Tactical Voting: Myths and reality
When you vote, do you vote Expressively, or Rationally? Most party activists and committed partizans will vote expressively, and assume that voters do likewise. However, many voters will vote rationally, seeking to maximise the impact their vote will have on the result. It is this tendency, that most activists find hard to relate to, that leads to the phenomena referred to as “tactical voting”. Still with me? Good, let me explain…
The way voters behave and make their choices
First, it has to be established that this is about how voters behave in First Past the Post/Simple Majority (FPTP) electoral systems as used in the UK, the USA and Canada. While I, personally, have a dislike for this electoral system, preferring Preferential systems, especially STV, this is not an article about electoral form. It is about how, and why, people make their decisions about who to vote for. It is also worth observing that there is no “correct” way to make this decision, and the terms used are not insulting, to vote expressively is not to vote irrationally, to vote rationally is not to ignore your own opinions, they’re simply shorthand descriptions.
The cost of voting
At a basic level, it takes time and effort to decide who to vote for and attend the polling station. Given that the odds of your vote actually, in itself, making any difference at all are very small, why do so many bother? Should we bemoan the fall in turnout in recent years, or remain amazed that turnout is as high as it is?
Expressive Voting
Given the costs of voting, and the likelihood that your vote will have little impact, why do people vote? Expressive voting holds:
Expressive voting is based on
- The previously discussed fact that no one’s vote is likely to be decisive,
and- The desire most people have to express themselves in support of things they
approve of, and in opposition of things they disapprove of.The argument is that people vote largely for expressive reasons, not because
they think their vote will decide the outcome of the election.Voting is much like sending a get-well card, or cheering for the home team,
or booing the visiting team.It feels good to express support for a sick friend, or for the home team.
We don’t do these things because we think our get-well card will cure
our friends illness or our cheer will cause the home team to win, although they
may help a tiny bit—and are almost surely more likely to help than your
vote is to effect the election.
At a basic level, an expressive voter makes their choice in order to show support for something they favour, and to oppose something they dislike. A partizan activist will vote for their party, regardless of constituency or likely local result. The express their support.
Rational Voting
Rational voting is a different kind of voting. A rational voter wants their vote to have an impact, to make a difference. They understand that their vote will have little, overall, difference, but want to maximise the impact it itself will have. They don’t want to waste their vote.
The term was first used effectively by Anthony Downs, in his incredibly influential An economic Theory of Democracy. When pollsters, pundits and politicians talk about “Basildon Man”, “Winchester Woman”, “Mondeo Man”, etc. they are referring to Down’s theory. The search for the median, swing, voter, the need to persuade them to vote for you, not the other candidate. The theory assumes that on each main issue, there is a broad spread of opinion, the [two] parties will oppose each other, can therefore guarantee the support of those on the sides of the divide, but will compete for the votes of those in the middle of the opinion spectrum. Blair’s middle ground, Cameron’s rush to the centre? That’s what they’re doing. Classic Downs.
Not the small problem though. Two parties competing. Indeed, as Duverger demonstrated, the First Past the Post system encourages a two-party system, it is indeed one of the (supposed?) benefits of FPTP, ’strong government’, ‘clear choices’, etc.
What happens when there are more than two parties?
That’s where rational voting comes in. A rational voter doesn’t want to vote for a third party candidate, they don’t want to vote for an also-ran. They want their vote to count, they want to make a difference to the result. Those (much-maligned) “winning here” bar charts on Lib Dem leaflets? Designed, deliberately, to appeal to this instinct.
In each district, voter support will, slowly, crystalise, such that there are two parties that can win, and a bunch of also rans. This is a natural by-product of the electoral system, the reason for its strength and success. But if your expressive vote would be for a third pary, an also-ran candidate? Why waste it?
Tactical voting is not an abuse of the system - it’s the natural end result of the electoral system
If you’re a Conservative party supporter living in Chesterfield, a Labour supporter living in rural Devon (or, like Billy Bragg, in Dorset), a Liberal Democrat in Kettering? Vote expressively for your favoured and have your vote mean nothing? Or vote rationally, for the candidate you least dislike out of the top two, and have your vote, potentially, make a difference?
The British electoral system encourages so-called “tactical voting” by its very design
Expressive voting has always existed, and will always be there (how else do you explain parties like UKIP, or 13% vote shares in Torbay and Totnes for Labour?), but in order to win, to displace the opposition? In a first past the post election, a rational voter will vote for the candidate most likely to beat the candidate they most dislike. For me, in 1997, that was a Lib Dem vote in Torbay. In 2001 it was a Labour vote in Exeter. In 2009? I hope to be able to vote expressively, for the party I feel is most likely to roll back the iniquitous statist centralism of the New Labour project. I want to vote Liberal Democrat. But if I were, somehow, to end up living in Kettering?
I’ll be voting for the candidate best placed to defeat Labour. Since 1992, Liberal Democrat supporters have been voting for Labour candidates in seats where the Lib Dems are in third place. Labour supporters have been voting Lib Dem in constituencies where Labour has no choice. “Natural” Tories have been voting Lib Dem in many parts of the country. The “big tent” compact of Blairism has been broken, Lib Dems are no longer naturally anti-Tory. But in order to defeat Labour, Tory supporters in no-hope seats need to know and understand; there is no shame in voting for a party that isn’t your natural first choice. The system encourages it.
Tactical Voting is a natural process
Campaigns promoting it simply accelerate the process.
There are lots of sources I could have cited for the above, but didn’t want to go into hyperlink frenzy. Google for “expressive voting” or “rational voting” and you’ll see what I mean. I may come back to this post a few times to update it, I’ve been planning it for the last few months. Any questions or suggested improvements very welcome
Tactical voting: myths and reality…
Some useful info from MatGB about tactical voting. Go, read, etc…….
Trackback by Make My Vote Count | September 18, 2006
Good post Mat. I always disliked the idea of tactical voting, but I am carefully considering voting SNP (who are 2nd in my constituency) because I think it would be really really funny if Gordon Brown lost. :D And I wouldn’t forgive myself in the unlikely event of him winning by one vote.
Comment by doctorvee | September 18, 2006
Aye, that’s part of the point. In the ‘97 election, my parents consituency had a “local conservative” candidate. It’s one of those monkey with blue rosette seats, Steen has a job for life, or at least did, normally way over 50%.
The guy got over 2000 votes, a massive protest. If those people had voted Lib Dem, then the (pretty useless IIRC) candidate would have won. If one out of three local Labour voters voted Lib Dem, he’d have lost in both of the last two, as it is they’ve got a solid 13% that makes no sense to anyone.
I hate that the system discourages it, but it’s a palpable fact. Look at Dunfermline, the Tories lost masses of vote share, did it matter? No, the ‘better’ of the top two won, which is all that mattered in that constuency. Camden at the last locals in London, palpable anti-Labour voting patterns.
It shouldn’t be needed (my arguments for preferential systems have been done ad nauseum but I’ll do them again later), but for as long as you have simple majority, it’s there. It’s the sort of analysis that happens when economists study politics. Or in my case a politics student learns the basics of economics, very glad I took those courses.
Comment by TaKtiX | September 19, 2006
Definitely an Expressive Voter me, then. On occasion I have thought of tactically voting, but then veered away at the last moment.
I do also think of that as a form of Rational Voting though, in that I hope in the long term that continued support for third candidates on otherwise two-horse races will keep proportional represenation on the agenda. So sort of longterm Rational. Maybe.
Comment by Katherine | September 19, 2006
I’m always a mixture. It wasn’t actually a hard choice in 2001, I’d been out knocking doors alongside the LibDem candidate and, well, personality clash didn’t really describe it, I disagreed with him on more policies than I did the Labour guy. I regret it now, naturally, but it was a different time.
Also, good to see you commenting again, came so close to commenting at yours a few times to check you were ok…
Comment by MatGB | September 19, 2006
[…] At this point I was going to give my readers a local hypothetical situation where this would work, but it won’t locally, frankly. So if you live nowhere near me, read and take action on what MatGB has to say. […]
Pingback by Cllr. Gavin Ayling » Vote tactically | September 20, 2006
Thanks for the concern Matt :-) Should be blogging again soon (honest guv’nor)
Comment by Katherine | September 21, 2006
I can’t believe you think the Lib Dems are going to roll back the authoritarian statist New Labour project.
In their willingness to appear ‘good Europeans’ they would sign us up to every bit of EU crap they can and the size of the state would increase because of it.
If you want roll back the only way is the UKIP.
Comment by Dave | September 22, 2006
their willingness to appear ‘good Europeans’ they would sign us up to every bit of EU crap they can
And which particular bit of propaganda have you read to make you actually believe that? Policy is to decentralise and democratise. I believe the EU is reformable as while the politicians want power,t he people across Europe would rather have it themselves.
I’ve travelled extensively over there, my optimism is not naivety.
But, ultimately, matter of opinion. However, given the polling numbers, a UKIP both is definately an expressive vote in virtually every constituency in the country. Which is the issue, your vote will only show your opinion, it won’t affect the result. I’d like mine to count thanks.
If’n you want to discuss European issues further, rather than voting patterns, find a post tagged Europe in the archive? topicality and all that ;-)
Comment by TaKtiX | September 22, 2006
Well sorry, but it wasnt a long comment so I thought it would be ok.
I think Europe and voting patterns are very much linked though considering how much power the EU has over us.
The EU is a statist monstrosity and therefore anyone wanting more of it is obviously a statist, and thats the Lib Dems.
My family are farmers and have complained about the CAP madness for years.
Yes voting UKIP now might be expressive but if enough people are expressive in that direction many other people will start to see it as rational.
So its not just expressive its about trying to encourage rational voters to see it as an option in the future.
Tactical voting is all very well if just a few people are doing it but it ends up in a right mess if everyone is voting for parties they don’t really support, for example Tories voting Lib Dem to keep Labour out while disaffected Labour voters vote Lib Dem because they don’t want Tories and don’t like Blair either, so a massively pro-EU party can get a big vote and win even though its not what people really want.
And thats why I don’t like tactical voting, it gives 3rd parties with views most people oppose much more power than they deserve and they get to pontificate how they are representing these views even though in reality people only voted for them as a protest tactical vote, and quite possibly wouldn’t have voted for them if they thought they had any serious chance of winning.
What FPTP does is give people the chance to make an protest vote, even to parties like the BNP without having to worry about them actually getting any real power. If people thought the vote would make a difference alternative parties might actually do less well than they do now.
Comment by Dave | September 22, 2006
Nah, a comment is fine, but it makes a lot of sense to discuss individual topics on in the same place, as otherwise you get weird disconnects happening (and people using search engines end up on pages completely unrelated to the topic, which isn’t good for anyone).
Anyway, I’ll answer the bits about voting patterns here, and the rest in a new thread, to keep it coherent.
What FPTP does is give people the chance to make an protest vote, even to parties like the BNP without having to worry about them actually getting any real power.
Tell that to the people of Bromley and Dagenham in London. The BNP came third in vote share, but came a (very) close second in terms of seats, all due to the disproportionate effects of FPTP. The Tories, who should have been second, won one seat total. The reality is that such ‘protest’ votes are inherent within FPTP, but can turn into real power, despite minority support.
FPTP in fact encourages tactical voting, it’s inherent within the system, and is one of its supposed strengths. It discourages people from voting in third or later place; this ratchett effect is referred to sometimes as “Duverger’s Law“, after a French philosopher who argued for FPTP to be adopted in France (the run off system they use now in some elections is the result). I wrote about it last December.
I dislike tactical voting as a necessity, but recognise it as inherent (indeed required) within the system. I would much rather we used multi-member STV, which would create a much more representative house and negate all these problems. But given that we exist within a system where FPTP is used, we need to learn how it works.
it ends up in a right mess if everyone is voting for parties they don’t really support, for example Tories voting Lib Dem to keep Labour out while disaffected Labour voters vote Lib Dem because they don’t want Tories
You just put forward the best argument for a change in the electoral system ever. There are seats in London, identical demographics, where one is held by the LibDems, the next by Labour. The SDP took one when they split off from Labour, and kept it when they merged in to form the LibDems, the other has remained Labour. In Cornwall, the Labour vote has always been very low; a “liberal tradition”, or simply rational (tactical) voting in favour of the party best placed to beat the Tories?
The LibDems get a very similar vote share now to that acheived in 1992, yet have many more seats. Why? Because the votes they did have in seats they couldn’t win have been lost tot he other two, and they’ve picked up and concentrated votes in those seats they can win.
Horrible, makes really knowing what the electorate want completely impossible.
voting UKIP now might be expressive but if enough people are expressive in that direction many other people will start to see it as rational.
So its not just expressive its about trying to encourage rational voters to see it as an option in the future.
Correct, completely. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with either type of voting, and if enough people vote UKIP, especially in elections where the vote is more effective, such as council and EU elections, then a tipping point may be reached.
But to really get votes,, they’re likely to first pick them up in constituencies where Labour and LibDem are distant 2nd/3rd, “safe” Tory seats. I both look forward to the day when Farage has a seat in Westminster, I’ve said before I respect the position of UKIP more than that of the vacillators who say one thing and mean another.
I just disagree with it vehemently. Anyway, this comment is long enough…
Comment by MatGB | September 22, 2006
Interesting, thanks.
But I don’t think there are any easy answers, with any kind of votng system any boundary redraw is going to affect the results quite a lot.
Surely the real key is to have small enough constituencies so they are likely to get the kind of person they want to represent them, rather than a large one where there are massive differences of opinion in different sections of the community.
This what happened in STV.
“in the 2003 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, a vote management strategy by Sinn Fein in West Belfast intended to replace an SDLP member with a Sinn Fein member led instead to the election of a member of the DUP, a party extremely hostile to Sinn Fein”
How can that sitaution happen? these guys don’t like each other, should they really be in a mixed constituency? shouldn’t the each have a seperate guy representing them.
Comment by Dave | September 22, 2006
shouldn’t the each have a seperate guy representing them.
They do. Multi member constituency, meaning that more people have an AM representative of them.
Put it a different way. I live in Torbay under Adrian Sanders as an MP. He came a close first, and I like him. Marcus Wood came second with nearly 40% of the vote IIRC. Are those 40% represented at all? What about the 13% who voted Labour, the closest Labour MP is Exeter.
Under STV, you, normally, have a much more representative group of MPs. Sure, at times, there may be anomalies, especially if someone tries to rig it and fails. But any system has flaws. STV has less flaws.
Another big advantage is no more “A-lists” and all women shortlists, multi-member constituencies mean you can have a selection of candidates. When Britain had them before (they were only abolished in 1951), it made it easier to get selected if you weren’t a white male in a suit, Barbara Castle was convinced that that was how she was selected.
There are always differences of opinion within even small communities, you can’t have the approx 80,000 needed to make a constituency without them. My parents, and my grandmother, have lived their entire life with a Tory MP in a safe seat. My grandmother has never lived under an MP she could stand, at all.
Is that representative? Much better to have larger constituencies witha spread of representatives, and give the voters real control over who they can vote for. After all, vote rigging strategies a la your quoted example only work if the voters follow it. Let people choose how to vote.
Have written about this at length already (and that category still isn’t fully up to date, still migrating), but this article on the New Politic Network is excellent: the evidence we have from the other side of the Irish Channel suggests that some proportional systems encourage politicians to engage with the community precisely because they allow people a variety of different elected representatives from which to choose. The Single Transferable Vote system used there means that politicians not only compete against candidates from other parties but with candidates within their own: being able to demonstrate that you, personally, are doing a good job is therefore at an absolute premium
What if your local MP is from your favoured party, but is crap? He gets reselected because parties rarely deselect except for misconduct. How do you deal? Under STV, the voters can deselect by voting for other candidates.
What if the local Tory candidate is pro-EU? You could vote for an anti-EU Tory instead. We wouldn’t need politicians trying to keep a “united front” at all times. They’d need to be honset and highlight disagreements in order to get re-elected. I highly rate STV as a system, deal with so many of the issues that are at fault in the british polity.
Comment by MatGB | September 22, 2006
That’s weird, my reply from last night isn’t showing. I went through that in some detail. Ah well.
Right, multi member constituencies are better than single member constituencies as you then have a variety of representatives making it more likely one represents your views. I grew up, and my paretns sstill live, in Totnes, a Tory seat for as long as records show. Fine for my mother, but for me, my father and grandmother, it means we’ve never had an MP representing our views at all.
To get rid of him, effectively the local Tory party would have to deselect him. Under STV, you can vote him out, as happens in Ireland regularly.
Say, for example, you lived in a close marginal seat that could fall to Labour, but is held by the Tories. The Tory candidate is very pro-EU (Ken Clarke for example). You need to support him, because the alternative is worse. Wouldn’t you rather be able to vote instead for an anti-EU tory, and know that those eventually elected were so because they had genuine support?
Any system is subject to attempts to rig it. STV is less open to it than FPTP, as it effectively eliminates tactical voting as an effective strategy. It makes candidates compete within themselves, eliminates the need for all-women shortlists etc.
In the example you cite, how can you draw the lines so that there isn’t a mixed constituency? 80,000 people per MP. Even in reasonably homogenous Devon, that leads to great differences in wealth and opinion.
STV is better representative of an area, creates a more responsive Parliament, eliminates the need for tactical campaigns and rigged candidate selction and gives voters real choice.
Thus you don’t get a false perception of pro-anti EU MPs, you get a real picture, even within the individual parties. Much better, for all of us.
The other comment was longer with more links, wonder what happened to it…
Comment by MatGB | September 23, 2006
OK, found them both, the spam filter had eaten them.
Um, Akismet? When a logged in user with administrative priviledges posts a comment, it’s NOT SPAM! Still, it’s good to have it working…
Comment by MatGB | September 23, 2006
Well I wasn’t trying to discredit STV in my last comment I was just saying any system has its problems.
From the limited amount I know of STV it sounds really good.
I know its probably been writen else where, but could you briefly say roughly how you think STV would work in the UK?
I assume you would need much bigger constituencies? or would you suggest similar size with a lot more MP’s?
If the constituencies were too big then the politics wouldn’t seem as local surely?
Comment by Dave | September 24, 2006
[…] September MatGB01:38 amAdd comment Just briefly, in the comments tot he Tactical post, the topic has drifted to how preferential systems, especially STV are better and negate the need for tactical votes. I thought I’d bring the discussion to the top again. Dave asks: From the limited amount I know of STV it sounds really good. […]
Pingback by STV - how it could work in Britain - Voting TaKtiX | September 24, 2006
Sure; as the trackback says, here.
Comment by MatGB | September 24, 2006