My first few elections were easy – I knew I liked the LibDems, and they were the only ones who stood a chance of beating the Tories in my hometown. A no-brainer, you might say.
It wasn’t until I moved to Scotland that I had to wrestle with tactical voting. SNP v Labour, and not a LibDem in sight. I talked it over with my partner at the time, and we both decided to vote LibDem regardless. But lo, suddenly I found myself in the polling booth, ticking a Labour box in a moment of blind, tactical terror. It is the only time I have voted out of fear rather than hope. I regretted it almost immediately. Turned out my partner had done the same.
I made a resolve never to vote tactically again and so, when the Holyrood elections rolled round a year later, I voted LibDem (to little avail).
To little avail, did I say? It’s true that my vote did not count for much, and I knew in advance that it would not. My previous Labour vote had “made a difference”, by which I mean it had picked a person and policies I disliked over those I disliked even more. My Labour vote mattered in Westminster. But it also made me feel sadder, smaller, a little more cynical.
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