Remain United: Gina Miller’s tactical voting site says Lib Dem in England
Remain United, a new pro-Remain tactical voting website from Gina Miller and colleagues, calls for votes for the pro-European Liberal Democrats in every region in England.
Overall, the Remain United calculations are that tactical voting for the best placed Remain party in each Euro-constituency would boost the number of Remain MEPs by more than half. That gives a powerful incentive to Remainers to cast their votes tactically.
The reason that tactical voting is effective even in the European Parliament elections despite their use of PR is due to the version of PR being used. The d’Hondt quota with closed candidate lists means there is plenty of scope for tactical voting to have an impact.
Details of the Remain United research and recommendations are here.
It is a pity that she does not make a clean sweep. She recommends voting nationalist in Scotland and Wales, which might be difficult for floating voters to stomach. The Scots have had a Lib Dem MEP before the 2014 melt-down, and we have come close in Wales in the past.
In a system like the one in place, tactical voting is crucial, particularly where the regions are small and so therefore the % needed is much higher (like the NE where you need well over 20% to win a seat). But there is a problem here that is almost impossible to finesse for tactical voters who wish to elect Remain MEPs in most seats. The LibDems can stack up near to double the number of votes they need for just ONE SEAT (and only one seat), taking those votes from another Remain party who ALSO might have been elected had they got just a tiny handful of more votes.
This is particularly evident when these 3 parties are clustered around the crucial 10%, with the regional variations. The close vote in 2014 between Greens and LibDems in, say, the South West region means that well intentioned tactical voting now between these pair by transferring to LibDem (and with Change UK in the mix as well) could lead to none winning (with say 130,000 each instead of 160,000 each, depending upon the performance of others). Take the recent London Europarl opionion poll where Change UK was doing well enough to win one seat in the capital, maybe two, even if behind the Brexit Party but ahead of the LibDems – if voters listened to the advice not to vote for them, the end result could be messy and actually a very divided vote at the crucial threshold, with a drop in one, a rise in the other…and zero seats: the Greens just and just managed to win a seat last time in the capital – had one other party just ahead of them in the results got a tiny fraction more of the vote, the Greens would have lost the seat by a whisker. Or put it another way, had they shed a few thousand votes to someone below them in the ranking, the same effect would have occurred.
The Remain ‘side’, if that is the right way to consider it, stand the chance of losing out in the strangest of ways by this tactic unless the LibDems push through a very critical barrier everywhere. On the other side of this argument to you, I lived through this myself in 1999 and 2004 and saw the eccentricity of the outcomes at that level, and that was when there were more seats. In spite of my difference in viewm, it would be extraordinary if 3 parties were to fight themselves to a messy draw at the lower end of these thresholds, minimising their seat numbers, while the other 3 parties cleaned up – specially if the current leader in the polls goes further into the lead.
…and right on time Mark comes a 2nd London poll which shows the LibDems way up and now far ahead of Change UK…meaning that the tactic can work!
I agree with Miller almost wholeheartedly.
What does concern me is that there seems to be no cohesion between all the remain parties and ideologies. The last thing we want is to have any form of voting split between too many remain parties.
The fight against Brexit mart feal and now. We definitely need a voice(voices)
to present a strong an irreputable case with many bullet points highlighting the many reasons why we must stay in Europe. I listened today to Tom Watson stating good sensible reasons why we have to have a 2nd referendum. If only him and his party would come off the fence and back remain.
We should also be shouting ‘from the rooftops’ that we cannot and should not trust USA with D.T. in the White House and the V.P. in Russia wants the E.U. to disappear.
Finally , the rise of the far right across Europe has to be challenged vociverously not just by the far left but by the” silent ”
majority….Centre , middle of the road democratic voters.!!