The end of tactical voting?

Could the days of tactical voting be numbered? Professor Richard Rose of Strathclyde University, in his recent report for Toscafund, writes: “The two parties competing for government now hold the winner and runner-up position in only 44 per cent of all parliamentary constituencies,” The 2015 result, he argues, “will also depend on how many more seats the Conservatives take from the Liberal Democrats than Labour does, and on how many seats Labour loses to the Scottish National Party”.

In 2010 Scotland gave Labour 42 per cent of the turnout and 41 of the country’s 59 seats, but the recent Ipsos-Mori poll on General Election voting intentions in Scotland put the SNP 28 points ahead among those certain to vote this year. The poll, carried out for STV in January, puts the SNP at 52 per cent, Scottish Labour at 24 per cent, Scottish Conservatives at 12 per cent, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens at four per cent each, UKIP at one per cent, and others at two per cent.

However, talk of the SNP taking over 50 seats is “a moot point”, says Mark Diffley, director at Ipsos MORI Scotland, particularly with the size of the majorities in some Labour seats. “What won’t happen is there won’t be a national swing along the lines of the movement evident in that poll. If you put it through electoral calculus or whatever, it spits out 50-odd seats for the SNP, but I don’t think anyone on the day will think that will happen,” he adds.

It’s too early to be fixated on the numbers, according to Diffley, who expects the campaigns and manifestos to focus public opinion away from the referendum on independence, which still dominates Scotland’s political debate. “The narrative of Labour’s line: ‘this is about getting the Tories out of Westminster’ may still prove to be quite effective, possibly. It’s certainly a line that has previously resonated, given their traditional performance in Scotland in a UK election. What they need to do is move the debate away from the referendum and onto the kind of ground where they feel they’ve got a better chance. At the moment we’re still slightly still consumed by the aftermath of that vote,” he says.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage hopes to win South Thanet in Kent, a seat which has changed hands between Labour and the Conservatives for decades. A recent poll by Lord Ashcroft puts him five per cent behind the Conservatives. The Greens, meanwhile, have their eye on Bristol West.

Edinburgh South, too, provides a good example. The seat is the Liberal Democrats’ number five target in the UK, after Labour’s Ian Murray won in 2010 by only 316 votes. The seat was traditionally Conservative until 1987, and the party still tends to poll over 20 per cent of the vote, while the area voted SNP in the Scottish Parliament election in 2011. Like many Scottish constituencies, an SNP swing has been predicted since their post-referendum membership surge. With the potential of a tight three or even four-way marginal, Edinburgh South - despite being a resounding ‘No’ in the referendum - could be pulled in all directions, and many other constituencies could go the same way.

This makes the General Election a difficult choice for those who like to vote tactically. The reaction of the Liberal Democrats to former First Minister Alex Salmond’s announcement he intends to stand in Gordon, a safe Liberal Democrat seat, was telling. The party predicted both Labour and Conservative voters would back their candidate, Christine Jardine, in an unofficial pact to keep Salmond out.