Only strategic voting can stop Tory majority
Winnipeg Free Press September 12
From the day Prime Minister Stephen Harper began his public musings about a fall election, he repeatedly downplayed the possibility of the Conservatives actually winning a majority. The numbers, he said, weren’t all that promising and there was a very good chance of another minority government being elected. Harper made these comments, presumably, for two reasons: first, he wanted to dismiss any suggestion that his intended dissolution of Parliament was merely opportunistic, a cynical junking of his own fixed-date election with the sole purpose of obtaining a majority and giving his party complete control over Parliament.
Secondly, he must recognize that nothing is more likely to hurt his chances for a majority than the public sensing that he is about to win one.
Harper was quite disingenuous on both points. His party’s private polling must have showed that his best chances for a majority were in the here and now, before a recession sets in and other unhappy political chickens come home to roost. And his polling must also show that, while he is much more popular than his party (a fairly common phenomenon given that most prime ministers get far more publicity and attention than do leaders of opposition parties), a substantial majority of the electorate — 60 per cent more or less — are unlikely to vote Conservative. However, that 60 per cent almost certainly includes a “soft” element that, under certain circumstances, might not mind seeing Harper re-elected at the head of a minority government, as in 2006. Some of that soft vote — currently undecided, or inclining to one of the opposition parties — would think twice, however, if they thought that by voting for a Conservative candidate they were handing Harper a majority.
The real uncertainty, of course, is a function of the fact that the 60 per cent who have hitherto not supported the Conservatives is not a single, cohesive body of electors but, rather, are divided, at least notionally, in their support of three national parties and a regional one in Quebec. The situation has been likened to the one that existed for nearly a decade following the 1993 election when the Reform party made its major breakthrough and decimated the old Progressive Conservative party in Western Canada, while the Liberals and the Bloc largely finished the job in the rest of the country. For the decade that followed, the centre/right vote was divided: even though Reform was overwhelmingly the conservative voice in Parliament, a significant number of voters continued to identify with and support the Progressive Conservatives.
In the present situation, it is the centre/left that is now divided, but the cases are not mirror images. The combined vote for the conservative parties in 1993, 1997 and 2000 never exceeded 38 per cent of the popular vote; moreover, when the Reform/Canadian Alliance took over the PCs, their combined vote dropped, in 2004, to 30 per cent. The centre/left on the other hand has reflected the support of more than 60 per cent of the electorate in every election since 1993; indeed, even in the Mulroney era and earlier the combined Liberal/NDP vote usually equalled or exceeded the vote for the Progressive Conservatives.
In short, their earlier divisions resulted in conservatives being under-represented in Parliament but that under-representation did not keep them from power while keeping the Liberals in power: as the 2004 election showed, once they no longer had a Progressive Conservative party to vote for, many Progressive Conservatives who identified themselves as middle of the road simply voted Liberal. On the other hand, the division on the centre/left in 2008 could well deliver not just power — but a parliamentary majority — to the right. It is interesting to reflect on how much editorial ink was spilled during the 1990s lamenting the injustice and the distortion of the national will caused by the existence of two “conservative” parties in the 1990s. Indeed, there was far more lamenting the division of the minority than there is now about the division within the majority — which now stands to jeopardize the possibility of national consensus on a number of significant issues.
If, in the current election, a majority of voters do not wish to see a majority of Conservatives in Parliament, they have it within their power to prevent it, but it would involve strategic voting. If, in those seats currently held by opposition members, voters were to vote for the MP elected in 2006 (or the same party if the MP is not running again) they would — on paper at least — have an excellent chance of re-electing all or most of them. For this to happen would require an extraordinary degree of discipline and self-denial that may well be beyond what many voters could bring themselves to demonstrate; and that, of course, is what Harper is counting on.
Comment by L. C. Hopkins, writing from on September 13th, 2008 at 12:00 am:
Mr Neville is right about it being within the power of the majority of people who belong to no political party to prevent a Conservative catastrophe. (Evidently for many in 905 and otherwise, the experience of Mike Harris’ gang of reactionaries was not enough punishment to put them off voting for further social and economic dislocation.)
However I fear that without leadership and direction (a specific riding by riding how to guide) and national mobilization there will be no effective response by voters or political parties.
In the case of the conservatives, their unity effort was made possible by the acquisition of a newspaper by Lord Black (and where is he now?) and the treasonous sell out of the PC’s by Peter McKay (who should be there too!) and a political leadership that was willing to negotiate to further a common interest in power - and implementation of a very right wing agenda.
In the present case, what we need is a national tidal wave in support of the ABC campaign of Newfoundland and Labrador premier, Danny Williams, who seems to be the only elected politician in Canada who really gets it! Only he has stood up to the power of the oil giants and demanded a public stake in future development, only he has called Stephen Harper “a fraud” for all the right reasons. And if you put his message together with a concerted national call for the majority of voters to do what the political parties of the left and centre cannot bring themselves to do - viz to put the interests of the Canadian people ahead of sectarian interest and vote strategically - there would be the possibility of denying Harper control of parliament. There might even be a chance that progressive parties could form a government with a popular program that would implement Kyoto and the Kelowna accord, that would bring in national day care, and get Canada out of Afghanistan.
A much better political strategy would have been for the three national parties with a similar orientation to have formed an electoral alliance BEFORE the election was called, turned their collective 60% of the vote into a working majority in parliament and set about implementing a progressive agenda while consigning the conservatives to the political oblivion they deserve.
(When it comes to real or imagined differences amongst the parties mentioned, all these parties doth protest too much: the NDP is hardly socialist and the Liberals in opposition are always much more left than in government, while the presence of the Greens in an alliance would would at least ensure that serious environmental remediation was a core part of the common program. The Liberals and NDP have negotiated AFTER elections in the past Nationally and in Ontario, why not BEFORE an election when it would do some good?)
Maybe Danny Williams can be persuaded to go national with his campaign. He is after all, a PROGRESSIVE conservative - one of the very few left - and he has my admiration and respect for calling a spade a spade, and putting the interests of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador ahead of those of Steve Harper’s friends in the far right.
Some 75 years ago the inability of the left and centre parties in another country to get their act together gave power to the far right with terrible consequences. Since Canada has no major military machine, even Harper couldn’t be that bad, but 4 years of government by these regressive conservatives will leave our country a very different place. And at that time, the NDP, the Liberals and the Greens can lead the national grieving for the Canada that used to be, all the while forgetting that things could have been different.
Yes we really need Danny Williams on the national stage.
L. C. Hopkins
Comment by VoteReformNow, writing from Canada on September 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm:
6 million votes elect no one every federal election. Our voting system is a national disgrace.
Strategic voting is a necessity under these circumstances.
Pair voting is a modern twist on strategic voting. You can still vote for the party you want, by pairing, or swapping your vote with someone in another riding.
More details at http://www.votepair.ca
Comment by Jonathan Zeidman, writing from Canada on September 21st, 2008 at 11:50 am:
The other possible solution, in my mind, would be for the opposition parties to form a coalition, to form the government. How that would play out in the long run is another question, and in any case, given that Jack Layton refuses to even meet with Elizabeth May is an indication that Mr. Layton, seeing the rising tide of NDP support will, once again, choose his personal ambitions to supersede any hope of defeating Harper.
Comment by G. Crane, writing from Canada on September 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm:
An organised, strategic vote swap IS under way at the facebook group ‘anti-harper vote swap’. A very well thought out initiative. Definitely worth the two seconds time that it takes to join facebook.