"Strategic voting is classically defined as "voting for one's second preferred option to prevent one's least preferred option from winning when one's first preference has no chance." Voters want their votes to be effective, and casting a ballot that willhave no influence on an election is undesirable--therefore, some voters cast a strategic ballot when they decide it is useful. This edited volume includes case studies of strategic voting behavior in Israel, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and the UK, and provides a conceptual framework for understanding strategic voting behavior in all types of electoral systems. The classic definition explicitly considers strategic voting in a single race with a single winner, which has at least three candidates. This situation is more common in electoral systems that have single member districts that employ plurality or majoritarian electoral rules and have multiparty systems. Indeed, much of the literature on strategic voting to date has considered systems like those in Canada and the United Kingdom. This book contributes to a more general understanding of strategic voting behavior by taking into account a wide variety of institutional contexts, such as single transferable vote rules, proportional representation, two round and mixed electoral systems"--
The 10 essays in this volume analyze the existence, extent, and conditions in which voters reason strategically and engage in strategic voting in various institutional settings and elections in the UK, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. Political science and economics scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel discuss a conceptual framework for thinking about voting and its strategic and sincere forms, then provide analysis of strategic behavior in specific institutional contexts, looking at aspects like the effect of national and constituency expectations on strategic voting, support for minority governments, information on party strength, and candidate quality, and the incidence of strategic behavior. Annotation ©2019 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
When voting against your candidate is in your best interest
Voters do not always choose their preferred candidate on election day. Often they cast their ballots to prevent a particular outcome, as when their own preferred candidate has no hope of winning and they want to prevent another, undesirable candidate’s victory; or, they vote to promote a single-party majority in parliamentary systems, when their own candidate is from a party that has no hope of winning. In their thought-provoking book The Many Faces of Strategic Voting, Laura B. Stephenson, John H. Aldrich, and André Blais first provide a conceptual framework for understanding why people vote strategically, and what the differences are between sincere and strategic voting behaviors. Expert contributors then explore the many facets of strategic voting through case studies in Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the European Union.
