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OTTAWA — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is pointing voters to tools they can use to ensure their ballot will help defeat Stephen Harper's Conservatives – endorsing strategic voting, but only for close-race ridings.
Ms. May's Greens are still in double-digit support in many national opinion polls, suggesting that they could hit record highs on election day, at least in popular vote. But Green support could also split the opposition vote and help elect Conservative MPs in some ridings – and Ms. May says defeating Mr. Harper's government is “obviously” the most important issue.
“As the leader of a grassroots party, I'm not in a position to yank anyone, or tell anyone what to do. I just think Canadians need to take a long hard look at the potential here to get rid of the government of Stephen Harper and all that it represents…”
“That includes Greens as elected MPs, and to make that change it includes Stéphane Dion as a minority prime minister.”
Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May gestures for more water as Conservative candidate Peter MacKay walks by during a brief break in an an all-candidates debate on Monday. (Mike Dembeck/Canadian Press)
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She said it's a bad idea to leave the Greens in most ridings in the country, but that it would make sense in a small number of ridings where there are tight races.
“Voting strategically as advice is pretty useless, because when you tell people to vote strategically, they don't know what to make of that advice,” Ms. May said. “People who are looking for help in those choice, certainly there's a lot of civil society, non-government efforts out there, and people know where to look. There's websites, there's ideas.”
“For the vast majority of ridings in this country, there aren't tight races, and for the vast majority of ridings in this country, advice to vote strategically – suggesting one should somehow jump away from the Green Party – is very bad advice indeed. There are a handful of close races, and other third parties are analyzing that.”
Several websites, like democraticspace.com and voteforenvironment.ca, have created models advising what party they believe is most likely to defeat the Conservative candidate in any given riding.
Ms. May noted that she has received endorsements from strategic-vote advocates like environmental group avaaz, which has endorsed three candidates against prominent Conservatives.
Ms. May is running against Defence Minister Peter MacKay, and struck a deal with Mr. Dion in which the Liberals agreed not to run a candidate there. Both have insisted that's as far as the deal goes, despite Mr. Harper's prediction that Ms. May would deliver an all-out endorsement of Mr. Dion's Liberals in the dying days of the campaign.
Ms. May insists that the Green Party will elect MPs for the first time ever in this election. She named a handful of prospective winners, including herself in Central Nova, ejected former Liberal Blair Wilson in Vancouver-West-Sunshine Coast, deputy leader Adriane Carr in Vancouver Centre, as well as Greens in Nunavut, and the Ontario ridings of Guelph and Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.
But different polls show different national levels of support for the Greens – from 7 per cent to 12 per cent – and it is unclear whether they will be in a position to translate their support into any seats.
