Strategy influenced third of voters: poll

OTTAWA • More than onethird of Canadians voted strategically in last week’s federal election to stop another party from winning, a new poll suggests.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents to the Leger poll said their decision took into account the chances that their vote would prevent another party’s candidate from being victorious.

And almost as many waited until the final week of the campaign to make their choice. Thirteen per cent made a decision during the last week, six per cent during the final weekend before the vote, and another 10 per cent literally didn’t decide until the last minute on voting day.

Those results suggest a good number of voters waited to see which way the wind was blowing before casting their ballots, motivated at least in part by a desire to prevent the outcome they least wanted.

The online survey of 1,503 adult Canadians was conducted Oct. 22-24 for The Canadian Press and weighted to reflect the makeup of Canada’s population; it cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.

Of all the parties, the Conservatives were the most likely to lock in their support early. Fully 50 per cent of respondents who voted for the Tories said they made their choice before the campaign started. By contrast, just 30 per cent of Liberals, 22 per cent of New Democrats, 31 per cent of Bloc Québécois supporters, 35 per cent of Greens and 31 per cent of supporters of the People’s Party of Canada said the same.

Overall, 57 per cent said their vote was based on their political convictions, without any thought to their candidates’ chances of winning.

The 35 per cent who did take strategic voting into account included 39 per cent of Conservative supporters, 43 per cent of Liberals, 28 per cent of New Democrats, 18 per cent of Bloc supporters, 16 per cent of Greens and 24 per cent of People’s Party supporters.

But while strategic voting was a factor, the poll suggests it wasn’t the primary factor for most. Asked to identify the main reason why they chose to vote for a party, 37 per cent said they did so because the platform and values aligned with their own. Nine per cent said their primary motivation was to get rid of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, six per cent said it was to vote against another party and four per cent said they voted mainly for the best local candidate.

Trudeau spent the final week of the campaign warning progressive voters that they must vote Liberal to prevent Conservatives from forming government.