Polling, Tactical Voting and the East Wilts Primaries

Many people have written to me about the need for tactical voting and asking me to “sort it out” with Labour!  A local group – the East Wilts Primaries, did set out to do exactly that by encouraging all candidates to take part in a moderated hustings, followed by a vote – which would have led to a local “people’s champion” – the lead progressive anti-Tory candidate.

I was personally very happy to take part in these and had engaged with the East Wilts Primary team as soon as I was selected.  As the first primary took place in Devon, the regional party and then the national party began to hear about it and it was quickly decided that Lib Dem Prospective Candidates could take no further part in any Primary Activity.  We all received notice that we would be deselected if we failed to comply.  The Labour party had independently come to the same view.

The reasons are twofold:

1.  A candidate's campaign is important.  Engagement, leaflets, canvassing, PR, fundraising are the hard slog of a campaign.  The more you do, the more votes you generally get. All of this is entirely under the candidate’s control and the process ends then with an official, regulated public vote.  At a Primary husting, the attendance, voting mechanism and conduct would be entirely out of the candidate's control.  The detail of the hustings had not been worked out by the Primary Team.  If one of the other progressive parties sought to flood the "primary" with activists and members - the primary vote could be swung regardless of the actual performance of the other candidates.  There is also potential for a candidate to have an "off night"!  Given the weight that might be given to the Primary outcome, an entire campaign, months or work, money and volunteer work could be undone by a prejudicial 3rd party event, or a freakishly poor one night performance.  Of course, normal local hustings don't have a "vote" at the end of them.

2.  Funding and Election rules.  The Lib Dem national Party were not satisfied that PPERA rules could be observed with the potential costs of running the primary events and any subsequent activities undertaken by the Primary team in support of the "People's Choice"

I hope this makes sense.  We are working hard to make sure that we are the default choice for people wishing to cast their vote for a progressive party.  As far as I can tell East Wilts Labour party has done practically nothing at all locally yet - we obviously won Marlborough Town Council election - with a 62% vote share over the Tories.  Only a Town council yes - but in Marlborough, that's something.  Note also that we have won that last 4 Amesbury Town Council elections - again up against the Tories.  

In both Wroughton and Ridgeway wards and in the PCC Elections on 2nd May – Lib Dem Candidates came in front of Labour (PCC for Wiltshire).  In Wroughton – our vote share was nearly double that of Labour.  I take greater store by votes actually cast in Wiltshire than by polling that is undertaken outside it.