Measuring strategic voting in multiparty plurality elections

We propose a method for measuring strategic voting in multiparty plurality elections, and we apply that method to the 1997 Canadian election. The firs t stage of the inquiry determines whether voters' expectations about the ou tcome of the election have an independent effect on vote choice, after cont rolling their preferences, more specifically their party identification and evaluations of parties and leaders. We show that in the 1997 Canadian elec tion perceptions of the local race in the constituency did affect the vote, but not perceptions of the race for who would form the government and the official opposition. The second stage of the analysis consists in assessing for each respondent whether her vote was sincere or strategic: a responden t is deemed to have cast a strategic vote if whether her expectations about the outcome of the election are considered or not leads to a different pre diction about which party she is most likely to support. On that basis, we estimate that about 3% of voters cast a strategic vote in the 1997 election . (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.