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For the first time in its history, the NDP would shrewdly play the strategic voting card: if progressives wanted real change in Ottawa, only the NDP could defeat Harper. It was an all-too-familiar refrain for voters, but one the Liberals had long cynically employed — often with great success — to the NDP’s chagrin.

But now the roles are reversed.

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One month into the campaign, the narrative hasn’t exactly evolved as the NDP had envisioned. Consistent polling shows the three main parties locked in a statistical tie with no breakaway in sight.

This is encouraging for Canadian democracy, for it appears that for the first time in years, Canadians will partake in an election campaign that is genuinely competitive across the board. An election that — at a macro level — is less likely to fall victim to strategic voting.

Historically, strategic voting has affected the NDP’s electoral prospects most destructively as the traditionally discounted third party. But the perils of strategic voting have also struck Liberals and Conservatives at critical points in their histories, when they likely merited better electoral results.

Three historical examples stand out.

In 1988, the NDP were the chief victim of strategic voting. In first place midway through the campaign, NDP Leader Ed Broadbent struggled to compete with John Turner’s well-heeled Liberals to attract the anti-free trade vote. While Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Mulroney’s pro-free trade platform ultimately prevailed on its own merits, Turner doubled the Liberals’ seat count, buoyed by an anti-free trade platform that clawed away hundreds of thousands of votes from the NDP.