Canadian Green Party - Shift happens
Continuing my sporadic series of political ads from Green parties in other parts of the world, here’s a rather inexpensive but quite sweet one from a small corner of Canada.
Canada has an election this week and the Green Party is polling well despite a completely unfair electoral system similar to that which New Zealand used to have.
What I’m interested in is those two parties at the bottom. The Greens and Bloc Quebecois. Their national support in Canada is about the same according to these polls, but according to this web site: the Greens will win no seats while Bloc Quebecois will win 55
And that has led to all sorts of inventive, and strange behaviour - such as the increasingly popular practice of vote swapping:
Suppose you’re an NDP supporter in a riding where the Liberal candidate is a close second to the Conservative. And a Liberal supporter lives in a riding where the NDP candidate is most likely to unseat a Tory.
You meet on a vote-swap website, and agree to hold your respective noses. You each vote for the local candidate that could beat the Conservative.
You have voted strategically in your riding, and your favourite party hasn’t lost a vote. In fact, it gets a vote where it actually counts — where it could result in a victory. Ditto for your counterpart.
