The ‘Progressive Primary’: Who Will Win?

Since the modern Conservative Party of Canada formed in 2003, progressive Canadians have adopted a variety of voting strategies to prevent Conservatives from assuming power.

Starting in 2008, voters played with the idea of strategic voting in the pursuit of “ABC,” or “anyone but Conservative.”

In 2011, progressives rallied behind Jack Layton’s NDP and surged in the final weeks of the campaign to the detriment of Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals. Stephen Harper got a Conservative majority.

But for the first time, the progressive vote had finally co-ordinated enough to provide a sizable opposition to the Conservatives, and vote splitting was kept to a minimum. With this, the progressive primary was born.

The progressive primary describes the first weeks of a federal election when progressive voters consider where to place their vote to accomplish two separate, sometimes contradictory goals: staying true to their values and preventing a Conservative win. Now in the heat of the 2025 federal election, the progressive primary is well underway.

The ballot question has become “Who is best to deal with Donald Trump and fight for Canadian interests?” Progressive voters are seeing what is happening in the United States, and they are not ready to accept something similar in Canada.

The Angus Reid Institute’s recent polling shows that the most important issues are the cost of living and Canada-U.S. relations. David Coletto of Abacus Data recently shared similar findings, and Leger has also confirmed this data.

The Liberals, by all accounts, seem to have best leveraged this critical question. But progressives must be mindful that coalescing a vote around two parties may have long-term, deleterious effects for our politics, discourse and polarization.

Beware the vote split

While top-line Liberal strength may compel some progressive vote switchers to abandon the NDP, this strategy may end up delivering a lot of marginal seats to Conservative candidates, especially in ridings previously held by the NDP.

Take North Island-Powell River, for example.

Currently held by the NDP’s Rachel Blaney, the riding is being heavily contested by controversial Conservative media personality Aaron Gunn. The Conservatives have targeted this riding since as early as 2022.

With the Liberals surging in B.C., a relatively small shift in support away from the NDP to the Liberals in North Island-Powell River could deliver a seat to Gunn, even marginally.

The race in North Island-Powell River is a case in which voting for the Liberals, despite their national surge, will work against a progressive voter’s best intentions.

This is also true in Courtenay-Alberni, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Nanaimo-Ladysmith and dozens of other ridings across Canada.

We’ve seen this film before

Political reshuffling happens constantly. Byelections occur, MPs shift parties and exogenous global events alter the priorities of previously predictable groups of voters.

While some of these changes are for the better, progressive Canadians should be concerned by the prospect of the country moving toward a more polarized, two-party system.

Canada has gotten through the last half-century avoiding many of the excesses and upheavals of our southern neighbours — largely because of the political counterweight created by Canada’s three progressive alternatives.

Many will argue that the current state of the NDP was created by its decision to partner with the federal Liberals in the wake of the 2022 convoy protests in Ottawa.

While the supply and confidence agreement granted the NDP enormous power over the federal policy agenda, it also forced the party to wear all the bruises and blemishes of a tired, third-term Trudeau government.

“Junior coalition partner” syndrome is not a new phenomenon. We’ve seen this elsewhere in the world. The call of the 2015 general election in the United Kingdom saw the dissolution of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, which ultimately resulted in the U.K. Conservatives catapulting into a majority government.

Left behind were the Liberal Democrats, who lost 49 out of 57 seats, leading to their demotion to third-party status in the House of Commons. It has taken the Liberal Democrats close to 10 years to climb back above 50 seats, with strategic voting cited as a reason why people moved their votes toward the two major parties, U.K. Labour and the U.K. Conservatives.

A study published by the London School of Economics found that strategic voting increased as Liberal Democrat supporters found their local candidate to be inviable compared with the Labour or Conservative candidate, causing a cycle of misfortune for the party.

The decline of the Liberal Democrats changed the political system in the United Kingdom, leading to a concentration of power within the two parties before the Brexit vote occurred. This affected Brexit’s “leave” and “remain” campaigns, deepening polarization in the country and ultimately leading to the creation of Reform UK, a right-wing populist party.

Canada and the United Kingdom share a first-past-the-post voting system in a multi-party electoral dynamic. While the voting system allows for divergent viewpoints, it also strains smaller parties, which are more vulnerable to the effects of strategic voting.

A newly polarized system

Extreme polarization occurs when a lack of true choice exists within a political system. It also encourages non-participation. When progressive voters get sick of the Democratic party in the United States, we tend to see people simply sit out an election rather than vote for the other party.

One effect of losing smaller parties within a multi-party system like Canada’s is that political polarization will undoubtedly increase. In the absence of smaller parties, larger political parties will seek to create more “wedge” issues to distinguish themselves from one another.

Political scientist Markus Wagner found that parties respond to societal polarization by taking more extreme positions, which leads other parties to entrench themselves in an opposing belief. This means that compromise on policy can become rarer.

In the United States, polarization between the two main political parties has risen for decades, but it is only recently that political violence at protests, death threats and intimidation have increased from fringe groups.

This further hinders the democratic process, as many will opt out of running in an election due to fears of being targeted, as we’ve seen with many politicians in the lead-up to this federal election.

In Canada, we still have the luxury of many options, allowing a robust policy debate to occur on the left while denying any single party the ability to take progressive voters for granted.

Canadians have long prided themselves on their ability to be open-minded. But a restructuring of the political system in which two parties emerge from the 2025 election with a plurality of the votes may result in a further trust gap among Canadians.

The case for supporting local candidates

The coming weeks of the federal election will determine who the progressive vote will coalesce behind, and what effects that vote shifting will cause in the near future.

For those concerned about the weakening of smaller parties, the worry is well founded. Should the NDP and Bloc Québécois have their seat count severely diminished, the progressive project in Canada will be harmed in the long term.

Public health care, the Canada Pension Plan, $10-a-day child care and public dental care would not exist if the NDP had not held the balance of power at various points during the last 60 years.

A government with the NDP or Bloc Québécois holding the balance of power accomplishes far more through compromise, vents the steam of polarization and produces policies that better reflect the interests of more Canadians.

Great emphasis on strategic voting this election could deliver a political map dominated by Liberals and Conservatives. I suggest: first take a moment to look critically at who is running in your local riding, their positions on local issues, their track records and what they can do as an MP.

And be very sure about the likely vote breakdown in your riding. In some ill-informed circumstances, choosing to vote for a Liberal in this election may deliver the Conservatives a win instead of sending an NDP MP to Ottawa to advocate for you.

National leaders for the election are important, but citizens are more likely to interact day to day with their local MP. It’s in all our best interest to continue having strong parties in the House to ensure that diverse and progressive opinions, whether in B.C. or Quebec, are still fought for at this critical moment in history.