Tricky decisions facing election's tactical voter
Updated on 27 April 2010
Tactical voting has been critical in the last elections but with new factors altering the 2010 campaign casting strategic ballots may not be quite so straight forward, writes Gaby Hinsliff.
As the singer Billy Bragg once unwittingly demonstrated, tactical voting isn't always easy to predict.
Back in 2001, he set up a website designed to help oust the Conservative frontbencher Oliver Letwin by encouraging progressive voters to vote tactically against the Tories in his home county of Dorset. The result? Victory for Letwin, egg on face for Bragg.
But tactical voting of the old-fashioned, not very organised kind - backing not your preferred party, but the one most likely to keep out the candidate you don't want - has been critical in the last three elections.
It got Tony Blair an estimated extra 40 seats in 1997, and in 2001 and 2005 may well have helped some Lib Dem incumbents hang on too.
But what about 2010?
Four new factors may make tactical voting less likely among some particular groups of voters, and its results more unpredictable among others, this time.
The biggest sea change is among Lib Dem supporters. Traditionally strong tactical voters because of the sheer number of seats where their candidate couldn't win, the "yellow surge" means more Lib Dems may now believe their candidate has a chance after all.
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Others may vote Liberal Democrat even if it's a hopeless cause locally, because they'll want to boost Nick Clegg's share of the national vote to boost his moral authority in any coalition talks.
Interestingly a poll by politicshome.com earlier in April found 20 per cent of Labour voters were now prepared to consider voting tactically, nearly double the number of Liberal Democrats thinking about it. By contrast the 2005 ICM poll found Lib Dem tactical voters outnumbering Labour ones by three to one.
The second change is in constituencies themselves. Boundaries have changed in many seats since 2005, and the strength of the Lib Dems means some two-way marginals now look more like three-way marginals: add in the rise of smaller parties such as the Greens, plus highly volatile national polls, and even hardened tactical voters may struggle to work out which horse to back locally this time.
The third change is the tempering of an "anyone but the Tories" mood which fuelled tactical voting at the last three elections. What seems to have convulsed the British public this time is an "anyone but the establishment" mood, whose effects may be less predictable.
And the fourth change is electoral reform fever. Somehow, the cynicism implicit in not voting for the party you actually believe in doesn't quite fit with a rebellious public mood and an apparent desire to change the system.
The logical consequence of Labour slumping to third place in some polls would be for more Labour voters to start voting tactically just as they once routinely expected Lib Dems to, and the leftwing think tank Compass is now actively debating this idea. But that would require being reasonably sure that Labour is doomed to stay in third place, and swallowing large amounts of pride.
Either way, the one in ten voters thought to have voted tactically at the last three elections now have some tricky decisions to make.
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