Here a wasted Vote is any Vote for a party that doesn't get 5% or win an electorate seat.
In effect it makes it easier to form a government. Around 5% are a wasted Vote which in effect nears you only need around 47-48% of the electorate to win (another 25% don't vote).
Election year here this year the current Labour lead government are behind in the polls and the right have a 1 seat majority in a couple of recent polls 61/120.
They've lurched to the right as well. Anyway even in a proportional system in one of the least corrupt countries in the world it can bite you in the ass.
Do you Vote for your favorite party if it's potentially a wasted Vote or vote for least bad option or vote for your favorite party regardless?
In Canada it's formally referred to as 'strategic voting'. Informally it's referred to as "holding your nose" and voting for the party's candidate best able to defeat the party you
don't want to win.
Either way, strategic voting, aka the ABC movement (Anybody But Conservatives) is what finally got rid of Stephen Harper in 2015 and put Justin Trudeau in as Prime Minister. As for me, I know that federally there's no chance of anyone winning here unless they're whatever the current conservative party is calling itself, so I vote my preference. That's usually NDP, has sometimes been Green, and once I went with a completely new party that had lofty goals but no chance, just because I liked the platform.
ABC means that in ridings where the Liberals had the best chance of winning, traditionally-NDP voters threw their votes to the Liberal candidate, and vice-versa.
Except in Quebec. Trudeau in large part owes his win to a Muslim woman who wanted to keep her niqab on while taking her citizenship oath. The Minister of Immigration and Citizenship said no. She took the government to court and won, just in time for the election.
How this contributed to Trudeau's winning is that the Liberals were in 3rd place at that time, as the NDP were the Official Opposition. Unfortunately the NDP leader who got them to that place, Jack Layton, died. His successor, Thomas Mulcair, didn't have half the vision and charisma that Layton did, and moreover was a federal leader from Quebec (they tend to be distrusted in Western Canada just because).
Mulcair was a believer in people's Charter rights and defended the woman's religious rights, to wear the niqab. This did not sit well with many voters in Quebec, as Quebec is becoming more secular over the years. The voters who were against anyone covering their face during the citizenship ceremony (the niqab covers the face and only the person's eyes are visible) and who weren't planning to vote either conservative or Bloc decided to vote Liberal - to punish Mulcair/NDP for supporting anyone wanting to cover their face for this ceremony.
So a lot of potential NDP votes in Quebec went to the Liberals instead. We woke up to not only a Liberal minority or a modest Liberal majority - but a large Liberal majority. On election night Stephen Harper decided to be a coward and had a lackey hand a note to the news anchors, announcing his resignation as party leader (leaders of parties that experience such a loss often do resign their leadership, but they have the integrity to do it on-camera, in person; Harper took the coward's way out).
So strategic voting worked federally. It almost worked for the most recent election in my province. We were desperate to get rid of the UCP, as they're taking this province further and further right, and the premier is determined to have us effectively separate while pretending she isn't.
If only those 1300 votes the NDP needed for a majority hadn't been spread out among so many ridings, it could have worked. The former health minister, Tyler Shandro, is hopefully going to be disbarred (he's a lawyer) for actions he took while in cabinet. If he were a private citizen he'd be in jail, or at least fined. He was defeated on election night by 7 votes. After the mandatory recount, his defeat stood - by 25 votes. He's demanding yet another recount, since he refuses to accept this. He especially doesn't like losing to a
nurse. He had a very hostile attitude toward doctors and nurses, and decided to pick fights with them
during a pandemic.
I don't know how many of those 25 votes were strategic. But thank goodness for them. They helped get rid of someone who gleefully put lives at risk, and thinks himself above the law, harassing doctors and nurses who were critical of him and his policies, invading their privacy, and making threats. Oh, and delisting meds for people like me - of course I could still get them if I wanted, but it would cost $$$/month. Oh, but wait... his WIFE runs an insurance company! There's the solution - pay his wife so I could afford the meds my doctor prescribed, instead of the substitute she didn't prescribe.
If anyone thinks his "blind trust" is really blind, I've got ocean-front property outside my window for sale.
There are other parties here besides the UCP and NDP. The Alberta Party has been trying to make headway, but hasn't, and NDP supporters were begging the people who vote AP to "lend their votes" to the NDP this time. Some did, which is why the NDP got more seats and the UCP lost seats (just not enough of a loss).
So in theory, no vote is wasted because in a democracy everyone gets to vote their conscience (and should, in my opinion). But in practicalities, when you have a party that is so toxic that their policies put peoples' lives at risk and they don't care... it's frustrating to see vote-splitting.
BTW, back to 2015... in the days leading up to the election, Harper's people saw the writing on the wall, that they were not going to win. Therefore the "opinion adjusters" - the people hired to flood social media and news comment sections with propaganda and "support" switched tactics... they started urging people to vote NDP in order for the Liberals not to win. Fortunately we knew the NDP weren't strong enough to win, and ignored those. I called one of them out in the CBC comment pages, pointing out that the day before, that account had been solidly pro-CPC, and now they were suddenly NDP? How stupid did they think the rest of us were?
