How tactically does your municipality vote? Or is tactical voting even possible?

With municipal and regional elections approaching, or months away, now may be a good time to start fine-tuning your voting strategy. You need time to get your tactics right in the voting booth. On the other hand, even choosing this line at the ballot box may be most effective by voting just before they close, in response to the latest forecast. Tactical voting is not, for me at least, as straightforward a calculation as is often portrayed.

Many people voting in Finland or following current affairs in Finland might think that tactical voting became common among the mainstream around the time of the 2023 parliamentary elections and that it is a fairly simple voting method. However, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny, at least not from the following four perspectives.

First, similar tactics have been used in Finland for a long time, for example in the 1937 presidential elections. Then, the election of Kyösti Kallio as President was preceded by the Social Democrats' successful tactics to prevent the re-election of the incumbent President P. E. Svinhufvud. In the first round, the SDP electors voted for their own candidate, K. J. Ståhlberg of the Progress Party, instead of Väinö Tanner, in accordance with an agreement with the Union of Peasants. The agreement stipulated that if Ståhlberg was not elected, the same electors promised to transfer their support in the second round to Kallio of the League of Peasants, who was eventually elected President of the Republic. So tactical voting has been part of Finnish politics for a long time. Thus, the votes allegedly lost by the Greens in the 2023 Parliamentary elections through tactics were not a sign of a new phenomenon.

Second, the number of tactical voters is limited (according to Helsingin Sanomat, about one in five voters did so in the first round of the 2023 Finnish presidential election), and values also have a significant impact on this calculated choice. Studies have shown that tactical voters do not make their decisions in a vacuum of values, but choose, for example, between several preferred parties. An exception to this may be the so-called "double voters". In the US, the two-party system ensures that only candidates from two parties have a realistic chance of success, even if there are candidates from outside the Democratic and Republican parties. In the US, there were double winners, particularly in the 2020 and possibly this year's 2024 presidential election. In these elections, double haters find both main candidates distasteful and vote for the more tolerable candidate to reject the other. So I would not call tactical voting a very simple or purely rational action.

Third, tactical voting takes many different forms, so lumping all these cases under one general concept is too generic and imprecise for a useful analysis. This raises the question of what does not count as tactical voting. Can a voter vote for a candidate entirely without any, even subconscious, tactical voting? Drawing a line between 'normal' and tactical voting is therefore not straightforward either.

Finally, achieving the desired result through calculated voting behaviour requires an in-depth study of elections, which not everyone has the time or expertise to do. However, even this does not guarantee the desired outcome.

However, this critical reflection does not mean that tactical voting is only a phenomenon that challenges or questions democratic principles. On the contrary, it can also expand the notion of the weight of a single vote, showing that every vote counts. After all, tactical voting is also a form of voting that allows voters the freedom to influence the way they want. Seen from this perspective, it can in fact embody the principles of a functioning democracy. It is not, however, a very simple or new phenomenon.

With reference to the complexity of the method noted above, those considering tactical voting in local and regional elections should start developing their strategy in the coming weeks. On the other hand, it will soon be a matter of time before you are busy running around in Excel with the variables in the formula, as there are a whole host of them - and only eight months to go until election day.

It would be great if it were the candidate of your own municipality, regardless of party, who could decide on important issues - or just be a member of this or that party!

Erdal Fere

The author is an analyst and influencing expert at Blic.