I recently saw the case made for strategic voting in Ontario in a column by TV Ontario’s Steve Paikin and in a media release by the citizen’s group Cooperate for Canada. Both are anticipating that Doug Ford will call an early election and suggest that the three progressive parties (Liberals, NDP, Greens) should agree among themselves to run only one candidate in a number of key constituencies.

Cooperate for Canada urgently writes that “we must not waste this opportunity [to defeat the Ford Government] with divisive and totally ineffective competition among the non-Conservative parties.” Paikin concludes on a more pessimistic note: “My hunch is, you’ll [the leaders of the NDP, Liberals, and Greens] stick with the current system of fighting each other as much as you’re fighting Ford, both because your competitive instincts demand it and, frankly, because you may dislike each other as much or more than you dislike the premier.”

Types of Strategic Voting

Before discussing the situation in Ontario, I will outline three types of strategic voting in a first-past-the-post electoral system: consensual, constituency focused, and inter-party agreement. In consensual strategic voting an incumbent government has become widely unpopular, and voters are considering which opposition party is most likely to defeat it. When a broad consensus emerges, they will rush to that party. An example is the federal election of 2015, in which voters flocked to Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party to defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, even though the NDP formed the official opposition before the election.

In constituency-focused strategic voting, voters are closely watching the emerging evidence in their constituency, and some may shift from their preferred party to another party to defeat the party they least prefer. The evidence would come from both opinion polls and recommendations from citizen’s groups who are also closely monitoring the polls. An example might be a constituency in which Liberals and Conservatives are very close with the NDP and Greens considerably behind. In that context, traditional NDP and Green supporters would shift to the Liberal candidate to defeat the Conservative.

The inter-party agreement situation is as discussed in Paikin’s article and Cooperate for Canada’s advocacy. By agreeing not to run candidates in certain constituencies, the parties are essentially making it easier for the progressive voter, because they will have only one progressive party available in the constituency, rather than three.

Unlike Ontario’s first-past-the-post electoral system, multi-stage elections that require the winning candidate to get a majority of the vote enable the electorate to vote for their preferred candidate at the beginning and, if their preferred candidate does not succeed, to vote strategically. Multi-stage voting can involve either inter-party negotiations between stages, as in France, or may be implemented by a mathematical algorithm, as in ranked ballots.

A Thought Experiment

Consider the outcome of the 2022 Ontario election for the 124 seats in the Legislature: Conservatives 83 seats, 40.5 % of the popular vote; NDP 31 seats, 23.7 % of the vote; Liberals 8 seats, 23.9 % of the vote; Greens 1 seat, 6 % of the vote. I identified constituencies where one progressive party finished a close second to the Conservatives and the two other progressive parties finished relatively far behind. I assumed these would have been most likely to be won by one of the progressive parties if there had been constituency-oriented strategic voting. Take the Toronto constituency of Eglinton-Lawrence, where the Conservatives received 16605 votes, the Liberals 16081, the NDP 3801, and the Greens 1513. All that would have been needed for the riding to go to the Liberals was a shift of 500 votes from the total of over 5000 NDP and Green votes.

Following this procedure, I found the Liberals would have gained 14 seats, for a total of 22; the Greens one, for a total of two; and the NDP three for a total of 34. The Conservatives would have lost 18, for a total of 66, which is still a slim majority. Because the NDP vote was already very efficient – winning a quarter of the seats in the Legislature with 24 percent of the popular vote – strategic voting wouldn’t have helped it much.

With perfect hindsight, strategic voting would have produced a closer outcome between the government and the opposition parties. However, in the midst of the fog of political warfare, things are not so clear. Voters don’t necessarily know how to translate province or even region-wide polls into constituency forecasts. And they may well be over-optimistic about their preferred party.

I remember watching the polls closely during the campaign, especially for Eglinton-Lawrence. I could see that as voting day was approaching the Liberals were losing support, and Eglinton-Lawrence was moving from a having clear Liberal lead to being a toss-up between the Conservatives and the Liberals. Would this somewhat unpromising information have persuaded NDP or Geen voters to vote strategically for the Liberal candidate?

Playing the Long Game

The enmity among progressive party leaders that Paikin refers to may be a result of different strategies. In the last two decades, the Ontario Liberals have succeeded when they have been seen by the electorate as a centre-left alternative to a radically right-wing Conservative party and have drawn votes from both what were once called “red Tories” and the NDP. This strategy contributed to Dalton McGuinty’s victories in 2003, 2007, and 2011, and Kathleen Wynne’s in 2014.

The NDP, having taken advantage of its efficient pattern of votes to form the Official Opposition in the 2018 and 2022 elections, would like to displace the Liberals as the only major left-of-centre party, as has happened in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. From the NDP perspective, strategic voting – especially an agreement among the parties – keeps the Liberals on life-support. Finally, the Greens would be most amenable to cooperation. As long as they have two or three seats in the Legislature, they can influence a progressive government of either stripe to support their policy positions.

 Between Now and Election Day

The July 29, 2024 projections by the poll aggregator 338Canada.com do not look great for the Opposition: the Conservatives have 42 % of the popular vote, the Liberals 26%, the NDP 20 %, and the Greens 7 %. This gives the Conservatives a huge majority of 93 seats in the Legislature, the NDP 16, the Liberals 12, and the Greens 2.

The NDP still retain the advantage of their greater vote efficiency. Liberals can perhaps find some solace in their lead of 6 % over the NDP in the popular vote, despite the fact that the Conservatives have been running a barrage of negative advertising about Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie and have been saying nothing about NDP leader Marit Stiles. The Liberals may still have some hope that, in an election campaign, opposition to Doug Ford coalesces around Bonnie Crombie the same way opposition to Mike Harris’s common-sense revolution coalesced around Dalton McGuinty.

With poll results like this, it is easy to understand why Doug Ford would want to call an early election. But an early election call with no rationale except political advantage could be a huge mistake, as Liberal Premier David Peterson found in 1990.

The polls might change between now and election day and become less favourable to the Conservatives. It’s unlikely they would be more favourable. If the polls point to a third majority government for Doug Ford will the progressive party leaders attempt an inter-party strategic voting agreement, or will they pursue their traditional strategies? Even if Doug Ford doesn’t call an election this fall, they will have to confront the question in the next two years.