THe merits (or not) of FPTP

[islington]

There's a lively discussion about electoral systems going on in a thread that's supposed to be about whether the 2018 review will actually happen.

I can't resist weighing in, but it needs its own thread.

I'll nail my flag to the mast as a fan of FPTP, but only in part for the reasons that have been argued in the other thread.

When electoral systems are discussed, there's a lot of discussion about the merits of single-party government as opposed to coalitions. This tends to overlook the fact that political parties are themselves coalitions. But the key difference is that a political party is a coalition that is assembled in advance of the election rather than after it. This means that electors can see, before the election, who will lead the Government if the party wins and what its political priorities are likely to be. Of course I acknowledge that electors may not be able to rely totally on what they see, because the leader may change during the Parliamentary term and political parties sometimes change their priorities once in power. But there are practical political constraints against changing leaders too often or for inadequate reasons, or the too-blatant jettisoning of election pledges; so it still makes sense for voters to take account of the way a party presents itself and its policies at election time.

The alternative, with coalitions that form only after the election, means that voters have no idea what they will be getting and what they are really voting for or against. Once the voting is done, they are helpless spectators as the coalition-building process contrives an outcome that was never on the ballot paper, for which no one really voted.

So I prefer an electoral system that tends to result in single-party government, which means in practice one that favours large parties at the expense of small ones. FPTP is well-recognized as having this effect, and this is the principal reason (not the only one) that I hope we shall retain it.

(A further important reason for keeping FPTP is that all the alternatives exhibit very serious drawbacks; but although this is obviously a legitimate way of making a case, it is essentially negative and I wanted to kick off with a positive argument.)

[Deleted]

Two thoughts:

It may mean that the voter knows exactly what they'll get from voting for party X, but it's less likely to be what they actually want if the choice is restricted to X and Y.

Sweden, Norway and Denmark, among others, have fairly rigid coalition pacts before an election, so that for example if the 'red', 'green' and 'very red' parties form some sort of pact, the voter knows what they will get from voting one of those parties, but they have the choice of which they prefer, to increase the influence of said party. You're broadly right in that the two largest parties are a sort of coalition, but no voter (aside from party members to an extent) gets any say in the direction of that coalition.

[J.G.Harston]

Jun 2, 2018 14:37:48 GMT islington said:

When electoral systems are discussed, there's a lot of discussion about the merits of single-party government as opposed to coalitions. This tends to overlook the fact that political parties are themselves coalitions. But the key difference is that a political party is a coalition that is assembled in advance of the election rather than after it.

In all the history of local government elections with FPTP about half of councils have been coalitions, hidden under the description of "No Overall Control", so FPTP=noCoalitions doesn't hold.

[greenchristian]

Jun 2, 2018 16:35:35 GMT @nw12398 said:

Two thoughts:

It may mean that the voter knows exactly what they'll get from voting for party X, but it's less likely to be what they actually want if the choice is restricted to X and Y.

Furthermore, in practice, the average voter knows very little detail about what the big two parties are actually promising in any given election. The number of voters who read even part of one of the party manifestos is incredibly small. Yes, the majority of voters under FPTP have a clear choice between two parties that can actually win in their constituency. But that doesn't imply that they know what they'll get from either, even if one of the two programmes is broadly in line with what they actually want.

[johnloony]

If no party has an overall majority on its own, then a vote for that party is a mandate for that party to use its numerical strength to negotiate for its policies to be adopted within a coalition. That is the case whether it is under FPTP or PR. The claim that FPTP tends to be good at producing single-party governments is mostly accurate for elections to the House of Commons in the UK, but not accurate for local elections or many other countries.

[johnhemming]

When it comes to what is actually done systems like FPTP lead to a strong executive. This tends to move power into the civil service. The UK system puts the executive substantially in control of the legislature which drives this even further in the direction of the civil service. Most decisions that are made are not ones which appear in manifestos.

There is an argument that there is a merit in having system (such as elected mayors) which strengthen the permanent staff. I personally disagree with that as I believe one of the strengths of democracy is persuading people of the merits of policy rather than ramming it through the legislature using procedural techniques.

[islington]

Thanks all for feedback. Let me pick up a couple of points.

JG Harston makes a very good point about the way FPTP works in local elections. I acknowledge that I was thinking of it at Parliamentary level, and in this context the most valid comparison is with other nations' electoral systems. In this international context, I think it's fair to say, as a generalization (to which there are exceptions), that FPTP encourages two-party politics and makes single-party government more likely.

nw12398 is absolutely on the money. In a proportional system, the voter is likely to be presented with a luxurious array of choice of parties with a realistic change of getting into Parliament. But here's the rub: under such a system, the significance of the choice is tempered by the fact that you do not know how, if elected, the candidates will behave: which type of government, and which policies, they will end up supporting. Indeed, the candidates themselves do not know this, because it will depend on the Parliamentary arithmetic once the election is over. So you may cast your vote for a candidate whom, as an individual, you hold in high regard, who strongly advocates a particular policy that you are very keen on, only to find when the election is over that your preferred candidate has bargained away your cherished policy in coalition negotiations and has ended up supporting a Prime Minister whom you detest.

Under FPTP, although of course you can always cast your vote for a fringe candidate if you wish, I agree that the effective options are much more limited. But on the other hand, they are much more meaningful. I can cast my vote for a candidate on the basis of a published manifesto and with a much better idea than under a proportional system of how the candidate will behave if elected as MP. This knowledge isn't absolute, of course, because there's always the possibility that an elected MP will go off on some personal tangent and cross the floor or start a new party; but this kind of behaviour is highly unusual because FPTP itself provides very strong political reasons to refrain from it.

So it's a trade-off, in my view. FPTP limits your choice, and in theory (although in practice it can be more complicated than that) the choice will tend to come down to two. And it's likely that some voters will find both options almost equally unpalatable (albeit probably in different ways). But even if it means opting for the one you consider marginally less odious, you at least know, in casting your vote, how your chosen candidate, if elected, is likely to use the power that you are putting in his or her hands.

Finally, John Hemming is, if anything, even more on the money with his point that FPTP does, indeed, tend to encourage a relatively strong executive. I regard this as an advantage, although others might see it as a drawback. It depends what you think think the relationship ought to be between Parliament and the executive. My own view would be that Parliament, because it is so large and contains such a range of mutually contradictory political views, is not suited to the task of actually governing. It should therefore instal a Government in which the majority has confidence. I don't see Parliament's role as giving Government detailed instructions about how to do its job; the value of Parliament is more by way of checking Government and holding it to account in various ways, with of course the reserve power (if things get bad enough) of ejecting it altogether.

[johnhemming]

Jun 3, 2018 9:31:20 GMT islington said:

FPTP does, indeed, tend to encourage a relatively strong executive. I regard this as an advantage, although others might see it as a drawback.

This is where the question as to how decisions are actually made in the executive comes in. For most policy decisions it leaves them in the civil service not subject to any practical challenge.

[Izzyeviel]

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

[therealriga]

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

AV. No need to vote tactically or have second rounds which add to costs and delay the result. Two-round systems also involve an element of tactical voting.

[islington]

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

Izzyeviel

I take 'tactical voting' to mean 'voting not for the candidate one most likes but for the candidate one judges to have the best chance of defeating the candidate one particularly dislikes'.

In my view electors are entitled to use their votes in this way if they wish. So I don't agree with your use of the word 'scourge' to describe something that is a normal and perfectly reasonable part of the electoral process. To put it another way, tactical voting isn't a bug; it's a feature.

[islington]

Jun 3, 2018 21:56:16 GMT therealriga said:

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

AV. No need to vote tactically or have second rounds which add to costs and delay the result. Two-round systems also involve an element of tactical voting.

They say in France that in the first round, one votes with one's heart, and in the second, with one's head.

How you feel about this will depend on by which organ you think people should be guided in choosing how to vote. I prefer the head.

I agree, though, that in theory, although perhaps not necessarily in practice, an AV system should be equivalent, or nearly so, to the French two-round method. 

My problem with AV, apart from the fact that it was decisively rejected back in 2011, is that assuming no candidate gets 50%, the candidate that avoids coming last in any of the successive rounds of voting is logically certain to win. In other words, it supports the candidate that is most successful in picking up eliminated rivals' second, third or fourth preferences. This is likely to be the candidate to whom fewest people object, rather than the one that has been most successful  in mobilizing positive support.

I'm not saying that AV is a disastrous system. It seems to work reasonably well in Australia, and there's definitely a case for it in things like internal party elections where you may well want the choice, for the sake of party unity, to fall on the candidate to whom fewest people object rather than the candidate with a strong, but perhaps polarizing, body of support.

But in national elections, where you actually want a degree of polarization (provided it doesn't get out of hand) because it presents voters with a clear choice, I prefer FPTP.

[mboy]

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

It would be an improvement over the current system, and it's difficult to see what argument could ever be used against it other than the hassle factor of having 2 rounds of elections in most areas. The cost is not doubled because much of the work for an election is a one-off cost anyway.

Jun 4, 2018 11:40:06 GMT islington said:

My problem with AV, apart from the fact that it was decisively rejected back in 2011, is that assuming no candidate gets 50%, the candidate that avoids coming last in any of the successive rounds of voting is logically certain to win. In other words, it supports the candidate that is most successful in picking up eliminated rivals' second, third or fourth preferences. This is likely to be the candidate to whom fewest people object, rather than the one that has been most successful  in mobilizing positive support.

This isn't really true, and because it's not true there is another voting system which actually does in fact capture the most "agreeable" candidate to everyone - Condorcet.

[islington]

Please see the below, shamelessly extracted from the wikipedia article on Condorcet systems. Note that 'instant run-off' or IRV is the US term for what we call AV. (The whole article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method) is well worth a look.)

I had not realized, and thought it was particularly striking, that in certain circumstances, indicating a second choice under Condorcet could cause your first-choice candidate to lose.

This may seem like hopelessly dry and techie stuff. But I think it's germane because a problem for advocates of Condorcet, or any alternative voting method, is that (based on the AV precedent) they will probably have to persuade the general public at a national referendum in which paradoxes and oddities of this kind will be ruthlessly (and perfectly legitimately) exploited by supporters of the status quo. 


Comparison [of Condorcet] with instant runoff and first-past-the-post (plurality)


Many proponents of instant-runoff voting (IRV) are attracted by the belief that if their first choice does not win, their vote will be given to their second choice; if their second choice does not win, their vote will be given to their third choice, etc. This sounds perfect, but it is not true for every voter with IRV. If someone voted for a strong candidate, and their 2nd and 3rd choices are eliminated before their first choice is eliminated, IRV gives their vote to their 4th choice candidate, not their 2nd choice. Condorcet voting takes all rankings into account simultaneously, but at the expense of violating the 'later-no-harm' criterion and the 'later-no-help' criterion. With IRV, indicating a second choice will never affect your first choice. With Condorcet voting, it is possible that indicating a second choice will cause your first choice to lose.



Plurality voting is simple, and theoretically provides incentives for voters to compromise for centrist candidates rather than throw away their votes on candidates who can't win. Opponents to plurality voting point out that voters often vote for the lesser of evils because they heard on the news that those two are the only two with a chance of winning, not necessarily because those two are the two natural compromises. This gives the media significant election powers. And if voters do compromise according to the media, the post election counts will prove the media right for next time. Condorcet runs each candidate against the other head to head, so that voters elect the candidate who would win the most sincere runoffs, instead of the one they thought they had to vote for.



There are circumstances, as in the examples above, when both instant-runoff voting and the 'first-past-the-post' plurality system will fail to pick the Condorcet winner. In cases where there is a Condorcet Winner, and where IRV does not choose it, a majority would by definition prefer the Condorcet Winner to the IRV winner. Proponents of the Condorcet criterion see it as a principal issue in selecting an electoral system. They see the Condorcet criterion as a natural extension of majority rule. Condorcet methods tend to encourage the selection of centrist candidates who appeal to the median voter. Here is an example that is designed to support IRV at the expense of Condorcet:



499 voters 3 voters 498 voters

1. A             1. B         1. C

2. B             2. C         2. B

3. C             3. A         3. A

B is preferred by a 501–499 majority to A, and by a 502–498 majority to C. So, according to the Condorcet criterion, B should win, despite the fact that very few voters rank B in first place. By contrast, IRV elects C and plurality elects A. The goal of a ranked voting system is for voters to be able to vote sincerely and trust the system to protect their intent. Plurality voting forces voters to do all their tactics before they vote, so that the system does not need to figure out their intent.



The significance of this scenario, of two parties with strong support, and the one with weak support being the Condorcet winner, may be misleading, though, as it is a common mode in plurality voting systems (see Duverger's law), but much less likely to occur in Condorcet or IRV elections, which unlike Plurality voting, punish candidates who alienate a significant block of voters.



Here is an example that is designed to support Condorcet at the expense of IRV:



33 voters     16 voters 16 voters 35 voters

1. A             1. B             1. B             1. C

2. B             2. A             2. C             2. B

3. C             3. C             3. A             3. A

B would win against either A or C by more than a 65–35 margin in a one-on-one election, but IRV eliminates B first, leaving a contest between the more "polar" candidates, A and C. Proponents of plurality voting state that their system is simpler than any other and more easily understood.



All three systems are susceptible to tactical voting, but the types of tactics used and the frequency of strategic incentive differ in each method.

[greenchristian]

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

AV and STV both incorporate tactical voting into the system without penalising the party/candidate you would most want to win in an idea world. A list system with either d'Hondt or Sante-Lague massively reduces the point of tactical voting. AMS reduces constituency tactical voting to be about keeping a particular candidate out, rather than a particular party out (as long as the list seats are at least 50% of the whole).

Jun 4, 2018 11:40:06 GMT islington said:

My problem with AV, apart from the fact that it was decisively rejected back in 2011, is that assuming no candidate gets 50%, the candidate that avoids coming last in any of the successive rounds of voting is logically certain to win. In other words, it supports the candidate that is most successful in picking up eliminated rivals' second, third or fourth preferences. This is likely to be the candidate to whom fewest people object, rather than the one that has been most successful  in mobilizing positive support.

That only applies if the ballot fully exhausts, though. And still leads to the candidate with the most first preferences winning more often than not. They do, after all, need to attract significantly fewer lower preferences in order to win than any of the other candidates.

But in national elections, where you actually want a degree of polarization (provided it doesn't get out of hand) because it presents voters with a clear choice, I prefer FPTP.

I still don't see why reducing voters' choices to just two parties (your apparent definition of "a clear choice") is in any way desirable.

[therealriga]

The other problem, of course, is that in recent elections, FPTP in the UK has no longer done "wot it sez on the tin" i.e. delivering strong stable single party government. Two of the last three general elections have failed to deliver a majority government and, in the other, the majority was so small that the PM unwisely decided to try to get a bigger majority. With the SNP apparently bedded down fairly well in Scotland, Labour's chances of winning outright significantly decrease and coalitions or minority governments become more likely.

[IceAgeComing]

Jun 3, 2018 21:56:16 GMT therealriga said:

Jun 3, 2018 20:54:24 GMT Izzyeviel said:

What system do you reckon would end the scourge of tactical voting that we see under FPTP? I for one quite like the two round French system, but I can understand why people would think otherwise.

AV. No need to vote tactically or have second rounds which add to costs and delay the result. Two-round systems also involve an element of tactical voting.

You get tactical voting with AV though; its just more complex to do and is only really possible in seats where at least three parties are competitive.  I'd argue that its actually a much worse form of tactical voting though in that at times the best tactical thing to do is actually to not give your first preference to your preferred candidate but instead vote for an opposition party to try and eliminate one of the other opposition parties earlier in the count which will have much friendlier preferences for your party.

Its a little complicated to explain so I'll give an example - there are other examples in Australia however this is perhaps the easiest example to use: the seat of Melbourne Ports in the 2016 Federal Election.  Traditionally a safe Labor seat (one that they've held since 1906) a mixture of boundary and demographic changes have made it a lot more marginal and by 2016 it was basically a three-way marginal between the ALP; the Liberals and the Green Party.  On first preferences the Liberals led with 41.9%; the ALP MP for the seat got 27.0%; the Greens got 23.8% and the rest were a collection of other parties and independents who generally were transfer friendly for the Greens or Labor.  After a full transfer of preferences the overall result was that the Labor Party held the seat with 51.4%; with the Liberals on 48.6% because the Greens; having finished third; had their preferences examined and like in pretty much every Australian election 90% of them went to Labor to push them into the lead.  Because of the closeness of the overall result and the gap between second and third and the fact that generally transfers from Labor to the Greens generally aren't quite that friendly and the... unique relationship between the incumbent MP and the Greens which resulted in him asking ALP voters to preference the Greens last (and most importantly behind the Liberals) and although lots of voters wouldn't have followed that instruction lots do and that would have meant that in a theoretical situation where the Greens ended up in second then the Liberals probably would have won the seat, although it may have been close.  Therefore, the best thing tactically it would have been for some Liberal supporters to try and do is vote 1. Green 2. Liberal: the idea being to try and push the Greens ahead of the ALP so that you eliminate Labor and then benefit from those preferences and get more votes back than you lost in first preferences.  If you don't quite manage to get them ahead then it doesn't matter; your vote will transfer to the Liberals and nothing changes.  You could have too many voters doing it in which case you've managed to elect the wrong candidate but that's the biggest difference with this form of tactical voting: its not something that everyone does but only a small few.

This scenario is probably not close enough for it to be effective or easy to do (I picked it because the others generally involve either Independents; a huge amount of votes with parties that aren't involved with the final finish or have four parties so they get very confusing which this is relatively simple) since you need to work out how many people you ask to do this (and it needs to be people who know what they are doing; this isn't like normal tactical voting where you ask everyone to do it) and in the above there's a risk that you could get too many people to vote tactically then you've just gifted the Greens a seat because you miscalculated the preference flow.  The key thing in three way AV contests is that it is effectively the voters of the party that finishes third that decides who wins and if you can perhaps change the order in which candidates are elected to help your party then tactically the best thing to do is to not vote for your favoured party.

Realistically the only voting systems where you don't have any tactical voting is something like the Dutch system - Open List PR with no threshold on a national basis meaning that every party that gets more than 0.67% of the vote gets a seat - and that probably isn't a voting system that anyone here would hold up as being a particularly good one.  However the sort of tactical voting you get with FPTP or forms of PR with larger thresholds - where supporters of parties who have no real chance vote tactically for the least worst realistic option - is better than the above scenario where you can have the best thing to do is to not vote for the party that you like the most.

[greenchristian]

Jun 4, 2018 23:23:59 GMT IceAgeComing said:

Jun 3, 2018 21:56:16 GMT therealriga said:

AV. No need to vote tactically or have second rounds which add to costs and delay the result. Two-round systems also involve an element of tactical voting.

You get tactical voting with AV though; its just more complex to do and is only really possible in seats where at least three parties are competitive.  I'd argue that its actually a much worse form of tactical voting though in that at times the best tactical thing to do is actually to not give your first preference to your preferred candidate but instead vote for an opposition party to try and eliminate one of the other opposition parties earlier in the count which will have much friendlier preferences for your party.

Its a little complicated to explain

The fact that it's both complex to do and complicated to explain means that it's going to be extremely rare in practice. And tactical voting needs to be done on a decent scale to have any actual effect.

[islington]

Thanks to all for comments and feedback. Just to pick up a few points -

I'm interested in John Hemming's argument that single-party Government empowers the civil service, but I'm not persuaded. I feel that what empowers the civil service is weak, indecisive government, which is surely likelier when multiple parties are involved. Governments with a clear sense of purpose and a good Parliamentary majority don't seem to have any difficulty in bending the civil service to their will (I'm thinking of Attlee and Thatcher, and to a certain extent Blair).

And while therealriga is quite right to point out that FPTP has failed to deliver anyone an outright majority in two of the last three elections, I'd also point out that at the 2017 election the two main parties between them secured over 82% of the vote and 89% of the seats, proportions that haven't been seen since the glory days of two-party politics from 1945 to 1970. If this is maintained - and it might not be - then I'd expect outright majorities to be the norm in future.

Finally, I set out in this thread to argue the positive case for FPTP as opposed to pointing out the defects of all other systems. But I can't agree with greenchristian's statement that electoral manipulation will be rare and difficult under AV. I thank IceAgeComing for the Australian example, and I'd like to adapt it to British circumstances to illustrate what I mean.

Consider an hypothetical constituency in which, if everyone voted his or her true preference without any tactics, the outcome would be: Conservative 43%, LibDem 29%, Labour 28%. For clarity I'm assuming only three candidates, but I think this is a reasonable simplification given that other vote shares would likely be small.

If the election is conducted under FPTP, the result is an easy Tory win unless a sufficient number of Labour voters choose to switch to the Lib Dem candidate so as to beat the Tory (and I reiterate that in my view it is perfectly reasonable for electors to choose to use their votes in this way).

If the election is under AV, it is reasonable to assume that second preferences of the 28% that voted Labour will split overwhelmingly to the Lib Dems when Labour is eliminated. Let's say the split is 27-1, so the Lib Dem takes the seat 56-44.

But now, suppose the first-preference votes are split: Con 43, Lab 29, LD 28. All that has happened is that the Labour vote is slightly up, and the Lib Dem slightly down, so that they swap places. This is a trivial change from the previous outcome, and under FPTP it duly makes no effective difference and the Tories easily win unless the anti-Tory vote coalesces.

But under AV, it can change the outcome radically. Even if we assume that the second preferences of Lib Dem voters split heavily for Labour, let's say 18-10, what we now have is a Tory win 53-47. So what we have is an election decided not by who comes first but by who comes second, even if the margin between second and third is only a handful of votes. This hardly seems a sensible way of deciding an election, and bear in mind that tactical voting has not yet been a factor.

Now let's introduce it into the equation. Suppose I am a committed Tory supporter in this constituency. I correctly anticipate, as election day approaches, that my candidate is likely to win comfortably on first preferences but that the battle for second will be very close. I also realize that, given the way second-preferences are likely to split, it is much more beneficial to my side if Labour comes second rather than the Lib Dems. In this situation, I decide to give Labour my first preference and I explain my reasoning to all my Tory-supporting friends and associates and urge them to hold their noses and do the same. When the votes are counted, the shares are Tory 41, Lab 30, LD 29. So Labour has indeed edged the Lib Dems into third, perhaps by only a few dozen votes (but a single vote would be enough), the LD votes break 18-11 and the Tories duly take the seat.

And so it is that tactical voting, on a very modest scale, can have a decisive effect.

[greenchristian]

Jun 5, 2018 12:35:29 GMT islington said:

Now let's introduce it into the equation. Suppose I am a committed Tory supporter in this constituency. I correctly anticipate, as election day approaches, that my candidate is likely to win comfortably on first preferences but that the battle for second will be very close. I also realize that, given the way second-preferences are likely to split, it is much more beneficial to my side if Labour comes second rather than the Lib Dems. In this situation, I decide to give Labour my first preference and I explain my reasoning to all my Tory-supporting friends and associates and urge them to hold their noses and do the same. When the votes are counted, the shares are Tory 41, Lab 30, LD 29. So Labour has indeed edged the Lib Dems into third, perhaps by only a few dozen votes (but a single vote would be enough), the LD votes break 18-11 and the Tories duly take the seat.

And so it is that tactical voting, on a very modest scale, can have a decisive effect.

The thing is that this kind of reasoning is something that is only going to occur to the very small proportion of the population who think like political activists. Even then it requires much more knowledge of how other people are going to vote in order to pull it off than does tactical voting in FPTP. And it still requires a lot of work to pull it off. In your example, assuming a fairly typical GE turnout you've managed to swing something in the region of 1000 votes in order to pull off this upset. In reality almost nobody has that many friends and acquaintances in real life. Let alone ones who all live in the same constituency and vote the same way.

Also you've only managed the upset because (a) the numbers were just close enough to pull off the upset (b) without your upset the numbers were unchanged from last time, despite this being a seat which is close enough for a thousand votes to make a difference - and so one where you would expect active campaigns (c) no other people/groups were organising something that would have changed the outcome to prevent you having an impact.

In other words, whilst it is theoretically possible to pull off a tactical voting upset under AV it is incredibly unlikely to happen in practice. And also requires that the tactical voting not be on too large a scale - if tactical voting of the kind you advocated here had switched the first preferences to Tory 38 Lab 33 LD 29 then the same Lib Dem split would have led to a Labour victory, rather than a Tory or Lib Dem one. Under FPTP, tactical voting can only cause the party you dislike the most to win if your information is badly wrong (e.g. Labour supporters tactically voting Lib Dem in a seat which is actually a Lab-Con marginal). Furthermore, FPTP as a system actively rewards parties and candidates who put out effective tactical voting messages. The same cannot be said of AV.