As an undecided first-time voter, my choice was between head and heart

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/07/first-time-voter-vote-marginal-seat

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As a student, I was able to register to vote in either my home constituency or the constituency where I live during term time. My home constituency was a Labour safe seat, so I decided to vote in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat marginal seat of Oxford West and Abingdon. Today was my first opportunity to vote in a general election and I wanted my vote to make as much difference as possible. However, as I started to think about the prospective candidates in my area, I soon found that picking a marginal seat was not going to make my decision easy.

I’ve always disagreed with Conservative policies, and their time in government over the past five years has not done anything to change my mind. I wanted to make sure I was voting for a candidate who was going to oppose the cuts the Conservatives have made to public services, as well as someone who was going to be in favour of higher taxes on the rich. In my mind, this left me with three options: the Labour party, the Green party or the National Health Action party (the NHA).

For both the Green party and the NHA, it was apparent that they had no chance to win the seat, with one former Green party candidate choosing to back Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat candidate. The Labour party’s chance looked slightly better but it still seemed like the seat was going to be a two-horse race.

I started to feel like I should vote tactically to stop the Tory incumbent being re-elected. This pushed the Liberal Democrats into the mix of my decision making, as the party best placed to challenge the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats’ time in coalition has been profoundly negative, particularly for students, and many of their policies fail to correspond with my own priorities. Yet, given the popular displeasure with the Liberal Democrats, my vote would be unlikely to help them get back into government. And it might help me get the Conservatives out of government. I had to consider whether it was worth “betraying” my political opinions for the sake of trying to avoid a hypothetical situation later down the line.

Making up my mind became only more complicated as social media became flooded with different opinions and a huge variety of endorsements. Yet in some ways, I enjoyed being undecided, as it allowed me to critically evaluate four candidates. If scrutiny is part of democracy, that can only be a good thing. I was undecided before I entered the polling booth today for one key reason. Our electoral system means that sometimes tactical voting appears to be the best option. I was having to vote with my head, even though I wanted to vote with my heart. I think I managed to find a fair mix between the two.

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