Editing Strategic voting (section)

==Coordination==
{{Unreferenced section|date=August 2024}}
The nature of strategic voting requires some level of coordination. Because it is a system of voting that assesses outcomes before casting one's vote, coordination towards the outcome is a prerequisite for strategic voting. There must be some kind of coordination device in order to vote strategically. Coordination devices, though not the only device, are typically opinion polls. For example, if there was  two similarly appealing majority candidates and a minority candidate and voters were given the choice between the three, polls are imperative to coordinating votes for either majority candidate.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Andonie |first1=Costel |last2=Kuzmics |first2=Christoph |date=2012-11-01 |title=Pre-election polls as strategic coordination devices |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0167268112001813 |journal=Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization |volume=84 |issue=2 |pages=681–700 |doi=10.1016/j.jebo.2012.09.014 |issn=0167-2681}}</ref> Polls are then a tool used by voters to ensure that the minority candidate doesn't obtain office, which would be adverse to Duverger's law.  

Tactical voting may occur in isolation or as part of an organized campaign. In the former situation, electors make their own judgement as to the most effective way to (typically) prevent the election of a specific candidate or party. In the latter, one or more parties or groups encourage their supporters to vote tactically in an effort to influence the outcome. 

The form that coordinated tactical voting takes depends largely on the electoral system of the polity. For example, vote thresholds in a proportional representation electoral system are found to prompt voters to coordinate their votes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Blais |first1=André |last2=Erisen |first2=Cengiz |last3=Rheault |first3=Ludovic |date=June 2014 |title=Strategic Voting and Coordination Problems in Proportional Systems: An Experimental Study |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1065912913520573 |journal=Political Research Quarterly |language=en |volume=67 |issue=2 |pages=386–397 |doi=10.1177/1065912913520573 |issn=1065-9129}}</ref> For example, in the 2018 Swedish election, thresholds led voters who identified with a small party to consider the outcomes of their votes on the system of government as well as the other parties' outcomes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fredén |first=Annika |title=Threshold Insurance Voting in PR Systems: A Study of Voters' Strategic Behavior in the 2010 Swedish General Election |journal=Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties |date=2014-10-02 |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=473–492 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2013.872118 |doi=10.1080/17457289.2013.872118 |issn=1745-7289}}</ref> The voting history of the polity also influences coordination efforts: in proportional representation systems with little voting history, voters tend to vote more sincerely than engage in strategic voting due to the unknown nature of what party will be most viable.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Blais |first1=André |last2=Erisen |first2=Cengiz |last3=Rheault |first3=Ludovic |date=June 2014 |title=Strategic Voting and Coordination Problems in Proportional Systems: An Experimental Study |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1065912913520573 |journal=Political Research Quarterly |language=en |volume=67 |issue=2 |pages=386–397 |doi=10.1177/1065912913520573 |issn=1065-9129}}</ref> 

Organized tactical voting in which a political party mounts a campaign calling on its supporters not to vote for their own favored candidates, but for those of a party which it perceives as more likely to defeat a common opponent, is less common. An example is the [[1906 United Kingdom general election]], where the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberals]] (incidentally, the predecessors of the Liberal Democrats from the previous example) and the then-insurgent [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] (founded in 1900) agreed on the [[Gladstone-MacDonald pact]], under which certain Liberal candidates would stand aside in favor of Labour ones, again to ensure that the Conservative candidates would not win on the basis of a split anti-Tory vote.

An intermediate case also exists, where a non-party campaign attempts to coordinate tactical voting, typically with the goal of defeating a certain party. Cases of this include the Canadian [[Anything But Conservative]] campaign, which opposed the [[Conservative Party of Canada]] in the [[2008 Canadian federal election|2008]] and [[2015 Canadian federal election|2015 federal elections]], or the [[Smart Voting]] campaign organized by Russia's [[Anti-Corruption Foundation]] with the goal of opposing and weakening the [[United Russia]] party in the [[2021 Russian legislative election]]. This also occurred in the UK 2019 General Election, where voting groups such as Tactical Vote and Turf Out The Tories, promoted tactical voting to prevent a Conservative majority.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Niall |date=2020 |title=Strategic Voting in Two-Party Legislative Elections |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3590197 |journal=SSRN Electronic Journal |doi=10.2139/ssrn.3590197 |ssrn=3590197 |issn=1556-5068}}</ref>