The goal: provide information to voters on prospective Ontario ridings where strategic voting could be applied in the 2025 Canadian federal election. This election took place on April 28, 2025.
Canada has five major political parties. Every aspect of each party’s policy could be debated, but for the purpose of promoting strategic voting I summarize the party platforms on a political policy spectrum from right to left as follows:
Progressive Conservatives PC – Right
Liberals LIB – Centre
Bloc Quebecois BQ – Centre
New Democratic Party NDP – Left
Green GRN – Left
The aim is for some combination of LIB – NDP – GRN – BQ minority government. By strategically selecting a candidate in the 16 Ontario ridings where centre/left votes exceeded conservative votes (split votes)as the candidate to back, riding winners from centre/left parties can be achieved. The minority form of government is the best way to protect Canadian citizens from the excesses of one-party rule.
What stands in the way? Information. This site will provide voters with the best* choice for a strategic vote in each of the 16 strategic ridings in Ontario with the goal of for centre/left parties and a total large enough to form a minority government in Canada in 2025. The strategic candidates list will be available when there are declared candidates in the ridings.
*Best candidate how? These are the rankings used:
- ran in last election with higher vote count than other centre/left party candidates
- Party candidate had higher vote count in 2021
- candidate’s win would address a historical inequity
- polling indicates party/candidate in lead in a riding
Ontario opportunities for Strategic Voting in 2025
Ontario portion of the Federal Election results 2021
Of the 37 seats won by the Conservatives in Ontario in 2021, 16 of them were won because the centre/left vote was split. In each of these ridings Strategic Voting could have resulted in a win for the Liberals, NDP or Geen parties. These ridings are the focus for Strategic Voting in the 2025 election.
2021 Election results, Conservative wins in 16 selected Ontario ridings
Source: 44th General Election – September 20, 2021 – Elections Canada
Strategic Candidates in the 17 Ontario Ridings in the Federal Election
The 16 strategic ridings are now 17 after riding re-alignment in 2023. The riding of Durham was split into Bowmanville–Oshawa North and York Durham
How were the strategic candidates chosen?
The reason for the selection of the strategic candidate/party for each strategic riding. The polling data for each riding will be updated as it becomes available.
The strategic choice for Oshawa was updated to LIB based on the predicted voting outcome being a 70/30 split between Liberal and NDP votes where the combined votes are greater than the PC vote. The other strategic choices are based on the 2021 vote outcomes. Of the 17 ridings, 4 are predicted to be close races, with the potential for a progressive win.
Results of 2025 Election in 17 identified Ontario strategic vote ridings
The results of the 17 Strategic riding are listed below. In general, of the 17 ridings, there were 2 where a progressive candidate won, 3 ridings where there was still a “split” of progressive voters which contributed to a progressives loss and 12 ridings where progressives were outvoted, with the total progressive vote too low for strategic voting to affect the outcome. Compared to 2021 results where the original 16 ridings were all “split” progressive voters, it appears that strategic voting had an impact.
Source of final vote counts: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2025/results/