“One of the nasty things about this is that while in FPTP tactical voting is fairly easy (look at which party opposing your most hated candidate got the most votes last election, and vote for them), in AV its actually really hard to work out where everyones preferences will go.”
That’s actually a good thing. Tactical voting not only leads to the ‘wasted votes’ you describe, but extreme unhappiness in other ways. A lot of people who claim to have voted Lib Dem to ‘keep the Tories out’ but to have preferred Labour are now very, very angry at the Lib Dems for joining a coalition with the Tories. Under AV, those people’s MPs (assuming they’re telling the truth) would know that the mandate they had wasn’t a ‘Lib Dem’ mandate or a personal one, but an ‘anti-Tory’ one, because they’d only have got in through Labour voters’ second preferences. This means that if (as many people who claim to be disgruntled ex-Lib Dem supporters claim) most Lib Dem voters are ‘really’ ‘anti-Tory’ voters, the Lib Dems would have had a lot more incentive to make a deal with Labour, rather than with the Tories. And of course if they weren’t ‘really’ ‘anti-Tory’ that would have been reflected too.
It sounds like it comes down to getting to express your preference while still not risking “wasting” your vote. I think getting clear preferences registered and not getting the interference from tactical voting speculations is a real benefit even if there are cases with surprising outcomes.
“One of the nasty things about this is that while in FPTP tactical voting is fairly easy (look at which party opposing your most hated candidate got the most votes last election, and vote for them), in AV its actually really hard to work out where everyones preferences will go.”
That’s actually a good thing. Tactical voting not only leads to the ‘wasted votes’ you describe, but extreme unhappiness in other ways. A lot of people who claim to have voted Lib Dem to ‘keep the Tories out’ but to have preferred Labour are now very, very angry at the Lib Dems for joining a coalition with the Tories. Under AV, those people’s MPs (assuming they’re telling the truth) would know that the mandate they had wasn’t a ‘Lib Dem’ mandate or a personal one, but an ‘anti-Tory’ one, because they’d only have got in through Labour voters’ second preferences. This means that if (as many people who claim to be disgruntled ex-Lib Dem supporters claim) most Lib Dem voters are ‘really’ ‘anti-Tory’ voters, the Lib Dems would have had a lot more incentive to make a deal with Labour, rather than with the Tories. And of course if they weren’t ‘really’ ‘anti-Tory’ that would have been reflected too.
It sounds like it comes down to getting to express your preference while still not risking “wasting” your vote. I think getting clear preferences registered and not getting the interference from tactical voting speculations is a real benefit even if there are cases with surprising outcomes.