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April 18

About factional fighting within the party

Are there any cases in history where faction A of a political party has deliberately nominated someone from faction B to stand in an election that it expects to lose, in order to damage the reputation of faction B? What are some of the cases where this strategy succeeded or failed? PCpasd (talk) 02:10, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to answer. In most countries (but, not Japan), factions are called something else — interest groups, caucuses, etc — so identifying when it is an actual faction (no clear definition covers more than one country), or just a bunch of spoilsports isn’t easy.DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 05:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly your scenario, but in the internal elections for leadership of the Conservative Party (UK), the election process could be triggered by a candidate who had no chance of winning, known as a "stalking horse", so that the actual challenger could enter the process without seeming to be disloyal (the election procedure has since changed to prevent this tactic). See Leadership elections: Conservative Party (p. 30). Alansplodge (talk) 10:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or taking a broader interpretation of your question, the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum was intended to silence anti-EU sentiment within the Consrvative Party. Prime Minister David Cameron fully expected that the proposal to leave the EU would be easily defeated, but it wasn't and he resigned. Alansplodge (talk) 10:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]