Heading to the polls on 4 July may feel like a simple act that requires little explanation.
You go into the local polling station, tick the name of whichever candidate you believe will best represent your constituency, and then you leave.
But the reality is people use their vote in a number of ways, sometimes straying from conventional methods to maximise the impact of it.
The reason tactical voting exists is because of our first past the post system – or FPTP – where each voter chooses a single candidate as MP in their constituency, with the winner determined by simple majority.
Therefore, a lot of the votes cast in the constituency are – in theory – “wasted”.
The party with the most MPs wins, rather than the party with the most votes overall. A party could therefore lose an election even if more people voted for them overall.
This is where tactical voting comes into play.
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What is tactical voting?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “an occasion in which you vote for a political party or person that you would not usually support in order to prevent another party or person from winning”.
You may have heard it mentioned in past elections – it first became popular in 1997, when Labour’s Sir Tony Blair won the general election by a landslide.
There are a couple of tactical voting methods, but it’s essentially a way people use their vote to increase the chance of getting the outcome they want.
Vote swapping
This is where you agree to vote for a party on someone else’s behalf, and they’ll vote for your preferred party in their constituency.
You would likely…
