I never could grasp the concept of winning by losing, but maybe I was not in school that day......
Many aspire for the "backlash effect" thinking the Dems will badly blow their chance in power that in the next election the electorate will throw them out. Pat Buchanan believed this when he ran as a presidential spoiler in 2000.
Subtraction = addition does not compute. The Conservatives may win in the next election, but the leftists will have entanglement of socialistic, and other bad laws in place that it would be almost impossible to get back to where the country was before. In effect, the ball still gets pushed leftward.