Tactical voting may have a significant impact in the elections on 4 July, as it probably did in 1997.
Tactical voting is defined as:
“voting for a political party or person that you would not usually support, in order to prevent another party or person from winning” (Cambridge Dictionary).
There is a widespread opinion that the Conservatives should be voted out as they have been associated with corruption, ineffective policies and the pursuit of pointless “culture wars”.
Benefits of tactical voting
Both the Liberal Democrats and Labour could benefit from tactical voting. The Times on 25 May reported that the Liberal Democrats could win up to 90 seats as a result of tactical voting: these are mostly seats where the Liberal Democrats came second behind the Tories in the 2019 elections.
Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, is one of the seats that could swing from the Tories to the Liberal Democrats with a bit of tactical voting.
Labour is similarly likely to benefit from tactical voting in those seats where it was second behind the Tories, as it has happened in some recent by-elections.
As for the Greens, it is known that they are targeting the Brighton Pavilion constituency (the seat of their only elected MP), as well as Bristol Central, where they performed extremely well in the recent local elections.
According to a poll conducted by Electoral Calculus 45-50% of Labour, Liberal Democrat or Green voters would consider voting tactically with the aim of unseating Conservative MPs in England, whereas Labour and Liberal Democrat voters are willing to support one another in Scotland with the aim of boosting unionist candidates.
The challenge with tactical voting, in Conservative-held constituencies, is how to make sure that voters know which candidate is best placed to beat the Tories: according to Electoral Calculus only 48% of voters have this knowledge.
There are websites, like tactical.vote, which give tactical voting recommendations for each constituency, based primarily on the general election results in 2019.
Best for Britain also supports tactical voting, but they intend to use recent opinion polls and will not issue recommendations until 17 June.
Equity may need to be a consideration as Liberal Democrat and Green voters may not follow the advice of websites that did not try to address, at least partially, the unfairness of our first-past-the-post electoral system. In 2019 it took 38,000-51,000 votes for each Conservative or Labour MP, but it took 336,000 votes for each Liberal Democrat MP and 866,000 votes for the single Green MP.
Tactical voting may not be required in constituencies where the result appears to be a foregone conclusion, or where progressive parties are in both first and second place.
Some political leaders have encouraged tactical voting. Furthermore, the Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders appear to have agreed an unofficial pact under which they will limit campaigning in some seats where the other has the best chance of defeating the Tories.
It would be much better if we could just all vote for our preferred party. Tactical voting would not be necessary if we had either proportional representation or a voting system that allowed to rank the candidates in a preference order, with votes from the least-voted candidates being reallocated, as it happens with the Single Transferable Vote and the Alternative Vote.
Brexit, the elephant in the room
Brexit has failed to take us to the dreamed sunny uplands and has not reduced migration. However, as commented by the former Conservative deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, Brexit is now the “elephant in the room” that the main parties refuse to acknowledge.
A closer collaboration with our European allies would help to address many of the main challenges such as the economy, climate change and defence threats. Heseltine therefore argues that ignoring Brexit makes this election “the most dishonest in modern times”.
Opinion polls have showed that, amongst those with an opinion, more than 60% of Britons now think that it was wrong to leave the EU.
Sadly, the Conservatives have adopted the agenda and the language of the hard-right, instead of taking them on as it was done with Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell. Appeasing right-wing populism is never a good strategy.
Will a better Conservative leader emerge after a heavy electoral defeat?
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