Forced to make a tactical vote? We shouldn’t have to vote for the least bad optionEvery election, millions of us head to the polling station in a conflicted state of mind – should I vote for the party I most believe in, or should tactical considerations come into play? Often,...Posted 20 Nov 2025
ERS in the Press – Coverage we’ve secured in the GE campaignYou might have noticed that there’s a general election approaching. Whilst the date of the election may have taken us all a little by surprise, the ERS communications team were ready to go and making...Posted 25 Jun 2024
Proportional representation would end the scourge of tactical votingThe losses in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton, where the Liberal Democrats overturned a 24,000 Conservative majority, were both the result of declining support for Johnson’s government, but also it would appear, the result of widescale tactical voting....Posted 03 Jul 2022
Little evidence to suggest that electoral pacts had ‘material impact on the result’Last week I wrote about tactical voting at the 2019 General Election, after the ERS revealed that almost a third of voters did not feel they were able to vote for the party they actually...Posted 11 Mar 2020
When millions feel unable to vote for their favourite candidate, something is seriously wrongThree months after the election, yet more evidence of Westminster’s dysfunction is coming to light. Tactical voting is going up Previously unreleased YouGov data for the ERS has revealed that almost a third of voters...Posted 06 Mar 2020
Three ways Westminster’s voting system has skewed the election – before a single vote is castThough we are still a couple of days away from knowing the outcome of the general election, the campaign has already exposed the worst flaws of the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system. In...Posted 10 Dec 2019
Is this the ‘hold your nose’ election? Record-breaking numbers set to vote tacticallyPolling from BMG research for the Electoral Reform Society has revealed that a record-breaking 30% of the public plan to vote ‘tactically’ in the next General Election. Tactical voting occurs when voters choose the best-positioned...Posted 04 Dec 2019
We should be scrutinising candidates and policies. Instead the talk is of tactics and pactsJudging by the first week of the general election campaign, it seems likely that the remaining month will see a lot of focus on ‘tactical’ issues. We’ve already seen electoral pacts, or parties standing down...Posted 13 Nov 2019
What is tactical voting and why is it bad for democracy?In a Westminster election, tactical voting takes place when a voter chooses a candidate whom they wouldn’t normally support, in order to prevent another candidate from winning. For example, if you want to vote for...Posted 12 Nov 2019
‘Strong and stable’? Westminster’s voting system is anything butVoters won’t be bossed about – perhaps that’s the first lesson we should take from the election. From voting for a parliament where no party got more than half the seats in an election hinged...Posted 15 Jun 2017