Anything But Conservative

Anything But Conservative (French: À bas les conservateurs or N'importe quoi d'autre que conservateur), also known as the ABC campaign and Vote ABC, is a political campaign whose aim is to defeat the Conservatives in Canadian federal elections. It encourages strategic voting.

The Canadian federal elections use first-past-the-post voting which allows a party with minority support among the population to win the majority of the seats in the parliament. Given the current make-up of existing political parties, the progressive vote tends to splits between the progressive federal parties, the NDP, Liberals and Greens, which allows for the Conservatives to win a disproportional number of seats in the parliament compared to their popular support. This results in Conservative candidates winning seats in some ridings with as low as 30% of the vote in the riding.

Strategic voting by Greens, Liberals and NDP in 2011 federal elections, if implemented with the benefit of hindsight, would have resulted in 2 seats instead of 1 for Greens (100% increase), 75 seats instead of 34 for Liberals (120% increase), 125 seats instead of 103 for NDP (21% increase), and would have resulted in a minority NDP government in place of a majority Conservative government.

It is estimated by ABC campaigners that a widespread strategic voting in 2015 federal elections can decrease the number of Conservative seats by over 72.

In strategic voting a voter ranks the candidates based on their preferences A, B, C, ... and votes for the most preferred candidate who has an actual chance of winning the seat.

For example, consider a voter who prefers the candidate A to the candidate B and C, and the candidate B to the candidate C, and according to the opinion polls A will receive 20%-30% of the vote in the riding and B and C each will receive 30%-40% of the vote. In this situation A is unlikely to win the election in any case. A vote for A will not result in A winning the seat, it is essentially equivalent to abstaining from an election between B and C. In such situations the ABC Campaign encourages the voter to vote for their second preferred candidate B. A vote for A is a wasted vote and does not effect the winner, whereas a vote for second preference increases the chance of a more preferred candidate winning the seat.

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