Early voting polls and strategic voting

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This discussion started last week when noted underdog Naheed Nenshi won the Calgary mayoral race. His election bid started with a scant 1% favour in the polls, and his campaign headquarters was actually vandalized a month ago. Even at the end the pre-election polls had him at around 30%, a 3-way tie with the two other frontrunners after the race began with a clear and obvious lead for the most conservative candidate.

Here in Toronto we were stuck with the classic voter's dilemma. Only 3 hopefuls, with the ultra right-wing candidate in a clear lead and the two left-wing candidates left to split the vote. Rob Ford ran on a platform of tax cuts, social program cuts, privitization, reduced public transit, and cutting city council in half, and was up at around 40-45% for the last length of the race, despite the endlessly stupid things he said and did. While a similar string of bad luck with the media (and poor decision making in general) quickly ended the race for young hopeful Adam Giambrone, Ford actually got stronger every time the media revealed a new idiocy.

Running against Ford were a pair of more-or-less left-wing candidates. While the former mayor's deputy, Joe Pantalone, was set to basically copy+paste the old policies, he was a distant 3rd place in every poll. More hopeful was the more Liberal candidate, George Smitherman. Around mid-September polls showed that Pantalone and Smitherman were splitting the left-wing votes, and that Pantalone had little chance of winning. While left-wing voters were chanting "anyone but Ford," they'd still have to decide which of the other candidates to vote for. Newer polls showed that people were piling onto the only 2 candidates that had a chance against Ford, and all other non-fringe candidates dropped out.

Nine days before the elections polls showed that Ford's lead had become less daunting. The departing candidates were throwing their support behind Smitherman, and he was polling at 40% against Ford's 45%, while Pantalone was getting the other 15%.

As the election date drew closer the debates began in earnest. Would left-wing voters go with their all-in underdog, Pantalone, and risk taking votes away from Smitherman and handing Ford the election? Or would they compromise their ideals and vote for Smitherman just because he was the only one who had a chance against Ford.

Municipal elections have a notoriously low voter turn out around here, despite them being one of the more important and immediate influences on most people's day-to-day lives. This was already a really important race, with Ford threatening to undue just about every bit of progress the outgoing mayor had made -- and that's just for a start -- and I can only imagine polls made the situation look even worse. If the only one you actually wanted to win had either dropped out, or had no chance in hell, how many people would bother to vote for second best? It was better than expected, but still only a 52% turnout.

So here's the thing. On the one hand we have a candidate go from absolute dead-last in the polls to taking a surprise win against a right-wing frontrunner in Calgary, while in Toronto candidates drop like flies and left-wing voters have a hard time trying to not split their votes while the right-wing candidate takes an easy win. Would more people have voted for Pantalone if they weren't so sure he would lose? Would more people have voted at all if they didn't see the writing on the wall months ahead of the actual election date?

I know I struggled with my decision when I had the ballot in my hand, but at least I bothered to show up. I couldn't say how much polls affected my final vote, but I do know that strategic voting -- which is based on early polls -- annoys the hell out of me.

jothki

That's the advantage of a two-party system, you can get all of that out of the way in the primaries, and then just vote for the remaining candidate that you want to win in the election.

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Doesn't really work for municipal elections.

But still, I don't think only having to (supposedly) opposing choices is better than being forced to make a hard decision on 3 or 4.

I'm just kind of fed up over these results.

Godfather

I'm not a canadian citizen, but i'm surprised Ford managed to turn things around at the end. From the way the media has manhandled him i'd have thought he would lose for sure.

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You'd like to think so.

Xaev

Situations like that are why I wish more places had instant runoff voting. That way, you can vote for who you really want but still make sure that by doing so, you don't help a candidate you hate.

Godfather

I think at one time I saw one of those free Metro newspapers with a front page article showing Ford in a devil get-up.

Subtle.

theSquid

This is why the Australian preferences system was thought up.

It's pretty weird but basically you rank the people you would like to get in - or if you just mark the guy you like, then his party ranks the other parties if they don't make it. They count up all the polls and knock out the lowest candidate. All his votes go to whoever was #2 on his voters' ballots. Then the next lowest gets knocked out until eventually you're left with two guys.

In the Toronto case, the two liberal candidates would have preferenced each other, such that when one gets knocked out, his votes would mostly go to the other liberal candidate who would then have the majority.

CasedOut

theSquid wrote: »

This is why the Australian preferences system was thought up.

It's pretty weird but basically you rank the people you would like to get in - or if you just mark the guy you like, then his party ranks the other parties if they don't make it. They count up all the polls and knock out the lowest candidate. All his votes go to whoever was #2 on his voters' ballots. Then the next lowest gets knocked out until eventually you're left with two guys.

In the Toronto case, the two liberal candidates would have preferenced each other, such that when one gets knocked out, his votes would mostly go to the other liberal candidate who would then have the majority.

This actually sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Why hasn't america implemented this?

Captain Carrot

Because this is America, dammit, and first past the post has always been good enough for us.

Modern Man

Captain Carrot wrote: »

Because this is America, dammit, and first past the post has always been good enough for us.

Canada has first past the post, too.

One of the benefits of 1st past the post is that it tends to force political compromise when picking candidates. In competitive races, parties will tend to nominate candidates who are more middle of the road, while still remaining attractive to the party faithful.

Doesn't always work, of course.

wwtMask

I hear that Howard Dean has come around to ranked choice voting. I doubt we'll ever get it because neither major party would be down for something that would weaken them. Hell, I'd bet it wouldn't even make it as a ballot measure.

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Actually, from what I remember, all 3 of the non-fringe mayoral candidates were talking about switching to a ranked choice system. Of course, the new mayor started breaking campaign promises before he'd even won.

Captain Carrot

Modern Man wrote: »

Captain Carrot wrote: »

Because this is America, dammit, and first past the post has always been good enough for us.

Canada has first past the post, too.

One of the benefits of 1st past the post is that it tends to force political compromise when picking candidates. In competitive races, parties will tend to nominate candidates who are more middle of the road, while still remaining attractive to the party faithful.

Doesn't always work, of course.

I'm pretty sure it almost never works that way.

theSquid

Modern Man wrote: »

Captain Carrot wrote: »

Because this is America, dammit, and first past the post has always been good enough for us.

Canada has first past the post, too.

One of the benefits of 1st past the post is that it tends to force political compromise when picking candidates. In competitive races, parties will tend to nominate candidates who are more middle of the road, while still remaining attractive to the party faithful.

Doesn't always work, of course.

Major parties do this anyway. Despite the hyperbole dems and repubs are not too far off from each other.

The upside is you can vote for a third party/single issue party and not feel like you're throwing your vote away.