A DEVON professor has warned that tactical voting websites may not always take account of local political circumstances and could be making poor recommendations.

Tactical voting has gained traction during this general election campaign, and essentially seeks to identify the candidate most likely to unseat the most recent MP.

Much is aimed at ensuring Conservative candidates do not retain their old seats or gain new ones.

But Geoffrey Hodgson, emeritus professor in management at Loughborough University who lives in the Central Devon constituency previously held by Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride, believes many tactical voting sites don’t take into account the political make-up of local elections.

And he believes they are definitely wrong when it comes to Central Devon.

“For around seven out of 10 cases, if you want to vote the Conservatives out then taking tactical voting advice is often very useful, but there is a peculiarity with Central Devon,” he said.

Mr Hodgson, who became a member of the Liberal Democrats after the Brexit vote, said the rural nature of Central Devon did not make it a conventional Labour seat, adding that the local council elections did not suggest Labour would perform well in the July 4 poll.

“The Liberal Democrats have done extremely well in Central Devon in the last couple of rounds, and now control two out of three districts, and out of the 20 district or county council seats in the parliamentary constituency, Labour has no seats,” he said.

“But tactical voting sites don’t take this into account, and the majority of them say to vote Labour for Central Devon.”

Mr Hodgson said he had found one person on social media platform X who tried to build in local data, but that he was “only one person in a garage relying on donations”.

As an example, the website tactical.vote suggests Labour’s Ollie Pearson would be its recommendation for a tactical vote, but it does this by looking at data from the previous general election.

The other candidates vying for the seat are Reform UK’s Jeffrey Leeks, independent candidate Arthur Price, the Green Party’s Gill Westcott, and the Liberal Democrat’s Mark Wooding.

By Bradley Gerrard