Do Self-Identified Tactical Voters Actually Vote Tactically? Evidence from the 2010 British Election

The typical conception of tactical voting in the political science literature suggests that tactical voters vote for a party other than the one they prefer most. Previous research in the British Journal of Political Science on the measurement of tactical voting in Britain has assumed that voters who say they have voted tactically have actually behaved as the political science conception suggests. This Article tests that assumption. I find that one-half of voters who self-identify tactical motivations do not fit the political science definition of tactical voting. The result indicates that scholars have dramatically overestimated the level of tactical voting (at least as political scientists define it) in Britain and, more importantly, that the methodological foundations of existing tactical voting research are invalid.