Tactical Voting in Great Britain in 1983 and 1987: An Alternative Approach

In a recent Note in this Journal (19 (1989), 126–36), Galbraith and Rae have explored the extent of tactical voting at the 1987 general election in Great Britain. This Note extends and complements their analysis, using estimates of the flow-of-the-vote matrix for each constituency derived from the use of entropy-maximizing procedures. It provides substantial evidence of inter-election shifts in voting behaviour that are consistent with hypothesized patterns of tactical voting, and suggests that the volume of tactical voting in 1983 and 1987 was also related to the intensity of campaign activity in a constituency.