A tactical voting movement for the upcoming UK June 8th election, initially started on Twitter, now has it’s own mobile website to check local constituencies.
If you’ve been keeping up with the snap election happening on June 8th, you’ll be aware that the Tories are currently expected to win by a landslide. The election, which was passed by MPs on April 19th, could see the party gaining a parliamentary majority not seen since the end of World War 2.
While there’s plenty of people who support Theresa May and her continued ‘Hard Brexit’ approach, there seems to be a growing number who are determined to overthrow her plans. Beating her outright would be pretty difficult, so crafty Twitter user Becky S came up with a spreadsheet to help out with tactical voting. It’s now been shared over 1000 times and has it’s own mobile website, tactical2017.com, which enables users to choose their constituency and see which party has the best chance of beating the tories.
Do you like keeping out the Tories? Do you like spreadsheets? Then this is for you https://t.co/ALyZPM0idQ #GeneralElection Lib Dems Labour
‘ Becky S ? (@chickabiddybex) April 18, 2017
Becky, 28, from West Yorkshire, cites Barack Obama as inspiration and told indy100:
“The theory is easy. Find a Tory swing seat and get people to vote for whoever is most likely to beat them. And for some constituencies it was genuinely that simple. For others, the Tory safe seats, it isn’t clear at this time who the best competitor is. Most of the data is based on previous election results in 2015, 2010 and by-elections.
The most difficult to call areas I have tried to indicate that people will have to pick those for themselves. I’ve also tried to indicate which seats are safe ”non-Tory’ so people can make up their own minds on those”.
It’s an interesting idea built on good intentions, though it’s important to realise that the 2017 election is a whole different scenario to 2015. With Brexit and the NHS now key issues, the swing of the votes could be very different this year.
Could it happen? Who knows, but it’s worth noting what Jeremy Corbyn said recently at an election rally. “People gave me a 200/1 chance, so anything can happen”.