Forgive the self-indulgence, but I briefly want to consider a couple of Hertfordshire parliamentary constituencies. For biographical reasons, it is an interest of mine but it also reveals a difficulty the Conservative Party faces.
The constituency of Hitchin & Harpenden was formed in 1997. Even in that dreadful year for the Tories, it returned a Conservative MP with a majority of 6,671. A prosperous commuter-belt seat, the Tory majority rose here, eventually exceeding 20,000 in 2015, but by 2019 the majority had fallen to 6,895, with the Liberal Democrats in a strong second place.
And that was that for the constituency of Hitchin & Harpenden. The two towns were split up by the Boundary Commission. Hitchin formed its own constituency, taking in some additional villages in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. Harpenden became the largest town in the new constituency of Harpenden & Berkhamsted, taking in parts of the old Hemel Hempstead and south-west Hertfordshire constituencies.
Politically, the two new constituencies had much in common. Traditionally Conservative, the Liberal Democrats had a long-established presence in local government and had emerged as the clear challenger in the Hitchin & Harpenden seat. But in the other predecessor seats, Labour was often in second place.
The Tories’ best chance of holding the two new seats would have been for the opposition vote to split equally between Labour and the Liberal Democrats among uncertainty as to who the main challenger would be. A private poll of the Harpenden & Berkhamsted seat, taken a few months before the general election was called, showed Labour ahead. In Hitchin, there was some Tory confidence that the Liberal Democrat vote would not be squeezed.
As it turned out, these hopes turned out to be false. The Lib Dems threw everything they had at Harpenden & Berkhamsted, Labour at Hitchin. In parts of the country usually ignored in national election campaigns, these Hertfordshire seats were bombarded with literature and leadership visits. Activists were directed to where they could make a difference. The result was that in Hitchin, Labour won 43.4 per cent of the vote, the Liberal Democrats just 9.4 per cent. In Harpenden & Berkhamsted, the positions were reversed – the Liberal Democrats won 50.2 per cent, Labour just 7.5 per cent. It was a triumph of anti-Tory tactical voting.
This is merely one example but it should cause the Conservatives great concern. It has been to the Tories’ structural advantage that the centre-left has usually been divided while the centre right has been unified, but now the reverse appears true. On the surface, the national vote shares for both Labour (34 per cent) and the Liberal Democrats (12 per cent) were not particularly impressive but that is not what matters. Who really cares if the Liberal Democrat vote in Hitchin collapsed, as did the Labour vote in Harpenden? Electors chose to vote for the candidate best placed to defeat the Tory.
There are broadly two explanations for this. First, it is possible that tactical voting has become more widespread because the necessary information to facilitate it has become easier to access and disseminate. The frequency of MRP polling – which, unlike traditional polling, gives results on an individual seat basis – makes it very straightforward for a voter to assess their options. Local newspapers are nothing like the force they once were, but social media allows targeted campaigning and recommendations to be passed on by friends and family.
If anything, one might expect this trend to continue. The 2024 general election was fought on new constituency boundaries when it can be harder to assess who the main challengers will be. Next time, the election will be fought on the same boundaries, with an incumbent non-Tory MP as the obvious tactical choice more often than not.
The second explanation for the rise of tactical voting is that the election was a referendum on the Tory Party. The public was not particularly fussy as to which party they supported as long as it was part of the “Not The Tory Party Party”, whether that be Labour, Liberal Democrat, or Green. They were sufficiently motivated to find out who could damage the Tories the most and voted – with ruthless efficiency – accordingly.
This pattern of behaviour should not be ignored as the Conservatives debate how to respond to their general election defeat.
In simple terms, the choice is to run a core vote strategy designed to consolidate the support of right-wing voters or to win over voters in the centre ground. Some of us will argue that there are more votes in the centre and that, in most cases, these voters count double (for every vote gained, it is one off your opponent’s tally as well as one to your own). A move to the right often results in over-promising and undermining claims of competence, as well as increasing dependence on older voters who might not be around in five years’ time (an estimated one in six Tory supporters fall into this camp). But there is another argument against a move to the right. The more you do so, the more you motivate your opponents not just to vote but to vote as effectively as possible to stop you.
There is a temptation for the Tories to pursue a 35 per cent strategy by “uniting the right”. If this involves, however, antagonising the 65 per cent, the trend towards greater anti-Tory tactical voting will continue. Not only do the Tories need to win over more supporters, they need to make those who do not support them less determined to stop them.
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