Voting Stategically? Know your riding!

[earth_as_one]

A friend of mine wants to punish the liberals for corruption. He thought about voting conservative so his local local Liberal isn't re-elected. But the fact is, voting conservative in his particular riding helps the liberals!

Results in his riding in the last election:

Hamilton East—Stoney Creek
Canadian federal election, 2004
Party Candidate Votes
Liberal VALERI, Tony 18,417
New Democrat DEPAULO, Tony 17,490
Conservative EISENBERGER, Fred 10,888
Green SAFKA, Richard 1,446
Independent CINO, Sam 393
Communist MANN, Bob 166

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_East—Stoney_Creek

As you can see the race here is between the liberals and the NDP. If he wants to punish the liberals, it makes more sense to vote NDP, not conservative.

In my riding:
Mississauga South
Canadian federal election, 2004
Party Candidate Votes
Liberal SZABO, Paul John Mark 24,628
Conservative GREEN, Phil 16,027
New Democrat CULKIN, Michael James 5,004
Green JAIN, Neeraj 1,899
Marxist-Leninist SULLIVAN, Dagmar 107
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga_South

Its pretty much a solid liberal riding. Unlikely anyone will defeat the liberals. I'm going to vote for the Green Party to help them gain legitimacy.

I recommend anyone thinking of voting strategically, inform themselves about who has a chance of winning in their riding. Just go to wikipedia and search on your riding by name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

[poligeek]

I agree that you need to know your riding when voting strategically as this system unfortunately forces us to do, when we don't support the leading party.

That being said you also need to look at your strategy. Do you want to cast a vote that gives a close party a shot at winning (in your friends case that would mean voting NDP not conservative), or do you want to simply withdraw your vote from a leading candidate but throw your vote to anyone who is not that candidate (in which case voteing for any candidate who is not likely in the running, is a tacit withdrawl of support).

This of course doesn't count the options of declining your ballot all together.

 

[FiveParadox]

Strategy Important

I completely agree with the above posts.

In my area, Newton—North Delta, the incumbent Member of Parliament is the resigning Conservative Member, the Hon. Gurmant Grewal; however, in the previous election, his party overcame the Liberal Party of Canada by a scant 502 votes.

 

[Calberty]

"Its pretty much a solid liberal riding. Unlikely anyone will defeat the liberals. I'm going to vote for the Green Party to help them gain legitimacy."

I do the same in our Calgary riding. The riding is a Conservative lock. In our riding, however, the Greens did better than the NDP last election. This election the Greens will do much better than the NDP in all Calgary ridings and most of the Alberta ridings with the exception of Edmonton. The Greens will come second in at least 2 ridings if not more.