If you are a listener to the News Agents podcast (and judging from our inbox, there are many on the Isle of Wight), you may have heard Sally (Perry), editor of OnTheWight, pose a question to the team on last Friday’s Q&A episode.
The situation arose because there’s conflict in the advice for those who don’t want a Conservative MP representing them in East Wight (EW) – Tactical voting sites are mostly saying vote Labour. The East Wight Primary (where 879 EW constituents voted securely), selected the Green candidate.
Asking for EW voters
To try and get an informed answer to the questions from the many people who have been in contact with OnTheWight, struggling with this conflicting advice – we thought we’d refer to a high authority – and we figured, you can’t get much higher in authority than the News Agent presenters.
The core of Sally’s questions (read in full below) was – Who is closer to understanding the thinking and voting intentions of Islanders – nationally-based statistical models, or a local grass-roots campaign, using a secure voting method that only let people registered to vote in East Wight.
Missed the point of the question?
We’re big fans of the News Agents, but sadly, on this occasion, they seem to have missed the point of the question.
Also, although we were asking the question on behalf of residents, it was incorrectly suggested that we might be asking for our own personal reasons. That was clearly not the case.
It was great to hear that John Sopel got his big break at BBC Radio Solent reporting about a man down a hole on the Island, but as far as helping answer the question – not so much. They just seemed to repeat the view of the tactical voting sites, without exploring the methods, findings, or localness of the East Wight Primary.
Big difference in poll size
The Tactical voting sites base their predictions on the findings of polling companies, which, as we understand it, contact a relatively small sample size of Islanders – around 35 people in a constituency – to get their voting intention, then use statistical analysis to calculate what they think the wider voting intentions will be.
The EW Primary vote was very strict, with lots of manual checking, to ensure that only East Wight residents, who were confirmed to be on the electoral roll, were able to directly vote on their choice – and 879 of them did.
Summary
In short – we tried to help readers who have this dilemma, but despite best efforts, we weren’t able to secure a definitive answer.
Get out and vote
Remember – the important thing is, get out and use your vote, whichever of the six candidates (read the details) you vote for.
Listen again
If you want to listen to the podcast episode, you can by visiting the Global Player. Our question was about 12 minutes in.
The full question
Sally’s question was:
“There is an historic change this election, with the Isle of Wight moving from one constituency to two, splitting into East and West.
“My husband and I run a news publication here and have readers ask us daily about tactical voting as they want to avoid the return of a Conservative MP.
“The national tactical voting sites say Labour will take the seat, but locally, a primary has been running in East Wight, which found the Green Party candidate to be the ‘People’s Champion’, as well as them winning exit polls from several hustings.
“Which advice should they be following? The polling companies or the East Wight Primary?”
Tactical voting sites
Below are the latest predictions (as of time of publishing) of the tactical voting sites. The links take you to the relevant websites.
