Strategic Voting Is Bad, M'Kay?

[LSJ]

Tactical/Strategic Voting: when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.

This is not a warning on a current issue, as tactical voting is uncommon and has no measurable effect in any country I know of. Rather, this is a criticism of the concept.

*Candidate refers to either an individual or a party running in an election
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First of all, this method seems contradictory. By voting for a less desirable candidate (A) to prevent an even less desirable candidate (B) from taking power, the voter is removing the influence of the candidate he or she prefers above all (C). When the voting statistics come out after an election or poll, the votes for Candidate A are inflated, the votes for Candidate B are normal, and the votes for Candidate C are deflated.

This can have a cascading effect whereby the first wave of tactical voters who vote for A cause the support level of C to drop, discouraging others from voting for C, resulting in an even larger wave of tactical voters next time. This will increase the chance of A winning and hurt B, but also destroy C.

By supporting a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in an effort to avoid an even less desirable outcome in the short term, the voter ends up damaging the support base of his or her most preferred candidate. As a result of tactical voting, the voter will have removed any chance of his or her preferred candidate from winning, possibly to a point that it no longer has any power in parliament/congress. If a candidate's support falls quickly over a relatively short period of time, it is most likely going to decrease until the vast majority of supporters are hard liners. Eventually the support will either be destroyed completely, or begin to regenerate. This is damaging in the long term - which in politics is very important.

Whereas a small party/candidate that sees increasing support in the polls gains supporters, as people gain confidence. Such a party appears attractive, as it seems to only become more influential over time and thus sticking with it is the best course of action. People are drawn to it because, even though it will not win, it will only get better next time.

The important thing is, by removing support from the preferred candidate, the most desired outcome is less likely to occur than if the voters voted for the candidate even though he or she did not win, because by practicing tactical voting, a voter is causing the growth rate of the small party to drop, and annual growth is what results in a party becoming powerful and the most desired outcome to be achieved.
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Again, this is in theory, not drawing from historical examples.

Because, in reality, most people stick with the party they prefer above all. As it is now, tactical voters count for a tiny section of every party's support pool. It is not nearly enough to make an effect on the popularity growth of a party, especially since in many countries, voters are around 40-80% of the population (changing significantly between elections), so the numbers always change by several percentage points every time and thus, for example, a drop of four percent is not enough to cause a decently sized party to be abandoned.

As an end note, that tactical voting is such a small part of an election makes the idea even less useful. Even if one could not live with a certain party governing and had to vote for a "lesser evil", the change of support would not be enough to make a difference, because almost everyone else is going to stick with their preferred candidate. I suppose, if pre-election polls show that parties A and B have a difference of about 2%, then one could make such a choice. But in just about every country that has more than two major political parties, it will rarely happen.

This sort of shows a hallway with two doors, where either one ends in a room with a tiger. If it is common, it has adverse effects. If it is uncommon, it is a waste.

[Fishy]

When Bush was elected in 2000, he won by just a few votes (and arguably some other not entirely good stuff). If only a few people would have voted for the "lesser of two evils" then Kerry would have won.

Last time I voted in my own country, I decided to vote for a party that actually stood a chance, the party I wanted to vote for got like three seats in parliment out of a 150, even less in polls. I decided to vote for another party, hoping to at least make that count for the coalation that had to be formed.

While I do agree that tactical voting might not be a great choice in the end, I don't think it's completely useless at least not if a majority would do it. Because what you see now, at least in this country is that a lot of people are either voting for a party that's bordering on right extremism or a party that couldn't be closer to communisn without actually being it.

What you have then is a country that can't be ruled. Nobody would form a goverment with either one of those parties and they would never get a 50% majority in parliment on their own. So for people who want to vote for those parties it might not be a bad idea to vote for a slightly more middle ground party. Sure it's not what you want it to be exactly, but at least you have a chance that some of your idea's will carry on into the government. Unlike the other option where your party just sits in the opposition and constantly screams about everything that happens, thus changing nothing. I'd personally prefer small changes towards what I would like then no change at all. Especially considering the fact that there just isn't any chance at all that either one of those "extremists" parties will ever win with more then 50% of the votes.