{"id":10521,"date":"2019-11-07T07:49:04","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T12:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justrightmedia.org\/blog\/?p=10521"},"modified":"2020-04-24T07:16:28","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T11:16:28","slug":"630-the-peoples-choice-or-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/archives\/10521","title":{"rendered":"630 – The people’s choice \u2014 Or is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The

In choosing our representatives for public office, are the winning candidates in any given election really \u2018the people’s choice\u2019? Or do they win for completely different reasons?<\/p>\n

The answer to these questions may surprise you.<\/p>\n

Many believe that ‘strategic voting<\/strong>‘ is what ultimately decides the winner – where voters are not voting for <\/em>a particular candidate, but against<\/em> another. And while it turns out that this is true for a significant number of voters (35%), statistics reveal that many other significant voting patterns are contributing to a final electoral outcome.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most surprising is that 57% of voters (according to a Leger poll conducted after the last Canadian election) say that they voted \u201cbased on their political convictions<\/strong>, without any thought to their candidates’ chances of winning.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another surprise is that among eligible voters who choose not to vote, 39.5% (according to Elections Canada) say that they simply \u201care not interested in politics<\/strong>,\u201d and have no particular desire to participate in elections. Indeed, efforts to increase voter participation may prove fruitless in attempting to appeal to this group \u2013 unless of course, arguments can be made convincingly enough to create that interest.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the phenomenon of populism<\/em><\/strong>. Populist politicians, like U.S. President Donald Trump<\/strong>, Britain\u2019s Nigel Farage<\/strong>, and Canada\u2019s Maxime Bernier<\/strong> have been among those associated with \u2018populist\u2019 issues believed to appeal to a broad electoral base. In each case, those issues related to immigration, national sovereignty, and an opposition to the politics of globalism \u2013 issues that have disturbed traditional voting patterns.<\/p>\n

But in the end, it is political parties <\/strong>themselves that ultimately select the menu of candidates to be fielded in any given election. Only once a candidate is selected by a party, does the voter get to meaningfully participate in the electoral process.<\/p>\n

Consequently, some see political parties as an undesirable obstacle between the voters and their potential representatives (i.e., candidates \u2018forced to tow the party line\u2019). But in a free democracy, and to even be able to offer freedom as a viable option on the grand political menu, political parties offer the only structure, discipline, and process that history has demonstrated to be Just Right, despite their risks of leading in the wrong direction.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n

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In choosing our representatives for public office, are the winning candidates in any given election really \u2018the people’s choice\u2019? Or do they win for completely different reasons? The answer to these questions may surprise you. Many believe that ‘strategic voting‘ is what ultimately decides the winner – where voters are not voting for a particular [Continue Reading]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3134,111,28,205,165,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-globalism","category-governance","category-latest","category-law","category-political-parties","category-politics","issues-elections","issues-immigration","issues-political-parties","issues-voting","category-12-id","category-3134-id","category-111-id","category-28-id","category-205-id","category-165-id","category-6-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10521"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11013,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10521\/revisions\/11013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}