Use Your Vote Wisely, Grasshopper

Make sure you vote today and if you have any sense keep your eyes focussed here, on twitter and on the liveblog. Bear in mind that when you vote, you can do a large number of powerful things to make sure you get your way. STV gives the voter extraordinary power to have their say in the distribution of seats. It is not just asking you who you liked the most, it is asking you who you would least like to see get a seat. This is why anyone voting today should cast their preferences wisely.

The most important thing can often be your preference order down the ballot. Here is a short guide to voting tactically.

Party plumping:

The simplest tactical voting technique, a ballot cast by a pure partisan allied only to one party and with little care for any other option. Make sure you distribute your prefernces in an order that will keep the most number of candidates in the race for the longest – that means calculating who has built up a decent core vote and who might be on the edge. Give the person on the margin your number 1 and work down towards the most popular candidate. That should keep as many of your party’s candidates in the race for as long as possible – allowing the benefit of eliminations and transfers to bring them over the line.

Individual’s only please:

It is a feature of Irish voter behaviour that as many as 40% of Irish voters cast their ballot based on personality. That is why Crowley, McGuinness and Mitchell are so strong at election time. You might have a number of personalities you like (and some you dislike) – STV gives you the power to maximise the return of those you like and marginalise those you dislike.

Order your ballot as follows: give your top preference to your favourite personality (otherwise you aren’t really a personal voter are you?) then you order the remaining people you like in the opposite order to their voter appeal – back the marginal candidate at number 2 and the more popular farther down. Then continue your ballot preferences to include those you have no feeling for and exclude marking the candidates you have a dislike for.

This only works if you exclude a small number at the end – otherwise your ballot stops circulating at the count and you are out of the game. You want to be in the game until the candidate you dislike is involved in a decisive count and your vote goes against them.

Anti-Party votes:

This requires a little more ordering than the personality vote – you order your top preferences according to the party tip above (least- to most- likely vote getters). Then order your ballot to include representatives of the parties other than those you wish to vote against – if there is one you would accept over the other, or even prefer over the other, then make sure to give them your final preference and exclude that party or person you loathe.

That is it, a tactical voting guide – go do your worst.