How your tactical vote will impact
ALEX Salmond is facing a ‘scare’ in tomorrow’s election as evidence of tactical voting mounts, according to Lib Dem chiefs.
Party insiders claimed their canvassing returns indicate Labour and Tory voters have deserted their parties in droves in a last-ditch bid to humiliate the former First Minister at the ballot box.
Yesterday, it emerged that a mystery punter has bet £3,000 that Mr Salmond will lose his fight against the Lib Dems, when the result is announced in the early hours of Friday morning.
But in an indication of the scale of the challenge facing his opponent Christine Jardine, the bet came with odds of 5/1, while Mr Salmond is the clear 1/10 favourite to win in the Aberdeenshire seat of Gordon.
Elsewhere in the country, there is mounting evidence of a tactical voting campaign from Unionist supporters in a bid to prevent an SNP tsunami.
In nearby West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, where the Lib Dems and Tories were originally duelling, it now appears the Conservatives are the only party capable of stopping the Nationalists.
Tory voters hold the key in seats where their preferred candidate is almost certain to come third behind Labour and the SNP, such as Edinburgh South and East Renfrewshire.
Speaking exclusively to the Scottish Daily Mail, former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling said: ‘There’s a lot of seats where there will be a big tactical vote. And the tactical voters will decide the outcome in these seats. Having been involved in General Elections for the last 30-odd years, I can tell you it’s on a knife-edge.
‘In recent times we haven’t seen [tactical voting] like this. Most voters understand what the game is here: the more MPs the Nationalists get, what you have is constitutional turmoil.’
Tactical voting has been dismissed by Mr Salmond in Gordon, who has claimed he could beat the Lib Dems and Tories even if they were on a joint ticket.
On being told that Lib Dems were talking up their chances last month, he advised them ‘to put some of their ill-gotten gains from their shady donors on at the nearest Ladbrokes and they can recover their party’s fortunes’.
Alex Donohue, of Ladbrokes, said: ‘We’ve taken our biggest Scottish constituency bet to date on the Lib Dems defying the odds to cling on in Gordon and keep Alex Salmond at bay.’
Last night, a senior Lib Dem insider said the party has found that Labour and Tory support has almost vanished on the doorsteps in the constituency.
‘Alex Salmond is such a divisive character and it’s going to be a lot closer than he expects,’ one source claimed.
Recent polling suggests that more than a third of Tory and Lib Dem voters across the country could switch sides to Labour in key seats, over half of Lib Dem supporters are willing to vote tactically for the Tories, and nearly half of Tory voters are prepared to consider backing the Lib Dems.
Former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit has suggested Conservative voters could back the Lib Dems in seats such as Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, where Treasury Chief Danny Alexander is standing; Ross, Skye and Lochaber, where Charles Kennedy is the candidate; and Gordon.
And it emerged that a prominent Labour figure in East Dunbartonshire, who wanted to be the party’s local candidate, is now campaigning for Lib Dem Jo Swinson.
A separate poll revealed that Tory voters could save Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy from a humiliating defeat in East Renfrewshire.