General Election 2015: Tactical voting ‘could thwart SNP’
Campaign groups are asking Scottish voters to put aside traditional loyalties to prevent a wipeout by Nicola Sturgeon’s party
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.With polls suggesting that Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalists could make a clean sweep of all 59 Scottish seats this Thursday, tactical voting (TV) by supporters of the main pro-Union parties could save the skins of some of the country’s best-known politicians.
With Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats all accused of falling asleep after last year’s referendum on independence, new campaign groups such as Scotland in Union and Scotland’s Big Voice are claiming they can halt the seemingly unstoppable rise of the SNP by asking voters to park their usual tribal loyalties and do the unthinkable.
But getting Tories to vote Labour or Labour to vote Liberal Democrat, when the fault-lines and long-held divisions are deep in key marginals, is, according to the director of one group, like “trying to bail out a sinking ship with a small bucket”.
On the main street in Perth, one of the small tactical voting campaigns, Forward Together, was urging Labour and Liberal Democrat voters to help Conservative candidate Alexander Stewart oust the SNP’s Pete Wishart. Similarly in Glasgow, aides of the Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy in East Renfrewshire near Glasgow are putting a recent 5 per cent jump in the polls down to Tories deciding that voting tactically for Labour is the only way of keeping out the nationalists.
Are you undecided about who to vote for on 7 May? Are you confused about what the parties stand for and what they are offering? Take this interactive quiz to help you decide who to vote for...
With the former SNP leader Alex Salmond on course to return to Westminster by taking the Aberdeenshire seat of Gordon from the Liberal Democrats, another TV campaign group, Scotland in Union (SiU), thinks that a tactical campaign calling for people to support the Liberal Democrat candidate, Christine Jardine, is “certainly having an effect”.
In Edinburgh North and Leith, where Labour’s Mark Lazarowicz is trying to hold out against the SNP, Conservatives hold the key to keeping a pro-Union MP at Westminster, according to Forward Together.
A YouGov poll commissioned by SiU estimated that one in seven Scots could turn to TV this week.
Alistair Cameron, SiU director, said he believed the post-referendum circumstances of Scotland’s politics mean “people are prepared to put aside their usual allegiances”. “It’s a question of trust. People don’t trust the SNP on North Sea oil calculations, on more devolved powers. They don’t believe another referendum isn’t coming,” he said. Given the closeness of the wider UK contest, he said TV could play a significant role in the final result and he expects some high-profile upsets. “It’ll be hard to judge. In Scotland’s case, TV may be like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a small bucket. But what’s the alternative?” he added.
Mr Cameron admitted any Conservative deciding to switch is going against the grain of party HQ in London, which has talked up the prospect of a SNP-Labour deal as a way of scaring voters in England to believe any agreement holds a threat to Britain’s sovereignty. Former prime minister Gordon Brown accused David Cameron last week of “playing the English card” and putting at risk “the very existence of the UK”.
Victor Clements, a former Liberal Democrat who heads Forward Together, said he believed the SNP’s influence at Westminster would be “utterly destructive” if it sends the number of MPs predicted by the polls. However Mr Wishart, who has held the Perth and North Perthshire seat for the SNP since 2001, dismissed the threat from Forward Together’s street activists.
“Their influence will be next to nothing. They are über-Unionists who say there’s a large group here wanting to vote tactically. In reality that doesn’t exist. The resonance is negligible. The Tory vote will be around 25 per cent,” he said.
Pollster Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University said he thought the impact of TV would be minimal, affecting at most only seven of the block of seats the SNP is forecast to win. “Tactical voting may help deny the SNP a few seats,” he said, “but in truth it seems incapable of re-creating the Unionist coalition that helped reject independence.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments