Tactical voting discussion – what next?

Thanks to everybody that has taken the time to discuss the issue of tactical voting over the past few weeks. The discussion over at http://compassonline.forumchitchat.com/ has been wonderfully Compass – generous, pluralist, values based and thoughtful.

It’s always challenging to summarise the main talking points of discussions like these but we’ve done our best to reflect what was said and how we will follow up.

  • There are many shortcomings of our democracy. The reason why we are forced to have this discussion is that ‘first past the post’ doesn’t reflect the will of the voters, meaning that many are forced to choose between ‘head’ and ‘heart’. There was broad agreement on the importance of moving to an electoral system that uses proportional representation (PR). Other shortcomings of our democracy that were mentioned included the vast numbers of citizens excluded from political discourse, low turnout, financial and corporate capture of Westminster and the lack of female representation.
  • People were split over tactical voting. Contributors were divided both over the principle and the effectiveness of tactical voting. There was roughly a three way split between those that supported the idea, those that didn’t and those that said it depended on the constituency.
  • Tactical voting is more complex than in 2010. Unsurprisingly, there was unanimous agreement that another Conservative government would be a disaster but there were differences of opinion on what constituted anti-Tory tactical/progressive voting. There is also the added complicating factor of the rise of UKIP. The electoral landscape in Scotland has changed dramatically and the Coalition Government has meant many progressives said they weren’t comfortable with voting tactically for a Lib Dem candidate, although some were.
  • The main concrete suggestion that emerged was for Compass to help develop a Labour/Green vote pairing site. This website would help pair Labour/Green voters in England to ensure the national vote share of each party does not change but the number of Tory MPs goes down. It would facilitate Green supporters in a Labour target seat to pledge to vote Labour to keep a Tory out. In return a Labour supporter in a seat that Labour is unlikely to win (or lose) pledges to vote Green, ‘lending’ their vote to a seat where it will make a difference.

Follow up:

  1. As a result of this discussion and the increasing complexity of the electoral situation we feel it makes little sense for Compass to take either a simplistic pro or anti tactical voting stance.
  2. Instead we’ll support the development of a Labour/Green vote pairing website for those that wish to vote tactically to try and stop a Tory government without changing the national vote of either party.

Thanks for everyone that took part and contributed to a useful and friendly discussion.

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