CPC or PPC? Strategic Voting For Canadian Conservatives

With Trudeau gone, the upcoming Federal election in Canada will be imminent. I'm using blogger and Reddit as a resource to help conservatives determine whether they should be voting for the Conservatives (CPC) or People's Party (PPC) in the upcoming election. Right now I'm using relatively low effort tactics to see if any of this gains traction. If it does, I'll up my game. 

We have an unusual opportunity ahead of us. The CPC is so far ahead in the polls that we can actually afford to split the vote while still making sure the Liberals (LPC) lose. The leftists have their own resource for strategic voting, so it's only fair that conservatives have theirs. I am a conservative, both in values and in politics. That being said, I also recognize that just because someone happens to share similar politics to mine, it doesn't necessarily mean they are thinking rationally when it comes to this stuff or aren't subject to their own echo chambers. So before people start throwing around baseless insults like shill or globalist, I am going to make very clear what I believe in and what my goals are for this site and the upcoming election.

These are the three items I care most about:

1. Tough on crime initiatives. Bail reform, longer sentencing, elimination of safe injection sites etc.

2. Reduction of immigration and elimination of immigration grifter schemes. The only immigrants we should be allowing in are highly skilled ones and job creators. I don't care where they are from or what religion they believe in. As long as they contribute to our economy and society, instead of sucking resources away from it. 

3. A focus on prosperity, technology and productivity in our economy, instead of a real estate feudal system. A focus on growing our energy production, in whatever form it takes. I am pro-oil, pro-nuclear and pro-renewables as it must be an all hands on deck approach to energy independence. The faster we rid ourselves of Saudi oil, the lower our carbon footprint will be. If we increase our reliance on Canadian oil by a million barrels, but reduce our reliance on foreign oil by 2 million barrels, that's a net decrease on the carbon footprint. I don't believe being pro-environment means you have to be anti-oil. 

Things I don't really care about, or are not priorities to me:

COVID vaccines, shutdowns, mandates and related convoy grievances. I never took a COVID shot but it's a dead issue. Let's move on. I get it that some small businesses and employees were hurt economically over this so it's important to them. But making it 95% of what you say is not going to make it appeal to a broader electorate. 

Globalists. Sorry, but you might as well try to push a boulder up a mountain if you're going to fight this. Bernier was happy to be a globalist until he split from the CPC. Globalism is aided much more by technology than anything a politician will say. Plus reasonable policies about immigration is really most of us want. The LPC tried pulling their Century Initiative bullshit on us and we see where that got them. Yelling globalists at every opportunity makes you sound like you're nuts, not someone who should be leading a country. 

Trans issues, abortion and "woke" stuff. If there's a gun to my head, I'll generally lean conservative on these issues. But I don't care that much. If there was a party that was tough on crime and tough on immigration but relatively liberal on this gender ideology stuff, I would have no issue voting for them. Plus DEI initiatives aren't even really driven that much by politicians. It's mostly social science profs at universities and HR people at private companies who see their industries and influence dying, and being annoying woke activists is their attempt at justifying their pay. No politician is legislating Bud Light to get trans grifter Dylan Mulvaney in their ads, it's the companies themselves that do this.

Out of my top 3 priorities, I have little confidence that the CPC, PPC or any political party will do that great of a job on issue #3 in terms of stimulating prosperity and technology. They'll do alright on energy policy. Better than what we have now. I have little confidence that the CPC will do the job that I want on immigration, but at least better than the LPC. The PPC would do a far better job on immigration. However, I DO have confidence that the CPC would do a decent job on crime. One out of three isn't that bad, I guess.

So with that said, these are the three goals I have for this election:

1. To see as many LPC/NDP seats become CPC seats as possible. Ideally see the LPC hold onto less than 20 seats, and hopefully a complete wipeout, which is actually not out of the realm of possibility.

2. Within the context of #1 taking top priority, to see the PPC get as many votes as possible.

3. A longshot, but to see at least one dominant CPC seat become a PPC seat. 

So how do we accomplish this? Get as many people as possible to vote CPC in the ridings that are expected to be competitive and get as many people as possible to vote PPC in ridings where the CPC is expected to easily win. We have a unique opportunity here to shift the Overton window if the LPC is completely wiped out. With the CPC becoming the big tent party and the PPC competitive in some ridings as a competitor to the right. We need to be smart about this. Don't be talking about election fraud when you're not willing to use your vote in the most efficient way possible. 

So what is the right move here? This is where my effort will come in if this movement gains traction. I'll be using 338Canada as my resource. I may eventually do a riding-by-riding analysis, but for now I'll use this general rule of thumb:

1. If you live in rural and in some cases suburban AB, SK or MB, absolutely vote PPC. 

2. If you live in rural areas of BC or ON, maybe vote PPC, but check your riding first. Same goes for suburban Calgary, Regina etc. 

3. If you live in the Maritimes, the suburbs outside the Prairies or other places where it is expected to be close, vote CPC.

4. If you live in heavily left leaning places like the inner cities where the CPC will not be competitive, might as well vote PPC. 

I'll give an example of each, but first I want to talk about Portage-Lisgar:

If you are part of this riding or know someone who is, you absolutely must vote PPC and convince them to vote as well. This was the riding where Bernier ran in last election and got 22% of the vote. The PPC is projected to get only 8% of the vote with the CPC 66%. We can't have this riding lose momentum for the PPC. If the PPC is going to ever be seen as a threat to the CPC so that they are held to account on immigration, this riding needs to keep the momentum it built in 2021. There is absolutely zero benefit to anyone voting CPC here instead of PPC. The CPC is going to win well over 200 seats. The NDP is polling at 15% so there is no chance of them running up the middle on a vote split between the CPC and PPC. I don't care if you even politically agree with the CPC more than you do with the PPC. Think of the PPC as a party that can hold the CPC to account on conservative values in case they get too centrist in their big tent party. But the PPC is useless if it can't win a seat or come even close to it. People of Portage-Lisgar, we rely on you. 

For my next example of a #1 scenario. I am going to use Regina—Qu’Appelle. Why this one? Because this is Andrew Scheer's riding. It would send a strong and symbolic message if the PPC did well here.

The CPC has gotten greater than 60% of the vote with the NDP topping out at 22% in the previous two elections. Even if all the Liberals went ahead and strategically voted for the NDP, their numbers would top out at 30%. There is very little chance that a PPC/CPC vote split would cause this seat to go orange. And even if it did? That would be a very strong message to the CPC. If, for instance, the riding turned out to be 40% CPC, 30% PPC and 30% NDP, that would be close enough to make the Conservatives sweat. They could lose to the PPC or NDP if they don't pick a lane and instead try to flip flop or double speak like O'Toole did. They would get the message that people are watching their immigration policy closely. 

An example of a #2 scenario would be Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte:

This one is a tricky one. It's projected to be a dominating CPC win with 60% of the vote to less than 20% each for the NDP and LPC. But it also has a history of only 40-45% support for the CPC. There is a reasonable chance that if the leftist vote coalesced around the NDP and the CPC and PPC split the vote perfectly, the NDP could win with a 35%/30%/30% type of split. It's a shame because this riding did gain some momentum for the PPC in 2021, but I would recommend voting CPC just to be on the safe side. Perhaps whoever voted PPC last time should continue to do so this time, so it can at least maintain that 7%. But don't campaign too hard in this riding for the PPC. I know I am saying two opposite things between this riding and Scheer's riding, but Scheer's riding represents something more symbolic to the CPC and PPC than the just the seat itself. Plus the chance of the NDP winning is a lot higher in this riding than it is in Scheer's riding with a perfect vote split. The risk-reward trade off of strategic voting makes sense in that riding, less so in this one. 

My next example is Scarborough North. This riding is a fairly important one to me, and not only because it's actually *my* riding. I say it with a bit of shame, but this riding is actually the 8th most likely seat to go to the LPC, and highest in all of Ontario. With that being said, it would also be a great responsibility and honour if I participated in the unseating of the LPC here:

Back in 2021, this seat had zero chance of ever going to the CPC. However, the CPC does sit within the margin of error based on polling estimates today. If the CPC's 32% maxes out at 39% and the LPC's 47% bottoms at 39%, we have a tie. Plus the recent by-election results in BC suggests that polling data still overestimates the LPC number. It would be a dog fight though. We need that 1% who will vote PPC to vote CPC in this riding. 

Finally we have Davenport, a riding in the core of Toronto:

As you would expect for a riding filled with braindead freeloaders, this one is not nearly competitive for the CPC. How the region can still somehow support the LPC/NDP coalition (or whatever they called it to avoid it being called a coalition) by over 70% is amazing to me. I guess they love their expensive rents for rundown buildings. Maybe it's the dedicated slumlords wanting to keep the gravy train running. But anyways, that jump for the CPC from 10% to 20% is nice, but it has no hopes of being competitive. For such a left-wing riding, the PPC actually did decently at over 3% in 2021. It's a much better idea for as many potential CPC voters here to vote PPC to send a message. Conservatives know they are outnumbered, but they can send a message by supporting the one party that wants to tackle the immigration issue the most aggressively. Seeing a strong PPC number might convince some people to vote PPC in future elections if they think they are a serious party. Certainly there has to be some people in that riding and other similar ridings who would never identify as traditional Conservatives, but might vote for other parties that display certain conservative values. Like how AOC in the States was asking questions about how people voted for her and Trump. 

So these are the examples behind my thought process for this election. Again, if I see this movement gaining traction, I will make more of an effort to do a riding by riding analysis. For now, I rely on readers to look up their riding on 338 and determine the best course of action for achieving the three goals I outlined above.