Government Preferences, Vote Choice and Strategic Voting in Canada

Do voters use information about and preferences over who will form government in their vote choices? Voters might have preferences over both which party wins the most seats and what type of government that party can form, which they can use to inform their vote choice. To answer this question, we examine the influence of preferences over government types and compare them to trends in party support in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Using rolling, daily cross-sectional survey evidence from the Canadian Election Study, we find that preferences over government type are strongly related to vote choice and that this relationship depends on the perceived viability of the preferred party. We also find that this relationship differs outside and within Quebec: outside Quebec, only the Liberal Party suffers among voters preferring minority governments, while within Quebec, the Liberal Party, New Democratic Party and Conservative Party all struggle to hold on to voters who prefer minority governments.