The results are in and the post-mortems will begin ...

Interestingly, the mainstream media is concentrating on the apparent collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote at local level and the startling victory of the SNP in Scotland ... but while the 'media narrative' is always fun to watch, what is really happening?

I cannot claim to be any more informed than anyone else, but it seems to me that during the last 30 years or so there has been a build up of 'tactical' voting.  Not merely people who consciously decide that they will vote for someone because their preferred candidate cannot win, but quite large numbers of people of have persuaded themselves (often on the basis of a perception that a particular candidate is closer to their outlook than the other leading candidate) to alter their vote and stick with that alternative as voting for another candidate whose views and outlook may be more closely aligned with their own has no chance of being elected ...

Much of that 'tactical' voting has been added to (not necessarily directly) by the simplicity of some of the messages that have built up over the last 30 years - the claims that Conservatives (usually referred to as 'Tories') are not merely nasty but they are fascist and evil too.  On the other hand, there are many who will simply assert that their opponents are naive and foolish to expect something different and or are stupid too.

Of course I would say that the characterisations are simply wrong ... and that no-one I know personally (of any party) is actually nasty, displays any fascist tendencies or is evil (to any extent at all).  They often agree as to what is wrong but disagree as to how to change things; and the prescriptions can be startlingly different. 

What I wonder is this ... to what extent is the apparent collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote a feature of an unwinding of the tactical vote that has been building up over my adult lifetime?  It is interesting that the vote in Brecon and Radnor for the Labour party has grown a lot (up over 8%) while Kirsty Williams' vote has fallen by something slightly more than that.  I haven't had time to look at the results elsewhere, but I wonder ...