Should you vote tactically?

Well, glad that I made somebody's day!
We have a whole month to get through, so anything can happen(sudden asteroid hitting the earth?)

But if I vote for the party I want to get in, the party I don't want will get in - so effectively I will have voted for him!

So it is no good saying just vote for the party you want.

The sudden emergence of a proposed policy which would please every single voter in the UK? Pigs etc...

Shame you are not in the Wyre Forest, Mishap. The link I gave earlier shows that the same percentage of constituents voted for other parties than for the Tory winner. That's because one of them was the candidate for the NHA, who wants to save the NHS.

I have to take issue with sillyoldfool I do consider myself to have a brain with several pieces f paper from major academic organisations to back that claim up and I continue to vote Labour. Have you considered renaming yourself rudeoldfool?

Agreed Teetime that was a rather offensive remark sillyoldfool. This is a discussion forum, we try to be tolerant of each other's views, with varying degrees of success. How offended would you be if I said that anyone who voted Conservative is selfish, deluded and should be ashamed of themselves eh? Try to keep it polite.

To be fair, SillyOldFool didn't actually say that anyone who voted Labour had no brain, just that he/she couldn't understand how anyone who has a brain would vote Labour.

It doesn't matter a damn who I vote for, the Tories here know they can't lose and everyone else knows they can't win.
I'm sick of the Jam Tomorrow promises of all the parties. If they can give so much once elected, why haven't they given it already? I don't believe a word any politician says.

Good heavens I wish the comment made by sillyoldfool was the worst I have ever seen or indeed experienced.

Voting tactically is grubby politics, especially if you have been told to do so.

It verges on hatred and I wouldn't/couldn't throw away my principle of voting for the candidate/party I believe to be the best.

You are dismissing your chosen candidate as a loser, a no hoper and not given him/her a chance to know what support he/she did actually have. I feel sorry for them which ever party they belong to. They didn't win but they didn't loose fair and square either! Hopeless situation and totally demoralising I should imagine.

As mentioned by annodomini: Labour told others to vote tactically , vote for the LibDem candidate to keep the Tories out. They did and the Lib Dem won. He then turned out to obviously be better than the Labour candidates and stayed in place for 18 years. Now nobody knows how much Labour votes gave him 'the win' but if it did have any bearing at all it was keep Labour out too. Irony!

good post POGS, but I realise that not everyone feels that way.Having read the posts on the manifesto threads,some people think their own party says all wonderful things/promises are great, and all the other parties are making terrible promises and I feel that surely we should admit, that we like some promises and not others even those of the party we support?
it seems childish to do otherwise.

rosesarered

Ain't that the truth.

Good heavens that would never do!

I would never vote tactically. Surely one should vote for the party one believes will do the best job. Admittedly , a difficult decision !

Posted too soon !

At the moment my thinking is on the lines of; do I vote for the party that gradually seems to be getting us out of a mess. Or, the party that got us into it .

Same here, ginny

Just stick with what you truly feel or you could regret doing anything other.

If we had a form of PR, this question wouldn't arise. Given what we have, in some seats, voting tactically may allow us some say in who is actually elected. It could be argued that this gives us a bit more democracy. I certainly have a preference list of how I would vote if it mattered but sadly it doesn't where I live. In a city nearby, the LDs have sometimes won the seat so if I lived there I would vote LD as sometimes what matters most is who you don't get

I will not vote tactically, never have. I shall vote according to my beliefs and conscience. This is a hard election to call even for expert political analysts and I for one am getting very interested in it all.

I am pondering if I would vote Conservative if it were to keep UKIP out .......

I know your point was in good humour GT but you do raise a point about tactical voting!

As previously mentioned in a post: vote Lib Dem to keep Tories out, Lib Dems stayed in power for 18 years ,keeping your chosen party out, Irony or what!

Vote Tory to keep UKIP out, Tories and UKIP do a supply and confidence deal, your vote would have been a waste of time if you were a green, NHA, LibDem, Labour voter and I would hazard a guess would make you angry with yourself for ever giving tactical voting a thought let alone doing it.

Likewise in a safe Labour seat vote Lib Dem to keep Labour out, they then go into coalition, why do it? It doesn't assure you of anything other than your party failing and you have aided and abetted the worst outcome possible for yourself.

What if all those who elected to vote tactically had stuck to their principles and voted for their candidate? You may have lost, that's democracy but the next time round you could be in a marginal seat with all to play for!

We have the complete opposite problem where I live apricot . It wouldn't matter a jot how I voted the Labour Party have a complete strangle hold on our town and need do or say nothing to guarantee winning at the election.

Some may say that's great having a guaranteed Labour council but only healthy competition leads to improvement.

Agreed gillybob it is no good for a town or a constituency when any one party has a stranglehold, all areas of governance need an effective opposition to keep extreme ideas from becoming practice.

Another though is that if all those people who don't use their vote did,
then results everywhere could be very different. I wonder what difference it would make in a place that was, say a labour stronghold. Would a vote from those who don't vote because Labour always get in anyway, be able to change it?

I am so sorry some of you thought I was rude and I apologise of course. My point was that it seems some people merely vote for the same party everytime regardless of their performance when in Government. Surely it is wiser to take this into account when casting a vote.

Sillyoldfool- I'm not a silly old fool and your aplology doesn't wash with me - you were not making that point at all in your post but having a pathetic pop at Labour voters