Monday 5 April 2010

On your marks, get set...

Lots of phone calls from various spin doctors wanting to know if I'd be interested in interviewing government ministers and their shadows tomorrow. I'm not usually this popular with the Westminster mafia. Most of them seem to be available from lunchtime.

One aspect of the general election that we've not heard much about so far is the possible impact of internet-organised tactical voting campaigns. The basic idea is that you pair with someone from another political party in another constituency and "swap" your vote. It works on trust (if it works at all) and is of course a negative approach to politics, as its primary purpose is to secure the election of someone you don't like in order to prevent the election of someone you really don't like.

We saw some of this in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 campaigns when it was essentially an anti-Tory tactic, with Labour and Lib Dem supporters joining forces. With better technology, and greater access to the internet, the "vote-swap" strategy is now potentially quite important.

Six months ago the BBC commissioned a ComRes survey of Lib Dem councillors which found they were twice as likely to back Labour than the Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament.

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