Strategic voting needed to oust Conservatives
Editor:
The 2015 Canadian federal election seemed to have an underlying theme of rallying behind the Liberals in order to remove the Conservatives from office. With an increase of 148 seats from the previous election, it is clear that support for the Liberals grew alongside the increasing opposition to Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. However, although the Liberal Party holds a majority of the seats in Parliament, many of those seats are held by MPs from urban areas rather than rural.
In a study conducted through Wilfred Laurier and McGill University, it was found that suburban and rural voters are more likely to support Conservative parties than their urban counterpart (2015). For those living in a rural or suburban area who maintain a Liberal political view, this can make voting in federal elections rather difficult. Canada does not run on a two-party system, however when it comes to voting in these rural communities, the tie usually comes down to Liberal and Conservative, with NDP holding only a share of the votes. This is when strategic voting, or “coordination of voter preference” comes into play.
This is especially important in an area such as ours, which has been governed by the Conservative Party for the last 13 years. Our current MP, Dr. Kellie Leitch, made headlines this year for her run in the Conservative Party Leadership Race. However not all of the headlines were beneficial for this MP’s political image. A recent survey shows that of all Conservative leadership candidates, Leitch was found to represent Canadian interests and values the least.
In the 2015 federal election, Leitch won 47 per cent of the vote share (30,602 votes) in the Simcoe-Grey riding. Mike MacEachern, the Liberal Party candidate, won 39 per cent (25,308) of the vote share, which is a total of 5,294 votes separating him and Leitch. David Matthews, NDP candidate, won 10 per cent of the vote share, totalling 6,332 votes. I understand fulfilling your democratic duty and voting your conscious, however, if strategic voting had of occurred in the Simcoe-Grey riding in 2015, the combination of votes for the NDP and Liberal candidates would have beaten Kellie Leitch by 1,038 votes. Not much, but it’s a winner-takes-all system. If you add the total votes given to the Green Party as well, the number of votes separating Liberal from Conservative would have risen to 3,961. Since Harper abolished the per-vote subsidy program in 2015, the votes cast for Liberal, NDP and the Green Party were officially null once Leitch took home the largest share of votes.
This is something to keep in mind for the upcoming 2019 Canadian federal election. We have three “leftist” parties that continue to split the vote in every single election. If the country can rally behind the Liberals to vote the Conservatives out of Parliament, we too as a rural community should be rallying behind a singular Left candidate in order to eliminate the woman who is out of touch with our true Canadian values. In an electoral system such as ours, coordination of voter preference can be extremely beneficial and should be considered by all constituents.
Gia Lynde,
Creemore.
