Politicians say anything to get votes now. But if a candidate went hard line right or left to win over the BNP or British Communist Party, they'd loose my vote, so it may not be a helpful tactic for them.
I'm cheating, I posted this on another AV thread:
The Yes campaign is not as rich as the NO campaign. The Yes campaign has published it's funding sources, the NO campaign refuses to follow suit.
AV is not that complicated. The Electoral Commission explain it in a video at the bottom of this page
First past the post was fine while we just had the Whigs or the Tories to vote for. Nowadays there may be as many as ten candidates on a ballot paper. We need AV so that parliament better reflects the will of the people. At the moment MP's can be elected with 30% of the vote, leaving 60% of the vote unrepresented in the constituency.
Australia, with AV, has had less hung parliaments than we have here with first past the post.
If AV is good enough for party leadership elections, it's good enough for us plebs.
You don't have to give a second, third or fourth choice, if you don't want to. You can just vote for one candidate, if there's only one candidate you like.