UK.GENERAL ELECTION 2019

The UK.GENERAL ELECTION 2019: What the voters are saying.

As the UK goes to the polls in what is dubbed the “Brexit election,” some Remain voters are going the extra mile to make sure their vote has the maximum impact. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to swap their vote with someone from a different constituency, switching allegiances to unseat an undesirable candidate.

‘Vote swaps’ are particularly common in marginal constituencies, where only a small number of votes are required to swing the overall percentage in favor of a different party. Tactical voting – when voters pick a party or candidate other than their first choice in order to reduce the margin of the other most prominent candidate – is by no means uncommon, with a poll by BMG showing that one in four people plan to vote tactically. However, vote swaps are a newer phenomenon and have been propelled into the limelight by an increasingly loud anti-Brexit discourse.

“This was a direct response to people on the street coming up to us and talking about the issue,” said Pamela Armstrong, a committee member for the collective ‘Cheltenham for Europe,’ who founded a Facebook group for vote swaps along with her friend Nikki Robson. “At first, we thought it would just be about linking our own [local] constituencies and we were a little surprised, when we went life, to get requests from all over the United Kingdom. I even had one from Antarctica which was a huge surprise to us.”

Robson and Armstrong set up the The Facebook group in May 2019 to bring together voters whose the primary concern was remaining in the European Union, and initially, it had 156 supporters. That number has now grown to more than 7,000 members, with up to 50,000 engagements per month and a month-by-month reach of two million. Whilst Robson handled the business end of the process, matching voters and supporting them through the swaps, Armstrong handled publicity, advertising the group on Twitter.

Tactical voting is when someone backs a candidate they wouldn't normally support, to stop someone else winning.

This often occurs in a constituency where two parties are in a tight race and candidates from other parties sit far behind.

If a voter believes their candidate sits too far behind in the race to stand a a chance at winning they may choose to vote for their favorite of the two who are in with a chance.

In this general election, voting tactically could help MPs who share voters' views on Brexit win more seats.

A the survey found that of 1,500 voters questioned, 24 percent said they planned to vote tactically to keep out a candidate they dislike, the BBC reported.

That compares with 66 percent who said they would vote for their first preference - regardless of how likely they were to win.