How Tactical Voting Could Shape the U.K. Election

(Bloomberg) --

In an election, you vote for the candidate you want to win -- that should be the rule. But in the U.K., it can be more complicated than that. Thanks to an electoral system involving 650 districts, and at least four big parties, very often the candidate that you want to win has no chance where you live. That’s led to the emergence of “tactical voting,” a practice that makes predicting the Dec. 12 poll even more complicated. That’s particularly the case in a year when stopping Brexit -- or making sure it happens -- will be a major incentive for many voters.

1. What is tactical voting?

It’s essentially voting against someone you really don’t like, by voting for the candidate most likely to defeat them. So if you’re a Labour Party supporter but live in the district where the Conservative Party usually wins and Labour does very badly, you might decide to vote for the Liberal Democrats, with the aim of defeating the Tory.

2. Why is it such a big deal in the U.K.?

As well as the Conservatives and Labour, Britain has smaller parties competing for votes: The Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Plaid Cymru all hold seats in Parliament. And Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party came first in this year’s European elections. The first-past-the-post voting system means that each district goes to the candidate who gets the most votes. With multiple parties standing, it’s quite usual for the winner to have received fewer than 50% of the votes. Take Stirling, in Scotland: In the 2017 general election, the Conservatives won with 37.1% of the vote, just ahead of the SNP on 36.8%. But Labour had 22.1%. If some of those Labour voters could be persuaded to back either the SNP or the Tories this time, they could make the difference.

3. How does it work?

While voters can clearly make their own minds up, politicians try to push them with the message: “The party you want can’t win. Help us beat the party you hate.” There’s also a proliferation of websites designed to help people work out how to vote tactically. And there are “vote swapping” sites aimed at easing the consciences of tactical voters. These work by pairing, for example, a Labour supporter who votes Liberal Democrat with a Lib Dem supporter in another district who is voting tactically for Labour.

4. Why is it such a big deal in this election?

There’s a reason why none of the above examples have people voting tactically for the Conservatives. Boris Johnson’s Tories are the dominant party on the right of British politics, whereas the opposition is split. So tactical voting has historically been about voting against the Conservatives. This time, it’s also about electing candidates who want to halt Britain’s exit from the European Union -- which means voting against the Conservatives. But not everywhere. Take Stirling again, where those Labour supporters might want to oppose the Tories and Brexit by voting SNP. However, they might feel more strongly about avoiding a Scottish independence referendum. In that case, they could vote Conservative.

5. Is there anything else complicating matters?

Even if you’ve decided what you’re voting against, who do you vote for? Political parties tend only to favor tactical voting as long as it benefits them, leaving room for disagreement and confusion. Take London’s Kensington, where Labour beat the Conservatives by just 20 votes in 2017. At the start of the campaign, according to Tactical Vote, three of the main tactical voting websites recommended voting Labour -- but the Best For Britain site argued people would do better going for the Liberal Democrats. Now Best For Britain isn’t carrying a recommendation, and Tactical Vote argues for Labour.

6. Do people really do this?

A poll for the Electoral Reform Society in October found 24% of people said they would vote for the person best-placed to keep out a candidate they don’t like. According to Matt Singh, founder of Number Cruncher Politics, the long-term average share of people voting tactically is less than 10%.

7. What else is happening?

In what might be a sign that they don’t trust people to get tactical voting right, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru have formed an anti-Brexit “Remain Alliance” covering 60 seats, where the parties have agreed one of them will have a clear run. The move may not have much of an impact because few of these seats had a significant presence for more than one of those parties.

8. What about the Conservatives and the Brexit Party?

Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage announced in November his party wouldn’t stand in Conservative-held seats, an acknowledgment that it risked splitting the pro-Brexit vote. But he said the party would continue to fight other seats that the Tories are trying to capture, a strategy that could make it harder for Johnson to get a majority.

The Reference Shelf

• A QuickTake on Britain’s election.
• Business Insider explains how to vote tactically.
• The Guardian explores the potential impact.
• Almost a quarter of U.K. voters are planning to vote tactically, according to the Electoral Reform Society.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Grant Clark, Edward Evans

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