strategic voting
Calculated electoral choice
Strategic voting is casting a ballot not for your preferred candidate but for one more likely to win against a candidate you oppose.
Rather than "wasting" a vote on a long-shot favorite, voters choose strategically to influence the outcome: I don't love the moderate, but I'm voting strategically to keep the extremist out.
Also called tactical voting.
- swing stateElectorally competitive region
- swing voterPersuadable electorate member
- spoiler effectThird option skews results
- lesser evilMore acceptable harm
- lesser of two evilsPreferable among bad options
electability · frontrunner · polling · margin of error · battleground · safe seat · third party · protest vote · game theory · first past the post · plurality · runoff · ranked choice · compromise · pragmatic · calculated · ballot · primary
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