Vote Lib-Dem, get the Tories

I’ve found this post on What You Can Get Away With rather late, bearing in mind that the General Election took place several months ago, but it may well be interesting reading and a useful reference in a few years’ time.

Like I said, vote Lib Dem, get the Tories.

As I mentioned in a post over at the General Election blog, the BBC’s new election site includes Peter Snow’s Swingometer, which allows you to map swings between any two of the three main parties. Sadly, it doesn’t let you work out the cumulative effects of swing between all three, but for the purposes of this post, we don’t need to. After all, Tom says vote Lib Dem, get Tory not Vote Lib Dem, and if there’s also a corresponding rise in the Conservative vote, you may get a Conservative Government.

Now, you can see where Tom and all the others get their idea that a Lib Dem vote is a wasted one from looking at the swingometer. After all, there are only a few Labour-Lib Dem marginals, but let’s see what Mr Snow, using real facts and figures says is the effect of different swings to the Liberal Democrats from Labour (assuming the Conservative vote remains the same)

On a 5% swing, Labour have 375 seats, the Conservatives have 176, and the Lib Dems have 65. On this swing, Labour would still have a majority of 104, and would actually have the largest share of the vote, though below 40% of the total.

Now, let’s increase it to a 10% swing. Here, Labour and the Tories would be about level-pegging in terms of votes, the Lib Dems would be polling higher than the Alliance ever did (almost as high as the party has achieved in local elections) and about 1 in 4 Labour voters would have defected to the Lib Dems. But they’d still have a majority of 28 in Parliament, holding 337 seats to the Conservatives’ 199 and the Liberal Democrats’ 79.

Surely a 15% swing will deliver the Tory government Tom promises? Um, no. Despite a swing of this size meaning that the Liberal Democrats would receive the most votes, while Labour drop to third place, the position in terms of seats is reversed. Labour lose their majority but still have a plurality of 280 seats, the Tories are up to 230 and the Lib Dems are up to a massive 107.

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