Présentée par la Chaire de recherche en études électorales.

Does the extent to which voters engage into strategic voting vary with partisan context? To answer this question, we systematically compare the results of two surveys specifically designed to measure strategic voting and conducted during two Canadian provincial elections — the 2011 election in Ontario and the 2012 election in Quebec. Although very similar in many respects, including the electoral system, the two systems differ in terms of party offer due to a different socio-political history. Using individual-level indicators, we find that the number of parties and the degree of party polarization in the district increase the probability to cast a strategic vote in both provinces. These contextual effects in turn explain the differences in levels of strategic voting in Ontario and Quebec. Our results bring important contributions to the literature of strategic voting that usually focuses on the effect of the electoral system as the sole contextual determinant of this behaviour.