It's at a more abstract level than I was expecting from the subtitle. I thought it was going to be a list of key issues, a summary of the parties' stances on them, and advice along the lines of "so if you care more about A, vote for party B, but if you care more about X, vote for party Y" - which would be more challenging to make non-partisan without one's own views creeping in.
You know when Scott Alexander makes a post arguing against some position that's popular in his circles but unheard of in ours, and his rebuttal is the first we've heard of it? That's how I felt reading your section about national vs. local issues. I haven't come across people talking about voting in national elections based on local issues. I thought the opposite was more the case: people recognising that the Party A candidate for the local council is better at getting the potholes fixed, but voting for the Party B candidate instead because they don't like what Party A stands for nationally and they see the local council elections as a sort of proxy national election.
The one way in which I think this fails to be non-partisan is in ranking tactical voting to tier 3. I have a feeling that particular concern would be consistently ranked rather higher by supporters of left-wing and/or minor parties than by Conservative voters. Perhaps Edrith considers his preference in favour of FPTP to be non-partisan, but pretty much all of the (significant amount of) calls for voting reform I've seen have been from the left.
I've seen anti-FPTP mainly from the Lib Dems and Reform, so I'd agree with "minor" but disagree with "left-wing" (which makes sense, as FPTP penalises smaller parties).
Historically the left has been more fragmented into smaller parties, but the right has become so more recently.
Although, I'm treating "pro-tactical voting" and "against FPTP" as equivalent, and maybe that's not valid: maybe there's a partisan difference between those who oppose FPTP in principle but use it as it's intended since we have it, and those who oppose FPTP and so recommend voting tactically as a workaround to it.
I think there are two conceptually different things here.
a) In an FTPT system, how important do you think tactical voting considerations are.
b) Whether someone is in favour the voting system being FTPT or PR.
One's answer to (a) seems logically independent of one's answer to (b).
On (a), I generally think tactical voting harms the person's cause in the long-run. E.g. lots of people don't vote Lib Dem because the Lib Dems don't win, which becomes circular. Also, the parties are actually quite different. Unless it's overridingly important to you to keep someone out, I wouldn't generally recommend it, hence it being tier 3.
On (b), I've set out my reasons for FTPT in the linked piece. I think me continuing to hold these views with the polls as they are makes it a principled stand, if nothing else! To pick up some of Rachael's and Alex's points:
- I agree support for PR is more often held by those on the left, but don't see it as intrinsically a party political position (except maybe for Lib Dems) or innately associated with either left or right (as Rachel says, Reform support it). Interestingly, one reason why the Yes to AV side was criticised was because they shunned working with Farage/UKIP (who supported it), making the campaign purely a left-wing/progressive campaign, which probably hurt its chances and may have shaped future support for voting reform as being more left-wing. It's interesting that this is very different to what happened in the Brexit referendum, where Vote Leave made active efforts to court Labour supporters and profile Labour politicians, even though there was more support on the right.
- I think one reason it is currently more left-ist is that we've had a long period of Conservative government and 'kick out the incumbent' is a great unifying cry. But if we had a long period of Labour government, with the right-wing vote split between Conservatives and Reform (and maybe Lib Dems shifting back more into Orange Book territory) that could change.
- I think a lot of activists/highly engaged people on the left (as I think Alex, you and Rachael are?) often see Labour/Lib Dem/Green as part of a 'progressive alliance' and that all are clearly superior to the Tories. But this is actually quite different to how voters for those parties behave: there are plenty of Lib Dem/Tory or Green/Tory swing voters who wouldn't vote Labour, and polls of views on individual issues also bear this out.
I think if you're in favour of FPTP, and your top priority is your tier 0 objective of getting a certain party into power, then in some constituencies (which of course depend of party preferences) you have to accept that tactical voting is often the only way of achieving that objective.
In Welsh and Scottish elections the solution has been to have a mix of FPTP (for a constituency representative) and PR (for regional representative). Particularly with e.g. Hague's complaints about "hyper-local MPs" I don't see why that wouldn't work. You'd have a local rep in parliament, MPs with a less regional outlook, and smaller parties have a chance if getting seats.
You, like some other people, seem to be interpreting 'I don't like tactical voting' as 'you should never tactically vote'.
Tactical voting is a necessary evil of FTPT and I do agree that occasionally one should do it (I gave an example), hence weighting it above Tier 4. But I think a lot of people do it too much.
Firstly, it's not a great way of getting a certain party into power; it's better at keeping a particular party out of power, and I generally think it's better to vote positively.
Secondly, it seems really clear to that the Lib Dems and Greens are worse off today because their supporters have done so much tactical voting over the last 20 years; similarly, UKIP supporters would not have achieved their goal of leaving the EU if they'd voted tactically for the Conservatives because 'UKIP was never going to win'.
In other words, voting tactically prioritises short term gains at the expense of long-term impact. Sometimes that's right, but not very often in my view.
"people on the left (as I think Alex, you and Rachael are?)"
I... was. My political views are kind of in flux at the moment, in a way I've been intending to blog about (although don't hold your breath because I've been intending it for quite some time).
Yes - I think both of those things are simultaneously true.
Rachael, on the anecdotal level, I was recently on holiday with several people who put much more weight on local issues than I feel is warranted, and more robustly, have read a number of articles (such as the Hague one) talking about the growing trend towards hyper-local MPs (including stats on how many councillors are becoming candidates). But I agree it's also true that people treat local elections as if they are national!
Nice post. The point I strongly disagree on is you putting 'To send a message' in tier 4. While such voting is often not aimed at the question of who will form the next government in the parliament to come, it often aims directly at the question of who will form the government (and what the nature of that government will be) in the parliament after that. Such protest votes often demonstrate the presence of a 'voting bloc' which is available to be collected, and is (in my view) one of the most effective means of minority influence in a first-past-the-post system .
In this respect, I doubt anyone who voted for UKIP at various general elections did so because they thought they would form the next government; indeed, I suspect many people who voted for UKIP would never have done so if there was a chance UKIP would have been the actual government. But such votes undoubtedly had a huge influence on the overall direction of the country, despite UKIP never managing more than a couple of seats in parliament.
And at the current election: voters on the right may choose vote Reform because they regard it as the most effective way to influence the Conservatives in their (likely) spell of opposition over the next five years, while having zero desire to see Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. Likewise, voters on the left may vote Green as a shot across Keir Starmer's bows, safe in the knowledge that the Conservative government will be removed.
Finally -- the above is also complicated by the nature of one's own constituency as 'message voting' makes more sense in safe seats (for any party).
Good point. If we can only transmit a couple of bits of information, we may as well use them to communicate preferences like "Labour but with stricter climate policies" or "Conservative but with stricter immigration policies", as an approximation to having referenda on various key issues.
In the last election the Green's main climate policy was abolishing nuclear power (they haven't published their manifesto for this one yet, let's hope there's a surprise shift to sanity) so voting Green may signal 'Labour, but with climate policies which sound tough, but are in fact entirely counterproductive'.
If I've misread you and you were actually gesturing at a vote for the Lib Dems being a vote for 'Labour, but with an actually implementable, aggressive climate plan that would genuinely do some good' then I withdraw my complaint entirely.
Voting for the Lib Dems isn't a great way of 'sending a message on climate' (however good or not it is for other reasons) because they have a broad policy platform with a lot of different policies. It's not clear what 'a higher vote share for Lib Dems' means.
On the other hand, voting for a party seen to stand overwhelmingly for one issue (like the Greens, or UKIP back in the day) does clearly show support for that issue - and, if enough people do it, puts on pressure.
I did mean the Greens (following on from Joseph's two examples), and I was trying to phrase both of my examples as value-neutrally and symmetrically as possible.
I personally agree with you about nuclear. I still think, on the Outside View, that someone voting Green is a signal that they favour stricter climate policies (note that "stricter" doesn't imply anything either way about how helpful or counterproductive those policies are).
"But if you strongly disagree with a party, how competent do you want to be at pushing through their radical agenda?" is missing a 'them'
The quote from William Hague has certainly made me rethink my approach. I do agree that MPs using a question in parliament to ask the minister to praise something related to their local constituency is a complete waste of everyone's time, and yet it seems to be very common.
However I don't understand in what useful sense you can prioritise which party you want in power over their manifesto, ethos, track record and party leader. Once you take those out what's left, vibes and inertia? I realise your text elides party and these factors, but your headlining table separates them, I think to the detriment of rational decision making. The only thing I can imagine putting at tier zero is the tactical voting, so I'm surprised you rank it so low. I always assumed that the world was divided into those who, if their favoured candidate was unlikely to be in the top 2 and the top 2 were likely to be close and they had a preference between them, would vote tactically, and those who didn't understand first past the post.
"I always assumed that the world was divided into those who, if their favoured candidate was unlikely to be in the top 2 and the top 2 were likely to be close and they had a preference between them, would vote tactically, and those who didn't understand first past the post."
This seems parallel to the argument between consequentialists and deontologists.
It also reminds me of discussions I've seen (but don't agree with) comparing voting to playing the lottery, because you have a comparably small chance of affecting the outcome.
I wonder if something going on here is assumptions about stability of preferences between elections?
To me, it seems pretty clear that the Lib Dems and Greens are worse off because their supporters do so much tactical voting; similarly, UKIP supporters would not have achieved their goal of leaving the EU if they'd voted tactically for the Conservatives because 'UKIP was never going to win'. And with the population now so politically volatile, we see lots of seats once considered 'safe' going the other way after 2-3 elections.
But this all assumes that if Person X thinks that Lib Dems (or UKIP, or Conservative) in one election they're pretty likely to do so in the next; i.e. moderately stable preferences across elections. Because these effects are all achieved over 2-3 cycles. If you're like Neil and a consummate swing voter, none of this has much weight and you should just maximise your impact on that election - as next election you're more likely than not to want another party to win.
The 'which party you want in power' is explicitly described as being made up of the various things below (manifesto, etc.). That was what Tier 0 was meant to symbolise: it's not a separate thing, but the cumulative weight of many of the items below.
I think tactical voting is much more widespread in ways that people don't see because they're used to it. That is, I think most people vote for one one of the top three candidates in their constituency, but would be more likely to vote for a minor party if they knew whoever they voted for would actually win. And I think that's sensible, that in seats with a reasonable chance of going to more than one party, voting for the plausible party you prefer to the other is likely to do more good than voting for a minor party. But I think most people stop thinking of that as tactical voting and get used to thinking of themselves as supporting the party they vote for most often
Yes, that's a fair point. In a conversation I had with a friend after posting this, I realised what I really meant was 'don't usually tactically vote between the five main parties'.
Good post, and genuinely non-partisan.
It's at a more abstract level than I was expecting from the subtitle. I thought it was going to be a list of key issues, a summary of the parties' stances on them, and advice along the lines of "so if you care more about A, vote for party B, but if you care more about X, vote for party Y" - which would be more challenging to make non-partisan without one's own views creeping in.
You know when Scott Alexander makes a post arguing against some position that's popular in his circles but unheard of in ours, and his rebuttal is the first we've heard of it? That's how I felt reading your section about national vs. local issues. I haven't come across people talking about voting in national elections based on local issues. I thought the opposite was more the case: people recognising that the Party A candidate for the local council is better at getting the potholes fixed, but voting for the Party B candidate instead because they don't like what Party A stands for nationally and they see the local council elections as a sort of proxy national election.
Yes, agreed.
The one way in which I think this fails to be non-partisan is in ranking tactical voting to tier 3. I have a feeling that particular concern would be consistently ranked rather higher by supporters of left-wing and/or minor parties than by Conservative voters. Perhaps Edrith considers his preference in favour of FPTP to be non-partisan, but pretty much all of the (significant amount of) calls for voting reform I've seen have been from the left.
I've seen anti-FPTP mainly from the Lib Dems and Reform, so I'd agree with "minor" but disagree with "left-wing" (which makes sense, as FPTP penalises smaller parties).
Historically the left has been more fragmented into smaller parties, but the right has become so more recently.
Although, I'm treating "pro-tactical voting" and "against FPTP" as equivalent, and maybe that's not valid: maybe there's a partisan difference between those who oppose FPTP in principle but use it as it's intended since we have it, and those who oppose FPTP and so recommend voting tactically as a workaround to it.
I see this completely differently. I would divide the tribes into
1. In favour of FPTP and therefore in favour of tactical voting
2. Against tactical voting and therefore against FPTP
3. Idiots.
I admit that Iain is smarter than me, and appears to be in category 3, so something is wrong here.
I think there are two conceptually different things here.
a) In an FTPT system, how important do you think tactical voting considerations are.
b) Whether someone is in favour the voting system being FTPT or PR.
One's answer to (a) seems logically independent of one's answer to (b).
On (a), I generally think tactical voting harms the person's cause in the long-run. E.g. lots of people don't vote Lib Dem because the Lib Dems don't win, which becomes circular. Also, the parties are actually quite different. Unless it's overridingly important to you to keep someone out, I wouldn't generally recommend it, hence it being tier 3.
On (b), I've set out my reasons for FTPT in the linked piece. I think me continuing to hold these views with the polls as they are makes it a principled stand, if nothing else! To pick up some of Rachael's and Alex's points:
- I agree support for PR is more often held by those on the left, but don't see it as intrinsically a party political position (except maybe for Lib Dems) or innately associated with either left or right (as Rachel says, Reform support it). Interestingly, one reason why the Yes to AV side was criticised was because they shunned working with Farage/UKIP (who supported it), making the campaign purely a left-wing/progressive campaign, which probably hurt its chances and may have shaped future support for voting reform as being more left-wing. It's interesting that this is very different to what happened in the Brexit referendum, where Vote Leave made active efforts to court Labour supporters and profile Labour politicians, even though there was more support on the right.
- I think one reason it is currently more left-ist is that we've had a long period of Conservative government and 'kick out the incumbent' is a great unifying cry. But if we had a long period of Labour government, with the right-wing vote split between Conservatives and Reform (and maybe Lib Dems shifting back more into Orange Book territory) that could change.
- I think a lot of activists/highly engaged people on the left (as I think Alex, you and Rachael are?) often see Labour/Lib Dem/Green as part of a 'progressive alliance' and that all are clearly superior to the Tories. But this is actually quite different to how voters for those parties behave: there are plenty of Lib Dem/Tory or Green/Tory swing voters who wouldn't vote Labour, and polls of views on individual issues also bear this out.
I think if you're in favour of FPTP, and your top priority is your tier 0 objective of getting a certain party into power, then in some constituencies (which of course depend of party preferences) you have to accept that tactical voting is often the only way of achieving that objective.
In Welsh and Scottish elections the solution has been to have a mix of FPTP (for a constituency representative) and PR (for regional representative). Particularly with e.g. Hague's complaints about "hyper-local MPs" I don't see why that wouldn't work. You'd have a local rep in parliament, MPs with a less regional outlook, and smaller parties have a chance if getting seats.
You, like some other people, seem to be interpreting 'I don't like tactical voting' as 'you should never tactically vote'.
Tactical voting is a necessary evil of FTPT and I do agree that occasionally one should do it (I gave an example), hence weighting it above Tier 4. But I think a lot of people do it too much.
Firstly, it's not a great way of getting a certain party into power; it's better at keeping a particular party out of power, and I generally think it's better to vote positively.
Secondly, it seems really clear to that the Lib Dems and Greens are worse off today because their supporters have done so much tactical voting over the last 20 years; similarly, UKIP supporters would not have achieved their goal of leaving the EU if they'd voted tactically for the Conservatives because 'UKIP was never going to win'.
In other words, voting tactically prioritises short term gains at the expense of long-term impact. Sometimes that's right, but not very often in my view.
"people on the left (as I think Alex, you and Rachael are?)"
I... was. My political views are kind of in flux at the moment, in a way I've been intending to blog about (although don't hold your breath because I've been intending it for quite some time).
I will be interested to read that when you write it!
Maybe people in local elections too often vote on national issues, and people in national elections too often focus on local issues?
Yes - I think both of those things are simultaneously true.
Rachael, on the anecdotal level, I was recently on holiday with several people who put much more weight on local issues than I feel is warranted, and more robustly, have read a number of articles (such as the Hague one) talking about the growing trend towards hyper-local MPs (including stats on how many councillors are becoming candidates). But I agree it's also true that people treat local elections as if they are national!
Nice post. The point I strongly disagree on is you putting 'To send a message' in tier 4. While such voting is often not aimed at the question of who will form the next government in the parliament to come, it often aims directly at the question of who will form the government (and what the nature of that government will be) in the parliament after that. Such protest votes often demonstrate the presence of a 'voting bloc' which is available to be collected, and is (in my view) one of the most effective means of minority influence in a first-past-the-post system .
In this respect, I doubt anyone who voted for UKIP at various general elections did so because they thought they would form the next government; indeed, I suspect many people who voted for UKIP would never have done so if there was a chance UKIP would have been the actual government. But such votes undoubtedly had a huge influence on the overall direction of the country, despite UKIP never managing more than a couple of seats in parliament.
And at the current election: voters on the right may choose vote Reform because they regard it as the most effective way to influence the Conservatives in their (likely) spell of opposition over the next five years, while having zero desire to see Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. Likewise, voters on the left may vote Green as a shot across Keir Starmer's bows, safe in the knowledge that the Conservative government will be removed.
Finally -- the above is also complicated by the nature of one's own constituency as 'message voting' makes more sense in safe seats (for any party).
Good point. If we can only transmit a couple of bits of information, we may as well use them to communicate preferences like "Labour but with stricter climate policies" or "Conservative but with stricter immigration policies", as an approximation to having referenda on various key issues.
In the last election the Green's main climate policy was abolishing nuclear power (they haven't published their manifesto for this one yet, let's hope there's a surprise shift to sanity) so voting Green may signal 'Labour, but with climate policies which sound tough, but are in fact entirely counterproductive'.
If I've misread you and you were actually gesturing at a vote for the Lib Dems being a vote for 'Labour, but with an actually implementable, aggressive climate plan that would genuinely do some good' then I withdraw my complaint entirely.
Voting for the Lib Dems isn't a great way of 'sending a message on climate' (however good or not it is for other reasons) because they have a broad policy platform with a lot of different policies. It's not clear what 'a higher vote share for Lib Dems' means.
On the other hand, voting for a party seen to stand overwhelmingly for one issue (like the Greens, or UKIP back in the day) does clearly show support for that issue - and, if enough people do it, puts on pressure.
I did mean the Greens (following on from Joseph's two examples), and I was trying to phrase both of my examples as value-neutrally and symmetrically as possible.
I personally agree with you about nuclear. I still think, on the Outside View, that someone voting Green is a signal that they favour stricter climate policies (note that "stricter" doesn't imply anything either way about how helpful or counterproductive those policies are).
Yes - this is a great point. I've updated the piece accordingly.
"But if you strongly disagree with a party, how competent do you want to be at pushing through their radical agenda?" is missing a 'them'
The quote from William Hague has certainly made me rethink my approach. I do agree that MPs using a question in parliament to ask the minister to praise something related to their local constituency is a complete waste of everyone's time, and yet it seems to be very common.
However I don't understand in what useful sense you can prioritise which party you want in power over their manifesto, ethos, track record and party leader. Once you take those out what's left, vibes and inertia? I realise your text elides party and these factors, but your headlining table separates them, I think to the detriment of rational decision making. The only thing I can imagine putting at tier zero is the tactical voting, so I'm surprised you rank it so low. I always assumed that the world was divided into those who, if their favoured candidate was unlikely to be in the top 2 and the top 2 were likely to be close and they had a preference between them, would vote tactically, and those who didn't understand first past the post.
"I always assumed that the world was divided into those who, if their favoured candidate was unlikely to be in the top 2 and the top 2 were likely to be close and they had a preference between them, would vote tactically, and those who didn't understand first past the post."
This seems parallel to the argument between consequentialists and deontologists.
It also reminds me of discussions I've seen (but don't agree with) comparing voting to playing the lottery, because you have a comparably small chance of affecting the outcome.
I wonder if something going on here is assumptions about stability of preferences between elections?
To me, it seems pretty clear that the Lib Dems and Greens are worse off because their supporters do so much tactical voting; similarly, UKIP supporters would not have achieved their goal of leaving the EU if they'd voted tactically for the Conservatives because 'UKIP was never going to win'. And with the population now so politically volatile, we see lots of seats once considered 'safe' going the other way after 2-3 elections.
But this all assumes that if Person X thinks that Lib Dems (or UKIP, or Conservative) in one election they're pretty likely to do so in the next; i.e. moderately stable preferences across elections. Because these effects are all achieved over 2-3 cycles. If you're like Neil and a consummate swing voter, none of this has much weight and you should just maximise your impact on that election - as next election you're more likely than not to want another party to win.
The 'which party you want in power' is explicitly described as being made up of the various things below (manifesto, etc.). That was what Tier 0 was meant to symbolise: it's not a separate thing, but the cumulative weight of many of the items below.
I think tactical voting is much more widespread in ways that people don't see because they're used to it. That is, I think most people vote for one one of the top three candidates in their constituency, but would be more likely to vote for a minor party if they knew whoever they voted for would actually win. And I think that's sensible, that in seats with a reasonable chance of going to more than one party, voting for the plausible party you prefer to the other is likely to do more good than voting for a minor party. But I think most people stop thinking of that as tactical voting and get used to thinking of themselves as supporting the party they vote for most often
Yes, that's a fair point. In a conversation I had with a friend after posting this, I realised what I really meant was 'don't usually tactically vote between the five main parties'.