in the system.

Of course there are a number of invalid reasons that low information voters vote, too, such as:

  • prejudicial or bigoted reasons (e.g. they only vote for white men)
  • silly reasons (e.g., they don’t vote for bald men or men that are short or wear glasses)
  • corrupt reasons (e.g. they vote for a candidate because the candidate buys their vote)

Regardless of what their reasoning is, this is how many voters vote and they will not be persuaded by a flurry of facts from a high information voter. Either they will not have the ability to weigh the facts provided, or they don’t think those additional facts matter to them.

It should be noted that low information voters are not uneducated or stupid. A single issue voter may be highly educated and decide that only candidates that support better healthcare. An intelligent voter may vote against a candidate because of a major scandal, even if they voted for the candidate repeatedly in the past. A vote is a limited instrument: what the meaning is of the vote is only known to the voter.

In the future, when you read a piece about the election (or rejection) or a candidate who stood for A, B, C, D, E, F and G on the issues, don’t assume that most voters voted for or against him/her because of the sum of A to G. Assume many voters voted for or against the candidates based on just one of those.

P.S. This was inspired by many things I’ve seen on social media that read like this:

‪Michael Hobbes‬ ‪@michaelhobbes.bsky.social‬

This is the whole ballgame for me: You cannot run a functioning democracy in a media environment where voters do not know basic facts about what candidates do and believe.

Voters are living in a post-internet world and legacy institutions have not kept up.

How would proportional representation have shaped the last Canadian election’s results?


Changing the way Canadians get to decide who forms the government federally has been a hot topic for some time. Before the last election, the government tried and failed to implement reform. There hasn’t been much talk about it recently, but it is a subject for debate that is not going to go away.

If you have an opinion about this one way or another, I recommend you review this: How would proportional representation have shaped this election’s results? | CBC/Radio-Canada.

The CBC ran the results of the last election through alternative forms of representation and analyzed the results. It is fascinating to see how representation changes, depending on the format followed. Kudos to the CBC for a superb visual representation.

I think reform is needed. I am still in favor of having a local MP and having the ability to have him or her voted out of office by the constituents of the MP’s riding. But I am also in favour of the percentage of each party’s MP aligning with the percentage of national votes that they received. Obviously I need to think about it some more.

In the meantime, take a look at what CBC has done, and decide for yourself.

(Image via Owen Farmer)

Strategic Voting in Canada – some thoughts

First off, there are sites like this one that claim to help you if you want to decrease the chances of a more right wing politician winng election in a specific riding: Strategic Voting 2019 Canadian Federal Election | don’t make a statement, make a difference.

You can use the site that way. But I’d argue you can use it another way. If you want to vote non-strategically, you can look at the site to see who is likely to win and then use that to vote for the party you prefer (assuming you are considering more than one). If you are unsure whether or not to vote NDP or Green, you might choose to vote Green and boost their vote count if you are pretty certain the NDP is going to win. Likewise, if you are a right of centre voter and you think there is either a strong chance or no chance the Conservatives will win, then you may feel more strongly to vote for the Conservatives.

Of course you don’t have to do any of those things. You can vote for your preferred party. You can vote for your preferred candidate. You can cast a protest vote for a more extreme party knowing it is unlikely they won’t win but as a way to indicate your displeasure.  Vote how you think best. It is your vote, and you can use your vote to participate in the electoral process the best way you know how.

Democracy in action – An Introduction to Field Organizing

If you want to do more than vote in an election, especially if you are an American, then read this: THIS ELECTION IS FREAKING ME OUT, WHAT CAN I DO!? (An Introduction to Field Organizing). Obviously this is geared towards Hillary Clinton supporters for president, but read it regardless of you who you plan to vote for and at what level.  It should help you get to the point of at least knowing the right questions to ask and where you might go next to get more involved.

Voting is important, but there is much more to democracy than that. If you step up, your involvement will make a difference, regardless of your role. Good for you for taking that next step.