From taboo to tactic: How strategic voting could shake up this election
CBC
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Alvin Finkel still remembers the day he was kicked out of the NDP.
The lifelong New Democrat from Edmonton had been running a website during Alberta's 2012 provincial election to consolidate progressive votes behind certain Liberal, NDP and Alberta Party candidates.
His hope was that "strength in numbers" might help turn the tide against the then-dominant Progressive Conservatives and their rising rival, the Wildrose Party.
About 50 like-minded volunteers joined his cause, obsessing over polling data and fanning out across key ridings in Edmonton and Calgary to count lawn signs for each party, pinpointing non-conservative candidates with a real shot at victory.
The argument was simple: if left-of-centre urban voters concentrated their ballots behind one person, rather than splitting between three parties, they stood a better chance of winning.
It's a much-maligned practice known as strategic voting — and among smaller political parties, it's borderline heresy.
"All parties have this notion that you're supposed to park your brains at the front door and assume that your party could win," he said.
"It's a fairy tale."
For his efforts, Finkel was given the orange boot — for a while anyway. He was eventually let back into the party in 2016.
So imagine his bewilderment this month when he heard about Cheryl Oates's appearance on CBC Radio, where she openly mused about voting Liberal in the upcoming federal election.
Oates, who served as a top aide for Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley from 2015 to 2019, admitted during an Alberta at Noon call-in show that she'd consider voting strategically to block a Conservative win.
"I've been an NDP supporter for a really long time," she said on March 10. "But I really, really don't want Pierre Poilievre to be the next prime minister."
Finkel says he never expected that sentiment from hardcore party faithfuls like Oates because "those are the kinds of the people who threw me out of the NDP."
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