Canadians with progressive views preparing to head to the polls Monday face a hard decision: vote directly for who you want to see in Parliament or vote to keep the Conservatives out of it, what's known as strategic voting.

Advocates for strategic voting have been out in full force lately, in what has also sparked several campaigns, including the Vote Together campaign or the ABC (Anything But the Conservatives) movement. As in most elections, this position  has caused a major debate in Canada about how to vote, with some calling the strategy essential, and others deeming it a blow to democracy.

The movement is based on the belief that most Canadians want the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government out, and the best way to do that is vote for the most likely party to beat him – either the centrist Liberals or the left-of-center New Democratic Party.

Since Harper came to power in 2006, he has sent fighter jets into Syria, helped bomb Libya, has vowed to extend Canada's presence in Iraq, withdrew from the Kyoto protocol, has been a major barrier in other environmental deals, and recently signed the  controversial and largely unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

On a national level, Harper has cut personal and corporate taxes, while also cutting funds for health care and other public services, such as the country's public broadcaster the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) that resulted in hundreds of job losses. He has also passed a controversial anti-terrorism act (Bill C-51) that extends the power of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), put a gag order on scientists doing federally funded research, has refused to open a national inquiry into the deaths of almost 1,200 missing indigenous women, and has refused to support measures that would facilitate corporate accountability in the extractive industries.

According to recent polls, almost 70 percent of Canadians said they want change.

But wanting change is not enough.

Canada is an old British style parliamentary system, which means that there are more than two parties to choose from and the winning party only needs a simple  majority, not 50 percent of the vote. 

This also means that a large part of the vote gets ignored. If a candidate in one voting district (called a riding) wins 35 percent of the vote, and the other 65 percent is split between the remaining parties, these votes are all ignored – even though they represent the majority of the ballots, which did not support the winning candidate. The leader of the party that wins the most seats becomes the prime minister. 

This has been the issue in Canada for past decade, since Harper has managed to remain in power with a majority government even though he has received no more than 37 percent of the vote.

“The Conservatives have been in power with majority governments for 10 years in Canada now, and they have not received more than 37 percent of the votes cast in any election during that time,” Dru Oja Jay, a campaigner with the grassroots movement against privatization Friends of Public Services, told teleSUR via email. “In a context where you have multiple parties and the majority actively does not want this to happen again, the question is: what is the solution?”

Lesser Evil Politics?

“We no longer ask ourselves what are the values and principles that we most want to promote, but simply how do I play this game to get the least offensive result. If you think about that, that's a pretty sad commentary on democracy.”

Strategic voting tells Canadians to vote for whatever candidate in your district has the best chance of beating the Conservative government rather than seeing the alternative vote be split between several parties. The method is fundamentally based on voting out rather than voting in power.

“This has produced quite a large debate as to the wisdom of this approach, and as to whether we really want to get into a kind of lesser evil politics rather than politics that might be said to be more principled,” David McNally, professor of political science and Toronto's York University told teleSUR.

“If people went for this approach, not only would the individual candidates be irrelevant but so would all the parties other than the Conservatives be irrelevant,” says McNally. “What it really says is, the only party that matters is the one you hate, and you do everything you can to get rid of them.”

In the case of the current elections in Canada, the opposition parties have both put forth policies completely at odds with each other on several key issues. These policies are also contradictory within each party, since the Liberals can be said to be progressive on some issues but not others, while some of the policies put forth by the NDP, the historically left-wing party, are very middle of the road.

To name a few examples, the NDP would continue with the Conservative's policy of keeping the budget balanced, while the Liberals have spoken out against austerity measures and plan to go into debt for the next three years to stimulate the economy; the NDP opposes the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, while the Liberals support it; the NDP wants to pull Canadian troops out of Syria, while the Liberals have not taken a stance on the issue; the NDP voted against a controversial Bill C-51, while the Liberals supported it.

“We no longer ask ourselves what are the values and principles that we most want to promote, but simply how do I play this game to get the least offensive result. If you think about that, that's a pretty sad commentary on democracy,” said McNally.

According to the professor, strategic voting highlights the disconnect between ordinary citizens and the mainstream political parties and the electoral process, not only in Canada but around the world.

This frustration and cynicism comes from the increasing power of money and the economic elite in politics, particularly since the “neoliberal period” dating back to the 1970s. Since then, “the government has more or less done what private corporations and banks have wanted when it comes to economic and social policy and not what might be said to be in the public interest,” said McNally.

Strategic voting has also historically hurt the left, according to McNally. The system leads to people voting for a more center party because they perceive them to have a better chance of actually being elected, which has historically meant that more votes are pushed to vote Liberal over the NDP.

However, according to Jay, the problem is not the system of strategic voting but rather a lack of proper understanding of how it works. 

“The problem, of course, is that most people don't have a nuanced view of strategic voting, and partisan messages tend to pollute what nuance they do have,” said Jay.

This often leads to people voting Liberal because they assume the centrist party has a lead in their local district, because they are looking at the polls on the national level when really they live in an area where the NDP was in the lead in the polls. This could split the vote between the opposition parties at the local level and “create an opportunity for a Conservative to sneak in with a plurality,” added Jay.

Despite the potential for this misinformation, Jay asserts that strategic voting makes sense given the current Canadian electoral system, but says the real solution is a push toward changing the electoral system. This includes options such as “proportional representation and an overhaul of media regulations on a structural level” to diminish partisan messages and interpretations of the polls. 

All three parties have been riding neck in neck in the polls in the past months and even days, which means anything can happen in Monday’s elections.