So, we've got a general election and everyone

is scrambling around looking at tactical voting.

I find it very confusing.

Personally, not convinced that it works.

Right, and I can see where you're

coming from because we've got different websites,

different sources making different recommendations.

So we, today, are going to talk about which of these you

can maybe have more faith in, which less.

Does it work at all?

We're going to be your tactical voting guides.

So, I've been getting loads of text messages from friends,

or even colleagues have been asking me who to vote for.

I feel like I have so much power that I shouldn't have.

And a lot of them, in fact all of them,

live in marginal constituencies and what they've been doing

is looking at 2017 results but then

hearing different, conflicting answers from these websites.

So we really dug into this.

Now, why now?

Why is tactical voting happening now?

It's because the two major parties -

Labour and the Conservatives - haven't really been dominating

the polls as much as they used to.

Now, we've looked at polling data in the last two years

but really we could go back quite a bit more in history

and what we would see - let's say this is like,

50 per cent of the vote - is that the Conservatives

have been jostling for the top position for a while.

More or less, this is what's been happening.

We have the Conservatives at 42 per cent in the most recent

poll of polls and Labour are at 29 per cent.

The Lib Dems have sort of re-emerged from obscurity

and are now at 14 per cent.

The Green party is also.

.... is, yeah, the Brexit party, and they have...

They're on six.

...gone up to 6 per cent, and they had some big results

in the European elections in May.

So, let's put the SNP in there.

Apologies to the SNP.

I think they're around about four, aren't they?

So just at that.

This is a political panorama.

It's all split, so it's no surprise

that people are so confused.

Right, because I guess back when we had a two-party system

and it was fairly stable you could just

look at the last result and say, oh, it

will probably be something like that.

Whereas, now, if we've got areas where the Lib Dems have gone up

and Labour have gone down, you could actually have a situation

where...

let's say you were a Remainer and your strategy is

to minimise the chance of the Tories winning in your seat.

Obviously what you want to do is vote

for the party that is closest behind the Tories in your seat.

Now, that may have been Labour last time,

but if they've gone down a bit and the Lib Dems have gone up,

it may now be the Lib Dems.

And so, yes, as you say the issue is,

voters who are trying to vote tactically just

don't know where their vote should go.

So, luckily for them there are loads of websites

advising them, right?

There are.

So let's see if I can just grab another sheet.

Another thing that's confusing is their names,

because they all sound the same.

Whack that one over there.

So, we have tactical.vote, tacticalvote.co.uk -

I'll do a different colour and this one - tactical-vote.co.uk,

getvoting.org, and finally, on the Remain side,

remainunited.org.

Is this just a Remainy thing?

Tactical voting?

Or Brexiteers do it too, surely, right?

Right.

So you could be confused for thinking

this is only Remainers, but we did

find one pro, sort of pro-Brexit tactical voting site, which

is called oneuk.org.

So, there's a lot going off.

I found that one quite amusing because the results were

something like 360 seats for the Conservatives, 160 for Brexit,

then 60 for Ukip, but then one Independent, one Labour.

It was something like that.

It was very crazy.

I mean, if everyone follows their advice then

it's plausible, perhaps.

Or is it?

That's the thing, I guess this is the point.

These are different sites, all sorts

of different numbers going on.

So it's hard to know.

It's hard to know where to look and which you should

trust more or less than others.

I'm still very sceptical about this because I put in...

I tried to use one... because my friend was asking me and I

thought, well, let's try this.

And it gave me completely contradictory results

depending on which website I was using,

and also, when I checked with the 2017

results of her constituency, it just seemed like the result

that it was giving me made no sense.

Yeah, and this is the point.

Some people have now made a, sort of,

meta-tactical voting sites, which

collates all of the different recommendations

and they find there are well over 100, just

on the Remain side, where different sites give

different recommendations.

So, shall we take a look at one?

Let's look at one.

Let's look at Finchley, which we thought

was particularly interesting, right?

Yeah.

Finchley and Golders Green.

This is in London and there's a couple of interesting things

about this place.

One is a relatively large Jewish population and, I think,

it's well known that Labour has had some problems there with

the accusations of anti-Semitism.

And then we have a former Labour MP, Luciana Berger.

Whose now running for the Lib Dems.

Whose now running for the Lib Dems, and is a Jewish MP

and was born in London.

So, you'd think, maybe Lib Dems have a chance here.

You would, but...

But if you check the 2017 results, what would you see?

So, let's have a look at this.

Do you want to slap 2017 somewhere

and I'll put them next to that.

Awesome.

So, that's the general election.

Yeah.

2017.

These blocks, we're going to say that each of these big ones

is 10 per cent of the vote and the little ones are 5 per cent.

So what we're looking at there is 2017 general election

result, Finchley and Golders Green,

where the Conservatives got about 47 per cent of the vote.

Labour would just be under 43 per cent.

It's clearly a hugely marginal constituency.

Marginal constituency, but very much a two-party race,

and the Lib Dems only got 6.6 per cent.

So anyone looking at those numbers would, of course,

think, okay, if I want to prevent the government's Brexit

deal going through then I've got to vote Labour.

But let's see what these different sites say.

So, if we were to look at the remainunited.org site,

this is associated with...

That's this one?

Gina Miller's organisation.

You get something a little bit different.

The numbers I'm going to show you

here are what they think voting intentions currently are

in Finchley and Golders Green.

So this is based on polling?

Yeah, they've done a big poll of about 6,000 people

across the country and used to make projections

for every seat, and they reckon the Conservatives are still

ahead, but on 42 per cent, down from 47 per cent.

They reckon Labour are 29 per cent and the Lib Dems are on 28

per cent.

So, essentially neck and neck.

And, we're talking about a gap there

of 13 per cent between the top two,

which, if these two coalesced, could be overturnable.

So the question is, 29 per cent, 28 per cent,

who do you vote for?

Then we look at getvoting.org.

This is the site in association with Best for Britain

and they go even further.

So in that situation we've got the Conservatives on 40 -

on 36 per cent, sorry.

The Lib Dems on 26 per cent and Labour on 25 per cent.

What method is that based on?

That's similar to remainunited but an even larger poll.

They polled 46,000 people, which meant they had enough to see

what...

That's 46,000 across the country?

Across the country.

Not just in that constituency?

Not just in that constituency, no.

That would be crazy.

But, amazing.

That would be the whole.

Whole lot.

So two methods here which do a big poll,

these were carried out more recently.

Sort of, September, October, November time.

So much more up to date than 2017 and they have essentially

Labour and Lib Dems neck and neck.

And that's not all.

We can then look at the pollster Survation and Deltapoll,

and each of these have been doing individual polls

in the local area.

So looking at this, I'm still very confused.

If I had a friend in that constituency,

obviously that's not where I live, but I wouldn't know...

I wouldn't know what to advise.

Right.

And if we just add in the most recent of all of those polls,

which is the Deltapoll one , I'll just show you how then

the picture may be changed even more.

They have Conservatives on 46 per cent - this is Deltapoll -

they've got the Lib Dems 32 per cent and Labour on 19 per cent.

Ah.

That's a bit more clear cut, I suppose.

A little bit more clear cut.

And then, so they would now be saying this very much,

if you want to stop the Tories getting into this seat

you would vote Lib Dem.

So, yeah.

Clear as mud.

And if we look at where these are coming from.

So, tactical.vote and tacticalvote.co.uk are basing

their recommendations mainly on 2017,

so tacticalvote in Finchley would tell you to vote Labour.

Remainunited and getvoting.org would

both tell you to vote Lib Dem.

So it's really not clear.

And in the end you might not be voting with your conscience.

You just had this one thing in mind

and you're being pulled in different directions.

Which is the result that you want?

But also, you've got to be thinking

- it's almost like game theory - is everyone else going

to be tactically voting as well and whose advice

are they going to follow?

And I find that even more confusing

because we don't actually know how many people are

looking at tactical voting?

According to one poll it's going to be around 60 per cent

and another poll found just 6 per cent,

and obviously they phrased the question differently so

that made a huge impact.

But on top of that, there have been studies that show that,

actually, tactical voting in 10 per cent of cases, I think,

can be very counterproductive.

It can, it can sort of split the vote entirely.

Exactly, yeah.

Because if you think about this case,

if one person is going to tactical.vote just

because maybe that's their top result on Google,

and the other goes to one of the other sites,

then you've got two people who both think

they're voting to prevent the Tories getting a majority,