If me and my spouse vote for opposite candidates would it be the same if we just didn’t vote?
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Nope! As my old government teacher always said: it doesn’t matter who you vote for, it matters that you vote. He wasn’t saying that because he valued democracy or anything. Here’s his reasoning-
Politicians select their policies and stances based on what is most likely to get them votes. They analyze demographics, voting trends, polls, etc. to determine the best possible route to getting elected.
When we choose not to vote, our ideas/opinions do not matter to a politician. This is why politicians don’t generally focus on getting younger votes by leaning into more liberal ideas- young people don’t vote, and won’t win them the election.
By voting, you are adding weight to your opinion, and the opinions of other people in your demographics. It may not change an election, or have a very visible effect on politics, but it very much matters.
No because it would
(1) affect voter turnout
(2) change your preferred candidate’s percent of the vote—especially if there’s less-popular third party candidates
(3) leave out all the stuff down ballot that is also very important! Voting for the president is exciting but voting for your local sheriff or school board positions can have way more influence in your day-to-day life sometimes
Yes it matter because of simple maths: For example you live in a town with ten people.
If you and your wife don’t vote, it could be that the score is 2 Vs 6, or 25% Vs 75%.
Now if you both vote, it becomes 3 Vs 7, or 30% Vs 70%.
Adding up 1 to the top and bottom of a fraction changes the fraction
In isolation, this doesn’t matter, but because of the voting system, it does, because those percentages influence seat allocation and that’s what really matters. So if you both vote opposite, you close the gap between candidates
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It matters less depending on your riding’s population, but it will always matter a little.
Imagine your district had 100 people possible to vote. You guys don’t, so the district (98 voters) votes 59 for orange and 39 for green.
Oranges have a 51.28% lead over green.
But if you both had voted it becomes a total of 60 votes for orange and 40 for green.
Oranges now have a 50% lead over green.
Again, it matters less at higher populations but it will always matter a little.
There are more elections than just the one at the top. I assume you are only talking about the presidency, in which case, go vote because the downballot stuff affects your life a lot. If you two are not voting for any of the same people anywhere on the ballot, I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t think you want the same future.
In a country where only two citizens existed excluding the politician, two opposing votes would cancel out. Same as not voting. However, we live in countries with hundreds of millions of people, more of which may prefer one choice in an election over another. So, let’s say there are ten of you.
Six of the ten prefer RED. Two of the ten prefer BLUE. If your spouse votes RED and you vote BLUE, then your vote is 1/3 of the BLUE’s support while your spouse’s vote is only 1/7 of RED’s support.
Since blue has less support, your vote MEANS MORE.
The benefits of our preferential voting system is that there are no ‘opposite’ parties – if you vote for an independent or minor party candidate who doesn’t get it then your vote will still flow on to your 2nd , 3rd, 4th candidate etc until one finally amases enough votes to be elected.
So even if you vote for ‘opposite’ candidates in the end your vote will still count towards your preferred candidates and will provide benefits to them in terms of future funding etc.
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