General election 2024
The way we calculate our recommended tactical vote is designed to be open, rules-based and easy to follow. Tactical voting is ultimately about coordination between thousands of voters, which means that it is important not to produce unexpected results. Using the same rules to calculate every seat also helps to avoid any possible bias in the recommendations.
The aim is to find the 'correct' tactical vote for every seat – that is, the party that will either win or come second to the Tories.
1. Look at the result of the most recent general election in the constituency.
2. In seats currently held by a progressive party, recommend a vote for that party.
3. In Tory-held seats, recommend a vote for the second-place party from the previous election.
4. If progressive parties are in both first and second place, we make no recommendation.
Adjustments for boundary changes: We are in the process of adding to these rules to reflect the splitting and combining of some constituencies due to boundary changes. Once this is completed, the method will be documented here.
Sounds simple so far, right? Some seats are a bit more complicated, so we have some rarer rules to handle these special cases.
1. In seats from rule 4 where the Tories are in third place but have a high vote, so a divided opposition could let them 'come through the middle', we recommend voting for the incumbent.
2. Where a seat has been won in a byelection, we recommend a vote for the byelection winner. (However, second-place finishes in byelections are not taken into account.)
3. In seats where the Tories do not stand, we aim to defeat the 'Tory-aligned' party. For example, in Northern Ireland, this means defeating the DUP because they propped up the 2017-19 Tory minority government.
4. We also consider the Reform Party (formerly the Brexit Party) 'Tory-aligned' as above, after their pact with the Tories in 2019. Where they are relevant we also aim to defeat them.
5. In the Speaker's seat we make no recommendation, as mainstream parties do not stand in this seat.
6. Where a seat is contested by an independent candidate who was formerly a sitting MP, we will consider their record of votes in that seat only (not any other seat if they have switched constituencies). The same number of votes will remain attributed to their former party.
Sometimes particular seats are unusual - for example when the numbers are 'too close to call', when prominent politicians stand as independents or where there has been a defection from one party to another. In these seats we may say 'Not Sure'.
We may also switch a recommendation to 'Not Sure' if our recommendation appears incorrect from polling (only if consistently in multiple different polls) or, rarely, to avoid a situation where different tactical voting websites disagree on a seat.
Our bottom line 'golden rule' is that we will not manually change a recommendation to a different recommendation - only from a positive recommendation to 'Not Sure'. This is to protect the site from pressure that can form around particular candidates but turn out to be an incorrect tactical vote.
If you believe we have made a mistake, please contact us at feedback@tactical.vote, but the potential result is not a change to your preferred candidate, only a withdrawal of our current recommendation.
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