The Grauniad Spitting into the Prairie Winds of Probability

Sure, it could.  So, what, the NDP & Liberals should engage in some grand alliance ?  Yeah, ha ha.  Sure.  That'll happen.

Short of electoral reform (and the record of that in the west is pretty bad, the US having failed to make any movement whatsoever towards abolition of the electoral college, that system having finally in 2000 made a man president ahead of his opponent who literally won more votes, and the electorate of the United Kingdom having actually voted down the option of AV (Alternative Vote/Preferential Voting), because...because, well, there's no way I can say that without being deeply insulting to the intelligence of said electorate), strategic voting is still the best option the voters have.  In theory, politicians and parties could put their own egos and ambitions aside, but when has that ever happened in the West outside WWII ?

For most of my lifetime certainly, voting for the least shitty likely outcome has always been the most sensible option for most of the western world, which does again beg the question for proponents of proportional voting who voted against AV in the UK, what the fuck were you thinking ?  Think the Tories are ever likely to put proportional voting on the ballot given the last results ?  Think there's much chance even AV will be on the cards again for the next several decades ?  Think a likely future rUK will give you any choices other than Tory or UKIP, or the future identical simulacrums thereof ?

But returning to Canadian voters again...Fuck it, you're going to re-elect Harper's government again and you know it.  Short of a massive crisis of confidence in the Tories' economic policies and/or some titanic scandal, you'll vote, like the idiot Brits, in favour of caution over chance, even if you're sane enough to recognise that burning off the oil-sands may well be a death-knell for the planet.

Because you're cautious, you're conservative, you're easily scared, you're risk-averse, you're disproportionately focused on the near-term future, you're rather wedded to irrational thinking, and, in other words,...you're human.