A common talking point when discussing Australia’s electoral system is that it eliminates the need for tactical voting. This is usually true, but there is a narrow set of cases in which tactical voting can be a relevant factor, and there may be more of these cases in 2022.
When a centrist independent is positioned between Labor and Liberal in a traditionally safe Liberal seat, the question of whether the independent, Labor or Greens makes it to the final two could make a difference as to whether the Liberal holds on. This could come into play in some seats in 2022, with the proliferation of the ‘Voices’ independents.
A recent tweet by Voices for Goldstein caused a stir, with a bunch of replies calling it “disinformation” or patronisingly explaining to them that, under preferential voting, you simply need to order the candidates in order of preference to ensure a candidate receives your vote.
Please note that if you vote for Labor in seats with a Voices candidate you may hand the seat to the Liberal party
Labor cannot win those seats, and unless the Voices candidate is in the top two, Liberals will win https://t.co/1Dkes4yTvP
— Voices of Goldstein (@GoldsteinVoices) February 27, 2022
I do think the tweet is a bit simplistic and overstates its case by broadening the scenarios in which this is true to include all “seats with a Voices candidate” (which is quite a few seats), but it may be true in some seats, potentially including Goldstein and Wentworth.
We use a few tools when counting votes in Australia which simplify the preferential system, and in most cases it works well. On election night, we count up the primary votes for each candidate and then divide up those votes between two candidates – usually these candidates are from Labor and the Coalition, but in some cases other candidates make this “notional two-candidate-preferred count”.
In most seats, we don’t need to know any more than this information. If it’s close, we need to see how every seat breaks down, but we need not concern ourselves with a voters’ other preferences.
We only need to worry about the detailed procedures of counting preferential ballots when it’s not clear which candidates make the top two. In very rare cases this is because a candidate may gain preferences from third place to make the top two, but usually it’s a matter of which candidate is in second place on primary votes.
In some cases, two candidates are competing for second place, and whoever achieves that outcome will win the seat on the others’ preferences. The most common cases of these are where Labor and Greens are neck-and-neck for second place. Examples include Balmain in 2011, Ballina, Lismore, Maiwar and Prahran. Some of the better prospects for the Greens to pick up extra House of Representatives seats would require this sort of result: Griffith and Macnamara amongst others.
This dilemma of tactical voting doesn’t particularly apply in these races because Labor and Greens preferences are mostly symmetrical – Labor voters and Greens voters tend to favour the other party strongly over the Liberal Party, such that if one is in a winning position on a two-candidate-preferred count, the other will be too. So you can just vote your personal preference. If you favour Labor over Greens, you can help Labor win, but if they lose your vote will elect the Green, and vice versa. Traditionally Labor preferences usually flow slightly stronger to the Greens than vice versa, but usually the preference flows are similar enough so that both candidates are in with a chance, so you shouldn’t consider casting a tactical vote against your preferred candidate.
But when the preference flows are asymmetrical, you can have a situation where two candidates are in a close contest for second place: one of them will be in an election-winning position, and the other will not.
This is more common under compulsory preferential voting than under optional preferential voting, where the primary vote position matters more as less preferences flow.
The most common situation where this has emerged in recent years, and the scenario likely to occur in 2022, involves a centrist independent challenging in a traditionally safe Coalition seat. This centrist independent can appeal to Labor and Greens voters (these seats often have a relatively high Greens vote) to switch to the independent in the hope of flipping a seat where Labor and the Greens are seen to have no chance. This independent is also able to peel away a few Coalition voters, enough to win the seat.
There were four electorates in 2019 which demonstrate this asymmetry in preference flows: Indi, Mayo, Warringah and Wentworth. The Mayo case involves a Centre Alliance candidate, but she generally resembles an independent.
The AEC conducts both a two-candidate-preferred count and a two-party-preferred count where the final two candidates are not Labor and Coalition, which allows us to compare these counts in these four electorates in 2019. In each seat, the Liberal Party made both counts, so this table shows the Liberal percentage in each count:
| Electorate | LIB 2CP | LIB 2PP | Gap |
| Indi | 48.61 | 62.73 | 14.12 |
| Mayo | 44.86 | 52.54 | 7.68 |
| Warringah | 42.76 | 52.12 | 9.36 |
| Wentworth | 51.31 | 59.85 | 8.54 |
There are differences between these seats (the Liberals won Wentworth, for a start), but this pattern is similar. The independent outperformed Labor in a head-to-head race against the Liberal Party by 7.7%-14.1%.
Now this particular strategic voting dilemma wouldn’t apply in these seats in 2019 because the independent (or CA candidate) polled a primary vote far above any other candidate apart from the Liberal. There’s no doubt who made the top two. But in cases where this independent is closer to the pack, it could come into play.
Kevin Bonham wrote an excellent blog post on this topic in 2018 which listed a number of similar contests where the second- and third-placed candidates were much closer. This includes the 2018 Wagga Wagga by-election, the 2009 Frome by-election, the state seat of Rockhampton in 2017 and the federal seat of Denison in 2010.
There was a lot of discussion about this in the final weeks of the 2018 Wentworth by-election, when the (admittedly inconsistent) seat polling suggested independent Kerryn Phelps and Labor’s Tim Murray were neck-and-neck for second place, but Phelps was in a much stronger position to win if she outpolled Murray than the reverse. In the end Phelps performed better relative to Murray than the polls suggested – which could have been due to Labor voters casting a strategic vote for Phelps, or just that the polls weren’t that accurate.
While this scenario can come into play, I think it would be easy to try and apply this argument where it doesn’t apply.
I don’t think it’s worth considering a strategic vote in any of the following scenarios:
- If Labor or the Greens are actually competitive in a seat, I’d recommend casting a sincere vote for your preferred candidate, rather than helping a less-preferred candidate defeat your preferred candidate. I think this probably applies in a seat like Kooyong. The independent there could be strong enough to win, but so could Labor or the Greens.
- If the independent is not strong enough to make the final count or to win the two-candidate-preferred vote. There are a lot of Voices-style candidates running all over the country and they won’t all do as well as Zali Steggall. I have particularly low expectations of those who are running in conventional Labor-Liberal marginal seats such as Casey and Boothby. Labor may well run dead to try to avoid this issue in seats where they have no chance, but that won’t happen in seats where Labor has a good chance.
- The independent needs to have a political positioning that makes them likely to do better on preference flows than Labor or the Greens. A far-left independent isn’t likely to have advantageous preference flows that would justify a strategic vote.
- A strategic vote doesn’t make sense if the independent isn’t so strong that their position in the top two is in no doubt. Established independents will usually convert second preferences into primary votes. You might as well cast a sincere vote in those races.
I suspect there will only be a small number of seats where this scenario plays out in 2022. But in an electorate with a relatively strong independent, where Labor and the Greens are not strong enough to win but in with a chance of making the top two, voters who don’t support the Coalition may want to consider these factors when deciding how they vote.
It must be a kick in the guts for a Labor candidate in a seat like this, if the party decides to play dead in the hope that the independent can deny the Liberals the seat. The Labor candidate will have signed up to an almost hopeless cause, but prepared to “fly the flag”, maybe take a chunk out of the margin, and maximise the Senate vote. Then suddenly all HQ support fades away – no money, no appearances from the leader or other high-profile shadow ministers, nothing. Thanks for coming. And if you happen to limp into second place anyway, any congratulations are likely to be insincere.
The only genuine case of a tactical vote I’ve seen is Melbourne 2010. A Labor voter would have been better off tactically voting for the Liberals to try and keep them in the top 2, as Greens preferences would flow far strongly to Labor than Liberal votes to Labor. Given that the Liberals advised a Green vote above a Labor, keeping the Greens out of 2nd was paramount to re-electing Labor in the seat.
Labor voters will vote at least via second preference for a teal or a green as the lesser of two evils.Taking Wentworth as an example it appears that the teal candidate can shift 8 to 10% away from the liberals.. that makes the difference. BUT still 40 to 44% of their vote is anti liberal. The trouble with teals is they are well heeled.but they do cause troubles for the liberals even if they don’t win.
It may be a bit simplistic, but the majority of Teal candidates are in conservative seats and are economically conservative themselves.
Could it not be their goal to form a minority LNP government so they can force climate action, but also retain the LNP in power?
This then makes sense in terms of the Teals wanting people not to vote Labor?
Tactical/Strategic Voting is only a phenomenon in First-Past-The-Post countries.
As you are forcing voters to vote with their head and not their heart.
Preferential or Ranked Choice voting eliminates this, as you can still give your preferences to the least worst major candidates or your 2nd preferred choice.
If there was First-Past-The-Post voting in this country (which I wish there was), the strategic/tactical voting would see the Green vote in most seats halve dramatically, and Labor absorbing most of this.
Even under OPV, voters who will be less inclined to preference (particularly in by-elections) are more motivated by anger than strategy, which is why there is such high exhaustion rates.
There is also a fail-safe of “well someone else will preference”.
If you want to witness true strategic voting in action, The Conversation did a good piece about the 2021 Canadian Election and the dilemma of progressive groups and trade unions in the NDP vs Liberal ridings showdowns
https://theconversation.com/canadian-election-2021-do-strategic-voting-campaigns-actually-work-166782
Interestingly because Canadian politicians aren’t as lazy as Australian politicians in terms of campaigning, the NDP (which is the 2nd left wing party) was able to pick up a handful of lower house seats unlike the Greens here. Even though the Greens have an even bigger advantage because of compulsory voting and compulsory preferential voting.
LJ, did you read the piece? Tactical voting is not just a FPTP phenomenon. I just explained how it can happen under preferential voting. Minimised, yes. Eliminated, no.
Dean, I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them. Someone who runs in an unwinnable seat knows what they’ve signed up for (if they’re the slightest bit sensible) and often get opportunities in more winnable seats later.
LJ, why would you wish for First-Past-The-Post voting, when preferential voting is so much better in so many ways?
In optional preferential voting, their is a tactical choice on whether to preference or to exhaust your vote. This can be both at a party level through the how to vote card or the individual choice of knowing when to stop numbering the ballot. And that is why I would like to see OPV at all elections!!
@Ben it’s more of a protest than strategic. Because you are not giving the Labor Party or major party your first preference out of a multitude of reasons
Tactical or strategic would imply the deliberate choice to vote for a candidate to prevent another from being elected, even if that candidate doesn’t align completely with your values as a voter. There is a sacrificial element to it. There is none in Preferential, because the vote ends up going back to the least worst option in the end but they have to get your vote the long way around.
Let’s say there is 10 candidates on a ballot, and you nominate Labor 9th and Liberal 10th. When both of those candidates will most likely be the 2PP. The only thing strategic about that would be the major parties having to suck-up to the minor parties and independents in order to gain their declared preferences on a HTV.
In FPTP, if you say to a voter you only have 1 choice, no preferences, you are then forcing the voter to vote strategically or tactically. Because there are more elements at play with their decision and they don’t have the fail safe of a 2nd, 3rd or 4th preference.
@Damo K, I think FPTP for me personally is cleaner and makes candidates work harder for their vote.
So in turn more voters are voting for people not parties because of the higher personal vote.
You also get more distinction between candidates and parties (no deals via preferences). There are less
All anglosphere nations: US, UK, Canada and NZ all use it. It is the simplest for any voting system, and allows for more people to understand the process and be engaged in it.
I also think that it allows for more diverse representation parliaments, as the parties themselves have to lean more into different community groups to get more decisive votes.
Understandably it is not for everyone but I think it would be an interesting experiment, if at least one state used it to definitively say whether it was good or bad in comparison
LJ, I really don’t think you’ve read what I’ve written? Which explains a lot.
If Labor and Liberal will “most likely end up in the 2PP” (I assume you mean 2CP), then that’s not the scenario I’m talking about this in the blog post.
If someone decides to switch their vote from Labor to Phelps to help her make it to the final round that’s not a protest, and it’s not their genuine order of preferences. It’s tactical.
LJ Davidson, I have previously gotten confused with preference ‘deals’. These are not like the old Senate where a voter’s preferences default to a set order. They are only recommendations put forward by the party and/or candidate in a certain electorate. Voters are then free to choose their own preference order if they wish, and at least 20-30% of voters do this and don’t follow the recommended preference sequence.
In Prahran in 2014 choosing between the Greens and the ALP did matter because the 2CP and 2PP margins were smaller than the difference in preference flows from the defeated candidate to the Liberal.
People get confused because the chief reason for tactical voting in first-past-the-post is to counter the spoiler effect. The whole point of preferences is to eliminate the spoiler effect.
But that doesn’t mean tactical voting doesn’t exist in a preferential system. It simply has a different purpose: to manipulate the order of elimination. Though ultimately it’s for the same reason: to ensure your least favoured candidate stands the greatest chance of being defeated. Call it a pragmatic tactical vote.
However, there’s also a second type of tactical vote under a preferential system that you might call a Machiavellian tactical vote. In this instance you vote for a candidate with little chance of winning, but whose advancement to the final stage helps ensure your preferred candidate’s victory.
Take Goldstein. A pragmatic tactical vote would be a Labor voter voting Independent to help ensure the defeat of the Liberal candidate. A Machiavellian tactical vote would be a Liberal voter voting Labor to help ensure the early elimination of the Independent candidate, and the success of the Liberal candidate.
P.S. It has nothing to do with full vs optional preferences. A decision to potentially exhaust your vote is not a tactical decision, simply an expression of personal preference.
LJ, I think the largest problem with FPTP is that it makes it almost impossible for independents and minor parties to win seats. People are just going to vote for the major parties so that they don’t waste their vote.
Dude your article is about does Strategic/Tactical Voting happen in Australia.
Whether or not you define if it happens under a Preferential voting system is irrelevant because it CANNOT occur under this system.
Strategic voting is all about a voter making the least-worst option in their overall voting paradigm. The key element being they have to vote strategically or tactically because they have no alternative or option.
They have only one vote and no preference.
All this talk about switching votes from a major party to a stronger independent in our system, still doesn’t distinguish the fact that the voter still has the fail safe of preferencing a left wing candidate over a right wing candidate or vice versa.
What is an Australian voter sacrificing or giving up by changing a preference on a ballot, when ultimately their intention is still affirmed?
Even if a traditional Labor voter still votes for an independent before the Labor candidate, they can still put the Labor candidate as their second preference as a block to ensure their vote is not exhausted or goes to an unwanted candidate.
Either way inversing your vote based on trends in the area is not strategic. As it will eventually lead to the same result
All that happens is your first preference goes to someone else, along with electoral funding but your preference will still be in play as a safety net. You’re not asking voters to forego anything under this.
Preferential is having the option to travel different directions but to the same location.
FPTP is multiple locations are on offer but you can only go to one.
The scenario you’re talking about is still where voters are giving their vote to a candidate who ends up in the final 2. They may preference them higher or lower but voter intention is not distorted. There is no “lost” vote either. Your thesis just affirms the “Later-No-Harm” criterion
> In Prahran in 2014 choosing between the Greens and the ALP did matter because the 2CP and 2PP margins were smaller than the difference in preference flows from the defeated candidate to the Liberal.
Technically yes. But that’s a very unusual example, because the gap was very small. It just so happened it was small enough to matter.
Obversely, the gap in the 2018 Wagga Wagga by-election was very large but ended up not mattering because the Liberal candidate would have lost to either the independent or the Labor candidate.
In general though, the larger the gap the more compelling a tactical vote.
It would be a strategic vote if someone, who doesn’t want the coalition to win a seat, votes for a voices candidate ahead of a Labor, when they prefer Labor ahead of the voices candidate.
I’m not sure if it’s worse that LJ Davidson categorically rejects the definition of a voter giving a higher preference to a less-preferred candidate for strategic reasons as “strategic voting”, or his insistence that “voter intention is preserved” despite the voter’s intention being definitionally different from the ballot they cast, or that he thinks that it’s apparently a bad thing that Australians have the right to express preferences thus!
From start to finish a totally incoherent argument. The mechanics of strategic voting in IRV are well explained in this article, it doesn’t matter if your personal definition is so absurdly overfitted to FPTP, you could at least take the effort to examine Ben’s definition within its own paradigm.
LJ, I really don’t think you understand what I’m talking about. If a candidate who can win the 2cp is defeated by one who can’t win it, you get a worse outcome by electing your least preferred candidate. This is why preferential voting violates the monotonic principle. It doesn’t happen very often, but it can happen.
You say:
“ Either way inversing your vote based on trends in the area is not strategic. As it will eventually lead to the same result.”
This is only true if the order of elimination does not change. But if it does change, that can change the outcome.
Dave in your Goldstein example the mad tactical voter risks their worst choice a Labor win.
Agree with Ben, he is talking about situations where DIFFERENT candidates end up in the top 2 (eg Labor/Liberal or Liberal v Independent). In these cases, the order of elimination is critical as a 1 Labor vote would rather the Independent be higher up on their preference list whilst a 1 Independent voter may put the Liberals higher than Labor.
Furthermore, end sequence preferences (like 9 or 10) don’t matter at all because if such a voter did preference small minor parties, a main independent in the middle and then Labor and liberal last, then if the result is a Liberal v Independent finish, their vote would go to the independent, not Labor.
Definitions are important. Preferential voting was designed to eliminate strategic voting or voters making a less of 2 evils choice that often weighs down the FPTP system.
There is a difference between strategic/tactical voting and simply exercising your preference in ranking a ballot.
Having worked on political campaigns in other countries, you’re traversing a completely different landscape when you’re talking about people voting strategically. The way the candidates campaign, their messaging completely changes and has to differentiate. I feel like in Australia with the emergence of these independent/Voices Of candidates it is merely tinkering around the edges.
If the whole argument above about “tactical voting” is surrounding Teal independents and their rise with the end result being the dislodgement of a liberal member or the consolidation of an anti-Liberal vote, is that strategic voting or just demonstrative of voter sentiment in the electorate.
The preferences are harvested or hoarded between a consolidation of like minded candidates, gifted to them by like minded voters.
The 2010 Denison example proved this because of the high Anti-Labor vote, however Wilkie was always going to poll higher/be preferenced higher for all groups voters as he was considered more moderate by Liberal voters than the Greens and more progressive by Greens voters than the Liberals.
Strategic would imply a complete collapse of an already established base vote to shift to one candidate. I don’t see how this happens or rather would happen if there is no benefit to voters who just want to turf the Liberal candidate can still do so, without having to drastically distort their intended vote.
That is, if Labor voters would never vote Liberal and the independent voters want their candidate to win which would mean preferencing the Liberal candidate if not last than near last.
The outcome is the same and voters are not needing to vote strategically.
The only coordination I could foresee is the tail-end of the ballot rather than the top of it.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the Liberal candidate last, rather than change your first preference?
I’ll accept I’m in the minority with this viewpoint
LJ, you’re defining “strategic voting” narrowly. If someone casts a vote that doesn’t fit with their personal preferences to take advantage of the voting system, that’s strategic. If someone would rather vote for Labor but casts a ballot for an independent to avoid a Liberal victory, is that not a “least worst” choice?
You’ve got convincing arguments that strategic voting is a minor factor in Australian politics, not that it doesn’t exist at all. I think I’ve been pretty clear that I think it only applies to a particular narrow type of contest.
But yes I do believe it happens, but also maybe it should happen sometimes? Clearly some people in the Voices movement want to educate voters in their electorate of this dynamic to try and increase their primary vote. It was discussed a lot during the Wentworth by-election in 2018.
You say “Wilkie was always going to poll higher”. Wilkie likely was always the Condorcet winner (as in he would’ve defeated all comers on a 2CP basis) but we don’t use Condorcet. If he failed to clear the Liberal candidate, it wouldn’t have mattered how he did on Liberal preferences.
You ask if the rise of Teal independents reflects strategic voting or demonstrative of voter sentiment. I think it’s a mix. Even putting aside this particular scenario where strategic voting makes sense, there are plenty of Australians who like to vote for a winner, and certainly there are plenty who don’t understand the voting system and think it’s best and simplest to just vote 1 for the candidate you think is the best you can get in their electorate. They don’t need to do that under our voting system (outside of this narrow scenario) but it happens plenty. I know plenty of Greens activists who get frustrated at voters who agree with the Greens but say they vote Labor to make sure Labor wins. That sounds like strategic voting to me.
Look at the shift in primary vote support for Labor and Greens in Warringah from 2013 to 2019. I’m sure plenty of those voters genuinely prefer Steggall. I suspect that will become more true as she establishes herself and has a personal vote and a record, but in 2019 I reckon quite a lot of those swing voters would actually prefer Labor or Greens but voted for her as someone who could plausibly win.
I don’t mind the article Ben, but I do see some of LJ’s points – and I have sent most of the past month on here putting counter points to his. His main point is that what you have described shouldn’t be called “tactical voting” as it is so different to the use of that term overseas.
As I’ve said before, “tactical voting” as defined here is an entirely stupid thing to be considering – and I think you go close to saying that Ben by listing only a small set of scenarios where a voter should consider it. You have summarised the major flaw in the logic in your last comment – “If a candidate who can win the 2cp is defeated by one who can’t win it, you get a worse outcome by electing your least preferred candidate”. You use “can” and “can’t” as very definitive states in this sentence. We only know this in advance of an election by looking at past elections and assuming >95% will vote the the same way as last time. Are the people on this blog the only ones aware of the ability to “vote tactically”. Perhaps 20% of voters are voting tactically, but they all think they are one of a select, “intelligent” few.
A candidate who seems likely to get a relatively low flow of preferences, may indeed not win the seat if they fall over the line into second by only a few votes. But the margin may have been so small because some voters decided to vote “tactically”. If everyone just voted in order of their candidate preference, that same candidate may secure second by say 5%, and be only a few % behind the leading candidate and win on preferences. WHO KNOWS! We don’t live in a steady state.
@LJ
Preferential voting complies with the later-no-harm criterion. That is not the only way in which tactical voting can arise. In particular, preferential voting fails the no-favourite-betrayal criterion, and that is exactly what Ben is talking about here.
This article provides a concrete example. (Scroll down to Examples » Instant-runoff voting.)
Ah, I thought I recalled there was a theorem on this, and indeed there is – the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem.
It states that any non-dictatorial ordinal voting system with more than two candidates is susceptible to tactical voting.
It is a proven mathematical theorem.
Let give a very simple example in the context of this discussion:
• Five voters vote Liberal, Teal, Labor.
• Two voters vote Teal, Liberal, Labor.
• One voter votes Teal, Labor, Liberal.
• Four voters vote Labor, Teal, Liberal.
In the primary vote, Liberal has five votes, Labor has four, and Teal has three. Teal is eliminated.
After distribution of Teal’s preferences, Liberal has seven, and Labor has five. Liberal is elected.
Now, say you’re one of the Labor voters. If you had instead voted Teal, Labor, Liberal, the count would have proceeded like this:
The primary vote would have been Liberal five, Teal four, and Labor three. Labor is eliminated.
After distribution of Labor’s preferences, Liberal has five, and Teal has seven.
So, a voter could have changed their vote to produce an outcome more desirable to them, even though that vote would have been insincere. This is exactly what tactical voting is.
@High Street
The same logic you described could just as well be used to argue that tactical voting does not exist in FPTP. “It’s not tactical voting because you can’t know for sure who the top two candidates will be…”
Boothby and Sturt may have been winnable for NXT in 2016 but they didn’t make the runoff (though I think Libs would have narrowly won anyway)
But in addition to general tactical voting, I think there’s a lot of misguided tactical voting. Look at the enormous swing against Greens in Ascot Vale when they were shifted from “winnable” Melbourne to “unwinnable” Maribyrnong. Lots of explanations but I think some of it is a belief among progressive voters that they need to vote Labor to prevent Liberals winning. The AEC is cracking down on misinformation this year – it might make a difference
Sometimes it’s invoked intentionally.
Alex Greenwich is the only non Liberal that wins a Sydney (state seat) runoff but he intentionally ran a “Just vote 1” campaign. Same with Shooters in Barwon (people forget that Labor were competitive).
Kerryn Phelps was the favourite in the Wentworth by-election but she smothered Labor’s hopes by putting out a Liberal preferencing HTV. However that may have also helped Liberals feel comfortable with voting for her.
An important consideration is whether the independent is actually flipping LNP voters, or just eating Labor and the Greens lunch. In rural seats where both brands are toxic, it makes sense. Same with blue ribbon seats. But conventional marginals like Boothby, or middle class Liberal seats like Hughes where Labor do ok at other tiers, I don’t see them doing well.
I’m surprised there haven’t been more Labor friendy candidates that present themselves as Palmer/Hanson/Katter style mavericks (like NSW Shooters – not progressive but left of the Nats on many issues). If they pull off enough voters from the Liberals, then surprisingly get Labor and Green preferences, they can win seats. Kevin Mack in Farrer might be able to pull it off if he runs again.
I largely agree with what Ben wrote, except with this part
‘If Labor or the Greens are actually competitive in a seat, I’d recommend casting a sincere vote for your preferred candidate, rather than helping a less-preferred candidate defeat your preferred candidate. I think this probably applies in a seat like Kooyong. The independent there could be strong enough to win, but so could Labor or the Greens.’
First of all, Kooyong has existed since Federation, and the conservative parties have held it for literally that entire time (and the Liberals have held it since the 40s, ie since the inception of the Liberal Party). Maybe that’s about to change, and I mean that sincerely. But you only know for sure who’s ‘competitive’ after the election’s already happened. The fact remains that if left-leaning voters in Wentworth and Warringah took this attitude, the Liberals would have never lost those seats. John’s advice more sense in this case: if it’s a rural or blue ribbon inner city seat then a tactical vote makes sense, insofar as it ever does.
But that’s dependent on whether the Climate 200 candidate actually has the best campaign on the ground- something that’s not easy to tell for political junkies let alone the average voter, beyond what colour t-shirt is annoying them at the flea market. Most people, much more well adjusted people you could argue, do not think too much about any of this shit. They vote how the last guy who mouthed words that sounded vaguely right to them told them to. If Labor and the Greens had more people banging down doors with platitudes in Warringah and Wentworth than Voices did, then maybe they would have won those electorates instead.
My advice for left-leaning tacticool surgical strike special ops voters this year is this: if you live in Kooyong, Goldstein, North Sydney, Wentworth, Warringah and Indi then vote for the climate 200 candidate. If you live in Mayo, vote for Sharkie. Their platforms aren’t great but you’re presumably used to being bullied into voting for mediocre candidates if you’ve ever voted Labor.
Some even better advice: just vote for who you like the best and stop worrying about this shit. It’s not worth the agita. This isn’t a movie and you’re not reality’s protagonist. You’re one voter in a hundred thousand and the rest of the electorate’s going to do what they do regardless of you. If you actually want to make a difference, volunteer for the candidate you like and help convince other people with actual activism.
I suppose the difference with Kooyong is that it’s been rapidly gentrifying and hence becoming a lot more “young professional” over the last few years, meaning Greens candidates (not necessarily Labor) are the beneficiaries. Also if these Monique Ryan supporters hate the policies and platitudes of Frydenberg so much, why would they put him above the Greens/ALP? At least the Greens (and Labor to a lesser extent) want climate action, an anti-corruption body with teeth, and investment in renewable energy and an efficient, effective and clean transition away from coal, oil and gas. I’d understand them putting the Greens over Labor, given the hatred small-L liberals have for the ALP for no particular reason.
Furtive Lawngnome, the track record of Federation seats is an interesting bit of trivia and a fun fact to bring up when and if it is overturned but streaks like that are far less predictive than the most recent data. Demographics change, boundaries change, and voter priorities change. It doesn’t matter one jot how Kooyong voted in 1901, or even in 1990. It’s ancient history. It used to be the case that the state of Victoria was considered Liberal heartland, it is now considered the most left-leaning state (at least in some respects). Things change, and it is misleading to appeal to historical streaks over and above current information.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is downright irresponsible to claim that it is a better bet to vote for a total newcomer to the political landscape on the assumption that they will certainly do better than a party that got within 6 or 7 points of victory in the last election.
My advice to left-leaning voters is to do your own research, and be very skeptical of claims that one entirely untested independent or another is the only person who can win the seat. Your final paragraph is much better advice on this front. Most of the time, voting your true preference won’t go wrong and the notion that tactical voting is a moral imperative is part of the grift.
FL, I don’t disagree about the agita. I’m posting this as an interesting topic for psephological discussion. I wouldn’t consider it a useful topic for a campaign.
But I do think Kooyong is different to, say, Goldstein or North Sydney. It’s more marginal (although the gap isn’t as big as I thought it would have been) and it’s a seat where the Greens have credibly challenged. If there is a substantial swing to the left in 2022 it could be in play (however unlikely) for Labor or the Greens. The long history isn’t relevant to this issue.
I heartily agree with FL – especially the last paragraph and the last sentence. Don’t worry about this stuff.
I think its a narrow distinction Ben between Kooyong and the other seats you mention – there’s always surprising seats that swing more than others. Will be interesting to line up all the seats on 2PP after the election and see which one have changed positions.
One reason seats don’t move much is because they don’t become marginal – causing the generally losing side to start to investing resources there. The biggest obstacles to change or that people think things will never change – aka “no point voting for Party X in that seat – they never win!”
@Nicholas – I am drawing a distinction between a long list of results in FPTP where say a minor party gets 15% of the vote for a distant 3rd and all of sudden 10% of them switch to vote for the party that consistently comes 2nd. Compare that to an election in Full preferential system where an IND comes on the scene in one election and they are only in contention by reducing the leading parties vote. We don’t know ahead of time how the preferences will flow relative to the margin that needs to be made up by the 2nd candidate. If you vote “tactically” you are taking a huge punt that your preferred candidate might not have got up if you, and all your tactical voting mates, had just stayed where you were.
The other thing with tactical voting is you have to see the alternative as sufficiently better than who you’re trying to get rid of. If voters don’t see enough difference between the Voices Of independents and the Liberals, then they’re less likely to bother with tactical voting. Steggall, Haines etc vote with the government most of the time and will likely support a minority Liberal government, so what’s the point?
Those shirts they’re wearing don’t look teal to me either, they look light blue to my eyes. Look up a picture of a teal duck to see what the colour’s meant to be.
@High Street
The distinction you are drawing between the typical case of tactical voting in FPTP and the subject of this post is one’s ability to predict how others will vote and the confidence one can have that their tactical voting will work as intended.
And I absolutely agree with you in that there is a difference. In a US presidential election, voters can be almost certain that the race will be between the Democratic and Republican candidates, and thus Green voters can be almost certain that voting for the Democrat will increase the likelihood of a result more desirable to them. In three-cornered elections in Australia, that certainty is not there.
The only point I am making is that tactical voting (in its purest, dare I say, mathematical definition) exists in preferential election. But I agree with you that it is unlikely to be wise to tactically vote.
In the last UK election when people did actually tactically vote (and parties tactically organised candidates in certain seats (Greens and Lib Dems)) Labour refused to deal with them, hence resulting in them losing a number of marginal seats to the conservatives where people had been turned off by the Labour brand.
For example, Labour lost Kensington by 150 votes, when there were 9,800 people who voted Lib Dem or Green, who could’ve easily won Emma Dent Coad another term in office. Tactical voting really doesn’t mean anything in Australia except for maybe NSW, however tactical voting is knocked out if people all do preferential voting in the lower house. The US two-party system is so powerful tactical voting doesn’t really matter any more, and tactical voting in NZ and Germany doesn’t really matter either, as they use FPTP-MMP meaning parties can’t be underrepresented anyway.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/45754/comment-page-1#comment-764481
Young professionals largely don`t represent gentrification* in Kooyong. Kooyong one of Australia`s wealthiest seats, so an increase young professionals (particularly those moving into flats in the denser parts) represents a net decrease in average household wealth and conservativeness.
* The gentry of course being a upper class wealthy enough not to need jobs (a.k.a. the landed gentry), although gentrification has never really specifically been about actual gentry as high taxation and social and change gutted actual gentry before the term was used in its usual current meaning of middle class people moving in to previously low income areas.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/45754/comment-page-1#comment-764558
Australia does have order of elimination tactical voting in safe seats, as discussed in this post and other comments bellow it.
The US system is very effective at forcing tactical voting through its extremely strong 2 party system but has the outlet of primaries that divert some of the pressure for additional parties into intra-party politics.
MMP causes tactical voting to bypass the 5% threshold, such as with National voters giving their local vote to the ACT candidate in Epsom to avoid ACT party list votes being wasted.
Funny you should mention Kensington, Ryan Spencer. That seat was Labour held, but some high profile outlets claimed, baselessly, that the tactical vote was for the Liberal Democrats (incidentally, the Lib Dem candidate, Sam Gyimah, was a defector from the Conservative Party and outgoing member for East Surrey so his liberal credentials and claim to the seat weren’t even very good). As you note, the margin was very close so it can be pretty confidently stated that [inept] instructions to progressives to vote tactically won Kensington for the Conservatives. Your read that Labour was to blame for “refusing to deal” with such candidates doesn’t match what happened in Kensington at the very least.
Fortunately, that scenario at least is cut out entirely by IRV. So long as everyone who votes tactically sends favourable preferences to their truly preferred candidate (and Federally with full compulsory preferences one must assume that everyone does) there is no such thing as vote splitting.
my whole argument was that FPTP (unless there’s proportionality to counteract any imbalances) is just really bad. That whole Kensington saga (especially for Labour) was a debacle, and no Lib Dem candidate would work tactically anyway. Apologies for not knowing the whole story.
You can’t call for a tactical vote for someone when Labour got 42%(!) of the vote in 2017.
The real advantage of IRV is that parties can build their profile without hurting the political parties closer to them ideologically. So for example Greens can build their vote from 1% to 20% without hurting Labor, then be in a position to challenge, instead of needing to go from spoiler to winner.
In FPTP they are smothered early on as the better they do, the more likely they are to be spoilers.
Your analysis of Casey is interesting. Labour got 28.6% primary votes in the last election, Liberals 45.25%. Hardly a close race. Labour also doesn’t seem to fight hard to win this seat. If they do they are hiding it well.
Curiously the community independent Claire Ferres Miles, who stands in Casey, is not listed in the Tallyroom’s candidate list. As the former CEO of Sustainability Victoria she is a strong contender for the seat
Casey is a 4.6% margin. That’s more relevant than the primary vote gap which ignores almost 11% for the Greens. I don’t think Labor is going to lay down and let an independent out poll them there.
She’s not on the list because I last did my update in late February and she wasn’t on any of the lists I looked at. Not my job to hunt down obscure candidates who aren’t even on the Wikipedia list, they can just post here that they’re running and I’ll add them in the next update.
So everyone, lets start this discussion off again – very topical in light of SA election as well as an article in Sydney Sun Herald yesterday on North Sydney.
The IND candidate Tink was quoted as saying “she would not tell voters how to fill out the rest of their ballot paper, and if there is a hung parliament in which she must help decide who forms government, she will look at how her electorate voted to inform her decision”.
So if you are an ALP or Green voter that is voting that way because you wish to see a Government OTHER than an LNP one (i.e. its not just a protest vote from an otherwise normally Liberal voter) and you switch your vote “strategically” to support the IND, Tink is telling you she will use the lower ALP/GRN vote that such switching causes to justify supporting the LNP in minority government, if such a scenario came to pass.
… I am supporting the LNP because although I got a 30% primary vote, the Liberal candidate in North Sydney got 40% and the ALP got only 15%…..
You might prefer to have an INP rep voting on legislation instead of a LNP rep, but if its still LNP introduced bills into the House, you haven’t effected much change.
The correct measure in such a case of examining “how the electorate voted” would be to look at ALP/LIB 2PP. Although if she happens to be some secret Liberal, it’s not out of the question that she could still use the primary vote as an excuse to support the coalition. So it comes down to whether one trusts her intellectual honesty.
High Street – that argument doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Tink didn’t say she’d vote based on primary votes – and there’s no way that’s how she’d do it. Not only would it inherently work against her interests, since people who vote for her will come more strongly from one side than the other (and thus reduce the number voting for the party you should support), and ignoring your own voter base in deciding which party to support in forming government would be a surefire way to lose your seat in the next election, but she has easy access to the necessary information, which won’t be affected by tactical voting.
For you see, the AEC publishes a 2PP count for seats that are non-traditional, which any seat won by an independent must necessarily be. So Tink would obviously look at the 2PP, and thus determine which party the electorate would prefer with much better accuracy.
I’m also curious as to why you base which party you support on which one gets more primary vote. If you think the LNP are the better party, vote for them, by all means (I disagree, but you have the right to think differently than me). But basing your vote on expected primary vote just means that you’re going to get the candidate with the fewest decent challengers with similar policies, rather than the one that best represents the area or your own views. It’s the whole point of the preferential system that you don’t rely on primary vote to define which candidate is the best, because it invites spoiler candidates.
Also, High Street, I hate to break it to you, but current polling data suggests that Liberals are on 34% and Labor on 23%, much closer than 40% vs 15%. Considering that Tink is polling at 20%, to get ahead of Labor she’ll need flows from Greens substantially stronger than Labor’s flows from Greens, and for that to happen, she’s going to need solid campaigning on Greens issues, which means she’ll be drawing more from the left.
Glen, it would make sense for the teal independents/voices candidates to back the 2PP winner, as it likely to be more favoured for Labor. Warringah is a case in point, the 2PP was highly marginal as most of Zali Steggall’s preferences flowed to Labor instead of the Coalition.
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