Canada
Related: About this forumFrom taboo to tactic: How strategic voting could shake up this election
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.
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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.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/from-taboo-to-tactic-how-strategic-voting-could-shake-up-this-election-1.7495076
I've always voted strategically, with few exceptions, in order to try and keep out the Cons no matter where I have lived. It is rare for me to be able to vote for a candidate instead of voting against one. If the NDP candidate has a better chance of winning than the Liberal one then I vote NDP and vice versa.

dutch777
(4,172 posts)...only vote for candidates from that party in the primary. While most times I would vote Dem anyway, there are times where I would rather be registered Independent and vote strategically to get a weak Repug candidate selected in the primary. Of course that can cut both ways, so that is a danger. But as backwards as we are in PA, probably won't change in my lifetime.
Spazito
(55,154 posts)we don't have to be identified with a specific party at all in order to vote which is a form of freedom I hadn't thought about until your post.
dutch777
(4,172 posts)And I did sometimes vote in primaries for least winnable Repug hoping to have better odds for the Dem in the general election. The pollsters also hate it as thy can't get an accurate sense of the voter trend lines as easily from the primary. I have no sympathy for pollsters. I just like Dems winning.