The strategic analysis

Earlier this week I put together a brief look at the effects (and failings) of strategic voting sites in the marginal seats from this month's election. But Alice has provided the definitive analysis of the sites' effect, with duly scathing critiques of both the effect of strategic voting generally...

I'm being told that the groups view their efforts as being a success, and that they're planning to repeat them all over ahead next time. Oh brother. I think we need to be really clear on their record in that case.

The problem with the strategic voting websites is that their electoral analysis was incompetent and utterly wrong in most of the ridings where it could be said to have mattered — leading to incorrect recommendations in many cases where it would have made a difference, and no recommendations in others that were overlooked.
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The maddening thing about the seat projection sites and strategic voting campaigns, from the perspective of party riding campaigns, is that it was nearly all they wound up hearing about at the doorstep if they were one of the targeted seats, and the strategic voting canvasses also sucked up a lot of volunteer resources for fool's errands, taking them away from the actual candidates' campaigns.
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The strategic voting campaigns also printed material that was distributed in the ridings (shown is an example from Edmonton Centre), leafleted people on their way into the subway (seen here), and conducted phone blasts in the days leading up to Election Day urging people to vote for the endorsed candidate as "the only way to stop Harper" (this happened in Brant), which detracted from the campaigns' ability to get their own vote out, as they parried numerous calls from confused voters.

...and particularly the one site which is trying to claim credit for some great accomplishment even in the face of its obvious failures in both assessing and converting opportunities to defeat Con candidates:

So, Project Democracy proved unable to rally sufficient voters to prevent 19 Conservative gains, completely missed the opportunity to even recommend strategic votes in 10 other cases where the Conservatives gained a seat, and got the recommendation right in just 8 cases where Conservatives were actually defeated, leaving 33 targeted Conservative MPs in place.

And the Conservatives were reelected with a majority government. No wonder they loved Project Democracy.