I see ending up with the ‘least hated’ candidate as a benefit, not a downside. And while “C could have stood a real chance of winning if it wasn’t for D’s voters”, again, that’s not a downside—minority votes should count too...
I agree with your first point, but not necessarily your second. To make this clearer, lets imagine that:
D voters like C and hate A
C voters hate A
B voters hate C
we saw
A 35%, B 31%, C 29% and D 5%.
D gets eliminated, and they all love C, leaving us with
A 35% B 31% C 34%.
B voters hate C, so they’ve all voted A, leaving us with
A 66% C 34%,
D voters sigh, and accept A’s landslide victory
If instead D chooses to vote B we get
A 35% B 36% C 29%
which then reduces to
A 35% B 65%
and D voters can’t grumble. Now this is a tiny bit artificial, but it shows that minority votes can be disproportionality powerful in weird ways: D voters in this example are much better off NOT going with their guts and voting C if they really don’t want A to get into power, especially if they know B voters hate C.
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 said, I still really like AV. One of my main reasons for liking it is that it has the potential to reflect what voters actually think. Theres certainly no waste of a first preference here, which means you truly can vote for your favourite party, which could lead to surprising results.
“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.
I see ending up with the ‘least hated’ candidate as a benefit, not a downside. And while “C could have stood a real chance of winning if it wasn’t for D’s voters”, again, that’s not a downside—minority votes should count too...
I agree with your first point, but not necessarily your second. To make this clearer, lets imagine that:
D voters like C and hate A
C voters hate A
B voters hate C
we saw
A 35%, B 31%, C 29% and D 5%.
D gets eliminated, and they all love C, leaving us with
A 35% B 31% C 34%.
B voters hate C, so they’ve all voted A, leaving us with
A 66% C 34%,
D voters sigh, and accept A’s landslide victory
If instead D chooses to vote B we get
A 35% B 36% C 29%
which then reduces to
A 35% B 65%
and D voters can’t grumble. Now this is a tiny bit artificial, but it shows that minority votes can be disproportionality powerful in weird ways: D voters in this example are much better off NOT going with their guts and voting C if they really don’t want A to get into power, especially if they know B voters hate C.
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 said, I still really like AV. One of my main reasons for liking it is that it has the potential to reflect what voters actually think. Theres certainly no waste of a first preference here, which means you truly can vote for your favourite party, which could lead to surprising results.
“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.