Strategic nomination

Strategic nomination refers to the entry of a candidate into an election with the intention of changing the ranking of other candidates. The name is an echo of ‘tactical voting’ and is intended to imply that it is the candidates rather than the voters who are seeking to manipulate the result in a manner unfaithful to voters’ true preferences.

The same effect may occur even if candidates are not nominated with this thought in mind. Depending on the voting system being used, the addition of extra candidates with similar constituencies may either split away votes and hurt their combined prospects (in plurality voting systems), or it may concentrate votes in favor of the overrepresented constituencies (in positional voting systems).

Strategic nomination may also be employed to confuse voters by running candidates with similar names to a major candidate. This can be seen as a type of vote-splitting, but could have some effect even in otherwise robust methods if some voters vote for a fake candidate instead of the real candidate. An Indian election in 2014 provides an example, where Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Chandu Sahu found himself facing ten independent candidates sharing his name.