Tactical Votes

Dr. Baltar

I've never fully understood tactical voting and I'd be very happy if someone were to enlighten me. Let's say I want to tacticially vote against Fianna Fáil in the next election and there are 10 candidates running in my constituency.
Is it a simple matter of filling the ballot from 1 to 9 and then leaving the 10th blank?

Some people were saying towards the Eurolections that there was a way to "make your vote weigh more" through transfers or something?

Anyone?

Eliot Rosewater

Tactical voting doesn't have that much of an effect in PR-STV. But I'll explain kind of what I did in the Europeans.

My ideal preferences were, say:
1 - Colm Burke FG
2 - Sean Kelly FG
3 - Alan Kelly Labour
4 - Brian Crowley FF
...

But I knew that Sean Kelly would get elected anyway. The risk was that my vote would be transferred to Sean Kelly, but not get picked out to be transferred to Alan Kelly, so that, were Alan Kelly elected, Crowley might not necessarily get the next vote. It might instead go to Kathy Sinnot. So I actually voted:

1 - Colm Burke FG
2 - Alan Kelly Labour
3 - Brian Crowley FF
...

That way Crowley would definitely get a vote or, more to the point, Sinnot definitely wouldn't.

That's a bad example, because Crowley was also a banker to get elected, but it went something like that. Basically it comes down to not giving a prefernce candidates you think will get elected so that your vote definitely goes to borderline candidates you want.

Lockstep

Eliot explains it very well.

The best way to tactically vote is to choose who you most want to get in, and then find a backup candidate who you want in but also has a good chance of beating the candidate you don't want.

I live in the North-West constituency and my main aim was to keep Declan Ganley out.
I gave Susan O'Keefe (Labour) my number 1, but it was pretty clear she wasn't going to get it, so I voted tactically with my 2nd one.
Gave my 2nd vote to Padraig MacLochlainn (Sinn Féin) as he would be the candidate most likely to be fighting with Ganley. Any way to tip the scales in his favour was fine by me.

However, the 3rd seat was a tricky one. If MacLochlainn didn't get it (and there was a strong chance this would happen as SF aren't transfer friendly) then I needed to decide who else would be competitive. Gave it to Marian Harkin (Ind) and my 4th vote to Jim Higgins. Continued this down the line until Declan Ganley (who I left blank)

Check out the bookies odds for who's most likely to take a seat, use them as a basis for determining who has a chance and work from there.

ForiegnNational

It would be good if somebody prepared analysis before the next election of tactical votes for each constituency. That way, if your preference was to stop, say Fianna Fail from being elected (just an example - does not necessarily reflect my views), but you lent towards Labour, you could structure your voting to prevent FF getting a vote.

It should be relatively straight forward, but I think a Tactical Voting campaign would truly terrify all of the parties, to think that they wouldn't be guaranteed a seat just on transfers.