Strategic voting in the 2015 general election:why Liberal Democrats didn’t vote for their own party

When do people not vote for their preferred party? Isaac Hale finds that in 2015, Liberal Democrat supporters abandoned the party when they thought it had no chance of winning a seat and a tactical vote could affect the outcome in their constituencies. This shows how in a first-past-the-post electoral system smaller parties can be caught in a vicious cycle of low expectations and strategic voting by their supporters.