By Julie Gordon
VANCOUVER, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Organizers of two key
strategic voting campaigns in Canada are throwing most of their
support to the center-left Liberals, who lead the ruling
Conservatives in polls and may also benefit from a bandwagon
effect in the final days of the tight campaign.
Both Leadnow, a non-profit group funded through individual
donations, and website strategicvoting.ca have seen support grow
as sentiment against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his
10-year-old government builds and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau
opens up a lead in opinion polls.
Nearly 90,000 people have pledged to "vote together" to beat
the Conservative candidate in their riding, marking a 30 percent
rise in support in the last three weeks of the 11-week campaign,
Leadnow said.
Strategicvoting.ca, run by Alberta-based information
technology manager Hisham Abdel-Rahman, has seen its unique page
views more than double in three weeks, with 28,000 people now
logging on to the site in a typical day.
Both campaigns ask left-leaning voters - whether Liberal,
New Democrat or Green - to vote for the local candidate most
likely to beat the Conservative rival, particularly in the
province of British Columbia, where races are tight.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N11U31B
With Trudeau emerging as the front-runner by about five
percentage points over Harper ahead of the Oct. 19 vote, Leadnow
has recommended 16 Liberals and 13 NDP candidates in 29 ridings.
But the campaign has hit a few bumps, with Leadnow accused
of having a pro-NDP bias after it recommended that party's
candidate in a close Vancouver race, despite the Liberals' lead
in local and national polls. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12H0AD
While the group said it simply took the lead of voters in a
riding that was too close to call, the controversy highlighted
the emotional problems of strategic voting.
"This is why people do not like to strategic vote," said
Steven Weldon, an associate professor of political science at
Simon Fraser University. He said it is impossible to know how
many people go through with their pledge to vote strategically
once in the voting booth.
Some analysts expect another common type of strategic voting
to occur - the bandwagon effect where those seeking change pile
their support behind the perceived best alternative - which is
possible now that the "Anyone but Harper" vote has a
front-runner after a virtual tie in the first half of the
campaign.
Harper, who is disliked by many left-leaning voters for his
tax-cutting, small-government agenda, is seeking a rare fourth
term as prime minister.
(Editing by Andrea Hopkins and G Crosse)