For a long time after David Cameron’s election to leader of the Conservative Party there was widespread talk of “tactical unwind”, that is how his changes to the Conservative Party may result in much less anti-Tory tactical voting at the next general election. It’s one of the range of reasons that many Tories quote for believing that they will do better in terms of seat numbers than the overall vote numbers suggest.
However, what’s struck me for some time is how the overall political campaigning is playing out in a way that is likely to rewind the unwind.
For example, on cutting public spending it’s much more a case of Conservatives on one side (more cuts! sooner!) and Labour and the Lib Dems on the other. There are important differences between the Lib Dem and Labour economic policies, but on a range of other issues too (such as the Ashcroft affair) the politics is playing out in a way that encourages tactical Labour votes for the Liberal Democrats where the local constituency situation warrants it.
What’s more, the clearer divides emerging over the last year – at least on policy instinct – between Labour and the Conservatives are also setting up a situation that is likely to encourage more tactical voting.
Now there’s also some poll evidence to back up this view:
New PoliticsHome research suggests that up to one in five voters may consider voting tactically – not backing their favourite party at the ballot box, but supporting whoever can keep a party that they dislike out of government.
This would represent a doubling of tactical voting from the approximately 10 per cent estimated to have done so in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections.
Labour supporters are almost twice as likely to vote tactically as Liberal Democrats or Conservatives.
Liberal Democrat MPs whose main challenge comes from the Conservatives are most likely to benefit from such an outcome, as pro-Labour voters switch to Nick Clegg’s party to prevent a Tory government.
Moreover, a large chunk of both Labour and Conservative supporters would prefer a minority government in conjunction with the Liberal Democrats, as the latest ComRes poll for The Independent showed:
Of Labour supporters:
61% want a Labour majority government
29% want a Labour minority government with Lib Dem support
2% want a Conservative minority government with Lib Dem supportOf Conservative supporters:
71% want a Conservative majority government
25% want Conservative minority government with Lib Dem support
2% want a Labour minority government with Lib Dem support
Those poll figures back up what I’ve been hearing from campaigners across a range of seats: tactical voting has not fallen out of fashion. Unwind or rewind? The evidence seems to be shifting to rewind.
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7 Comments
Tactical rewind, when the electorate say bo selecta.
(I’m so so sorry)
I’ve always thought the 10% figure of tactical voting was vastly underestimating the true amount; in a lot of areas people have been voting “tactically” for so long they no longer even think of it like that.
Combine that with stuff like personal vote for sitting MPs (my vote for Ben Bradshaw in 2001 was as much a personal vote as it was a tactical vote against the odious Tory candidate) and you’ve got a bigger effect than most credit on the actual polling numbers. Lib Dems across the country know this in their targetted squeeze messages, and the other parties are doing it as well know.
And the ‘subscribe’ box isn’t automatically ticked, oops…
The thing is, tactical voting is bound to increase over time. Back in the 80s it was a novel idea promoted by a bunch of communists. By 1997 it had entered the mainstream. As party loyalty has abated and information about where each party stands in each constituency increases, it is bound to increase. In essence, voting is getting smarter.
Two points:
1) That doesn’t necessarily mean Lib-Lab tactical voting. I’ve read one blog today by a UKIP supporter pledging to vote Labour to defeat the LDs in his constituency, something you might have thought would have been unthinkable a few years ago. I expect to see people voting all over the place.
2) This is all ultimately unsustainable because if everyone is voting tactically then the vote becomes an essentially meaningless exercise of responding to the last poll rather than reflecting how people actually feel.
It can only undermine the voting system in the longer term, which is another reason why we so desperately need to get rid of FPTP.
“2% of Labour supporters want a Conservative minority government with Lib Dem support”
“2% of Conservative supporters want a Labour minority government with Lib Dem support”
And these people are allowed to vote?
I know, I know. But still.
Malcolm, looking at the actual data, 1,155 people in total, of which let’s guess at, say, 35% Tory, 35% Labour according to their weighting. So that’s 404 people, approximately. Of them, 8 would’ve said that to get a 2% result. But a sample of 400 people gives a massive margin of error, so 2% is effectivly none for the purpose of a valid poll.
Of course, it might be that some of them are planning to vote for a specific candidate, or live in a weird seat (is there, for example, a Tory/Plaid marginal?). Or it just shows that 2% of supporters of each of the main parties are blithering idiots.
Just be glad they didn’t ask if anyone wanted a Tory/Labour coalition, the margin of error from LD supporters might put it up to 4-5%…
The tactical vote is always complicated by lcoal activity. In many party of the country the Labour and Conservative parties have ceased to exist in any meaningful way – often not even standing local election candidates year in year out, certainly not campaigning.
Also people as we know split their votes – voting Tory Nationally, Lib Dem locally, UKIP in the euros for example.