There was only originally going to be one post on this site, but a question was asked on Twitter about the need for tactical voting in the first place, so I thought I would explain.

First Past the Post

The electoral system in this country is messed up. It relies on something called “First Past the Post” which invariably produces a skewed result that unfairly puts what is usually the largest minority into office with a majority of the MPs in the House of Commons.

The country is divided up into 650 constituencies by the Boundaries Commission. These do change from time to time and are referred to as “boundary changes.” Each constituency elects an MP to sit as a representative in the House of Commons. However, the winning MP is simply the person to garners the most votes within the constituency. There is no requirement for the MP to attain more than 50% of the vote, no run-off votes, just a single one-off vote in which the candidate with the most votes wins, hence “First Past the Post”. This means constituencies can have an MP that the majority did not vote for.

Under this system, the votes cast for the candidates that did not win in their constituency do not go anywhere. They have no ability to influence the outcome of the election either locally or at a national level. In the 2017 general election, around 46% of the votes cast did not go towards the election of a candidate. There have been elections in recent history where this percentage exceeds 50%.

It is also worth noting that candidates are, under electoral law, elected as individuals. In the eyes of the law their party does not matter. This is why the many MPs who have changed parties over the recent months are under no obligation to resign their positions and hold by-elections to get themselves re-elected under their new party despite the complaints of many who do not understand the system.

Formation of the Government

The party that forms the government is the one that has the most elected candidates. Due to the way that constituencies are organised, this can result in the number of seats attained by each party being out of proportion to their share of the vote nationally. For example, in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives polled 36.9% of the vote yet wound up with 330 seats (50.1%) of the seats, Labour polled 30.4% and only attained 232 seats (35.7%), while the SNP polled 4.7% and got 56 seats (8.6%).

It is assumed that the leader of the party with the most seats will be appointed the Prime Minister. Strictly speaking, the person who becomes Prime Minister is the person who has the confidence of the House of Commons. We have no ability to directly elect this person. As has been shown with the accession of Boris the Liar to the position of PM, it was only Conservative Party members who elected him as leader of his party, and an assumption because of numbers (and a failure to challenge him by the opposition).

Once this individual has been to see the Queen, they then set about making ministerial appointments, usually from the ranks of MPs in their own party. Neither we nor Parliament have the ability to question or remove these people from office.

Pros and Cons

There are two main arguments in favour of First Past the Post.

The first is that it allows a specific individual to be accountable to their constituents. The constituency has the power to determine who represents them and when to remove them rather than voting for a party and having a candidate imposed upon them. The idea is that this creates a personal connection with the constituency.

The second is that it results in a majority government which means that the party that is granted power is better able to get its work through Parliament than if they had to deal with a coalition partner.

There are, however, flaws in these arguments.

Other electoral systems do exist which would allow voters to retain control over who represents them. What we lose by using FPTP is the ability to have representative government in this country.

Many of the underlying problems in this country come from the fact that governments are allowed free reign for five years once elected and are usually able to do so with no opposition owing to the fact that they generally will have a majority of the MPs. The opposition will continue to raise points, raise amendments, and challenge the government in order to try and hold them to account, but in the end, because they have a majority in the House, they can railroad their legislation through without issue most of the time.

The net result of such a situation is that some sections of the population are not represented in the government’s program. We have seen this particularly in the regions of England and Wales where areas have been neglected and are not a priority for government investment. This is why the loss of funding coming from the European Union will be damaging to such areas. It has resulted in people being “left behind.”

In the situation where a coalition exists, multiple parties have to come together in order to produce a shared program for government. This requires compromise between the parties but also means that the larger partner cannot guarantee the consent of their smaller partner(s). Since no party has an overall majority, the possibility for real opposition in the House of Commons rises and the ability for the opposition parties to have more of an influence is also greater.

Coalitions are much more of a feature in countries which use forms of Proportional Representation. This is because the numbers of members returned from each party more closely represents the percentage of the vote they gained from the electorate. Even if we compare with the D’Hondt system of proportional representation used in our European Elections in which multiple MEPs are returned for each electoral region, it produces a far more representative result than FPTP does and would give a higher probability of returning coalition government if used nationally in this country.

The Tactical Voting Requirement

The need for tactical voting exists because First Past the Post does not allow us to directly elect the government or its leader (the Prime Minister) and does not produce a representative government. It also has a habit of routinely discarding the votes of people who do not vote for the winning candidate.

The only way for the electorate to effect a change of government is to decrease the number of MPs the party in power has and increase the number for another party. Unfortunately, First Past the Post is working on a constituency level and because of the way those constituencies are constituted by the Boundaries Commission, this can be difficult to achieve. It requires widespread disaffection with the government to effect a change.

The Boundaries Commission when it redraws constituencies tends to ensure that like voting areas are bound together to produce a clear result intended to maximise the vote of the constituents. What this results in is constituencies which are either “safe” (i.e. where one party is usually pretty much guaranteed to win even if they put up the worst candidate imaginable) or “maginal” (i.e. two or more parties are in contention and either can win the seat).

Tactical voting is the intention to vote in a manner designed to remove the sitting MP (or their party) from your constituency. In a “safe” seat, this is somewhat harder to do largely because there will be bigger percentage of loyal voters who always vote for the same party irrespective of leadership or policies. In a “marginal”, the difference between the parties in contention could be a few thousand votes or less. This could be the product either of a balance in the number of loyalists between the parties involved, or the exact opposite where there are a larger proportion of floating voters.

So, you are in a marginal constituency where the Conservatives and Labour are in contention and the Tories have the sitting MP, the objective would be to remove that Tory MP. Irrespective of where (if anywhere) your own political inclinations lie, voting for the Labour candidate would be the action most likely to produce the removal of that Tory MP even though it would give you an MP that you do not necessarily support. If enough people in your constituency act in the same way then you will succeed and you will have removed a Tory MP from their seat thus potentially contributing to taking the Tories out of power.

In the current situation, it may be more complicated than simply voting for the party that came second. It is therefore important to seek out as much information as possible including local polling and organised tactical voting sites before coming to a decision about the best way to tactically vote. It should also be noted that campaigning does change things so it is best to reassess the situation close to polling day.

Conclusion

Put simply, tactical voting is just the action of voting against a (usually) sitting candidate purely to remove them in favour of an alternative candidate who stands a chance of winning.

It is a very negative way of voting as it involves voting for a “least worst choice” rather than for someone you actually want to win. Unfortunately, the nature of our flawed First Past the Post system necessitates this thinking some times with the result that we are locked into what is essentially an unrepresentative two party system with no hope of changing it. There are currently proposals around to reduce the number of MPs down to 600 which, according to some analyses, will increase the number of safe Conservative seats and make it harder to remove them from office, so the situation could potentially get worse rather than better.

The current UK general election and the political environment in which it is taking place has triggered a lot of debate on the subject of tactical voting. Not all of that “debate” can be considered helpful, and it is detracting from the main goal which is to ensure that another term of office is not granted to the destructive and incompetent Conservative Party under the leadership of Boris the Liar.

Personally, I have been burnt by tactical voting before to the point where I swore I would never do it again, therefore this election presents me with somewhat of a quandary. I have been stabbed in the back by both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party and as a result have regretted voting for either in the past simply as a way of getting rid of the other. This is before getting into the subject of brexit where both parties have essentially twisted the knife. I therefore have the difficult choice of having to decide whether or not to hold the line or, because of circumstance, vote for a party that I feel has betrayed me.

That is, however, not what I need to discuss here.

Caution

I can see that under certain circumstances and in particular constituencies that tactical voting may be counterproductive and may yield a result which is undesirable. This would be as a result of the current political situation in this country particularly with regards to brexit, but also because of the disconnect which is occurring between some voters and the parties they traditionally vote for.

We have a number of things which are not “normal” going on here:

• a large number of people are about to vote on the basis of one political issue (i.e. brexit);
• a larger proportion of the electorate (recently estimated to be around 14% according to polling) are prepared to vote purely tactically to remove the Conservative government;
• traditionally Tory voters may not vote Tory because of their brexit position;
• moderate Tory voters may not vote Tory because of the party’s swing to the right;
• moderate Tory voters may not vote Tory due to possible connections with Nigel Farage and his party;
• Tory voters may not vote Tory because it is being lead by Boris the Liar;
• Labour remain voters are viewing the Labour Party as supporting a “leave” stance;
• Labour leave voters are viewing the party as supporting a “remain” stance;
• moderate Labour voters may be uncomfortable with the current leftist position of the party;
• moderate Labour voters may not be happy with Jeremy Corbyn.

These are conditions which have potentially created a larger proportion of floating voters than normal, and it is these people who determine the result. The electorate may be prepared as a collective to behave in a manner which is inconsistent with previous elections. As a consequence we cannot rely solely upon previous results and who came second as a guide to who is the ideal candidate to vote for to remove a Tory. Also, political polling makes use of statistical modelling in order to extrapolate out a reasonable predicition from a much smaller sample size. If the modelling does not take into account the unusual circumstances, the predictions made could be wildly adrift, particularly those at a national level.

Given that tactical voting websites are going to base their recommendations on just this sort of data, the first point I would make is that care needs to be taken in selecting a candidate. Some of the sites that I have seen have not updated their details to include correct information about which candidates are standing and therefore include results for parties that will not represented on the ballot. In choosing a candidate to vote for, please look at the local situation in your constituency, find any more detailed polling information and do not leap blindly. I would also add that as campaigns progress, the polling will change and so the recommendations will change and you may need to reassess your position much closer to polling day. In some cases the choice will be difficult or less than obvious, in others it will be simple.

Self-Moderation

Unfortunately, there has been much arguing and bickering online about tactical voting which has been counterproductive, achieves nothing and is deflecting away from the main goal.

The second point I would therefore make is accept that you cannot control the game.

You cannot dictate to others how they should vote; it is their choice governed by their reasoning. It is pointless to get into blazing arguments with people just because they are not planning on doing what you want them to do. By all means, persuade and make the needed information available, but recognise that there is a point at which persuasion can become cajoling and bullying. Accept that it is their choice and move on.

I’d also point out that the date for announcing candidacies in constituencies is long past, so there’s no point in complaining about who’s standing or expecting people to step aside because it’s too late for that now. As I am about to explain, many of the candidates that people think should step aside are actually serving a useful purpose.

The candidates and their parties will be publicly saying and acting as if they are playing to win, and that is only natural. Do not condemn them for not campaigning to come second.

Diversification

My final point (this is the reason for the title and probably the more important point); there are many ways to play this game, NOT JUST TACTICAL VOTING!

There needs to be recognition that there is risk in tactical voting. The mere action of persuading many people to vote tactically can have an undesirable effect. If all you are trying to do is move votes from one non-Tory party to another, there is a chance that the votes that you move to the target party will countered by votes that are naturally moving in the opposite direction as a result of the circumstances listed above. We cannot predict this and we cannot do anything about it which is why it is wise not to consider tactical voting alone to be the magic bullet that is going to solve our ills.

Remember this; in this game you can win either by adding to your score or taking away from your opponents’ score. Ideally, you want to do both.

All tactical voting is doing is moving the score around between non-Tory parties. We have forgotten the fact that it is possible to move votes from the Tories to somewhere else, and we have failed to take into account why such people would want to reject their traditional voting behaviour.

There has been much discussion/argument about the Canterbury constituency that was held by Rosie Duffield (by a very small margin over the Tories) and the candidacy of a LibDem member there. The argument goes that the LibDems should have stood down to allow Labour’s pro-remain Duffield to retain the seat. This is, however, the incorrect way of looking at it and ignores the Tory voters.

In electrical terms, there is something called a “sink point” or an “earth”. The purpose of such connections is to allow stray voltages resulting from a fault to find a way to ground via a path of least resistance in order to protect the machinery in which the fault is occurring and any human who happens to be in contact with the equipment at the time.

The same thing applies here. The LibDems are a sink point for Tory votes.

Put yourself in the shoes of a moderate Tory voter. You are unhappy with the direction of the Conservative Party, unhappy with Boris the Liar, unhappy with the scoundrels that he has surrounded himself with, unhappy with the lies and the behaviour. If you are presented with a choice between a Conservative Party lurching to the right or a Labour Party heading to the left, where does your vote go? You would be asking these voters to swing politically far farther than many would be willing to go if you expect them to vote Labour, so there is a reasonably good chance that these votes will go to the Tories as the “least worst choice” especially given the treatment given to Corbyn by the right-wing gutter press.

With a Libdem candidate present in this situation, then those Tory votes have somewhere to sink to. It does not matter that these voters are not voting tactically for the candidate most likely to win; they are looking for someone more in tune with their thinking. Voting Labour would be the path of highest resistance for these people, LibDem the path of lowest resistance. The LibDems are a more natural choice for moderate Tories than Labour.

What matters is that it reduces the Tories’ score.

I accept that moving those Tory voters to Labour would be the best outcome as this would both reduce the Conservative candidate’s vote and increase Duffield’s vote, however, anything which enables the Tories score to be reduced is better than not moving it at all. The lower the Tories score is, the easier it is for Labour to win this seat again. Yes, some moderate Labour votes will sink to the LibDems as well, but this can be mitigated if we can get to those disheartened moderate Tory voters.

So, rather than sitting online complaining and arguing with people who have said they will not vote tactically, how about this instead… find ways of convincing moderate Tory voters who have not decided to shift their vote to cast their ballot for someone else. It does not matter who, remember, it reduces the Tories score. The same thing applies to those voters who are still undecided. If they can be persuaded to vote tactically, then fine, but if not, anywhere but Tory is the next best option.

Take into account the fact that not every one is online, nor necessarily on Twitter, Facepalm or whatever platform you are using. Some can only be reached by traditional means in meatspace.

Stop arguing and start looking for ways to reach these people.

Addendum: The YouGov Poll

The headline information about the YouGov poll that was recently released showing the Tories winning by 48 seats conceals some hidden depths which are not being openly discussed by the media who are only really interested in the big story.

While the poll shows the Tories winning, the more detailed data shows that they are not winning by much. They are facing strong challenges in many constituencies where the poll predicts that they will win by much narrower margins than in previous elections. As things change throughout the course of a campaign, these figures are what have the Tories worried as a late shift in voting intentions could see them losing the very seats that this poll told them they would win.

It is therefore important that what my third point above says is taken on board. I accept that promoting tactical voting is a potentially useful thing to do, but it could be hazardous if used alone. We really do need to find ways of persuading traditionally Tory voters, the moderate support for the party, to listen to the better angels of their nature and vote for someone else.

We also need to ensure that we get the vote out. A large turnout by younger voters, particularly the ones who have been registering to vote in large numbers over the past weeks, could potentially be enough to swing some of the seats that the polling highlights as being at risk for the Tories because these are people who are far less likely to vote Conservative. Find the apathetic voters and persuade them to vote.