Your voting intentions
Poll: Your voting intentions
Total Members Polled: 1233
Discussion
turbobloke said:
Kermit power said:
JagLover said:
Kermit power said:
That's just bizarre! Not a single poll out there sees Reform winning more than a couple of seats, so what justifies the short odds on them compared to the Tories or LibDems?
Not a gambler but aren't they on 50/1 and the Tories are on 40/1 and therefore have a higher chance?Betting odds depend on volume of betting, but in any case that looks about right, relatively speaking, given how the campaign has gone so far.
Electoral Calculus, for example, are calling 19.9% of the vote for the Tories, 17.8% for Reform and 11.6% for the LibDems, which makes sense of those betting odds until you look at their seat projections - 76 Tories, 66 LibDems and just 3 Reform.
Take the prediction for Liverpool Walton as an example and you start to see why. Labour are still expected to romp it, but their share of the vote is forecast to drop from 81% to 77% with Reform increasing from 2% to 9.4%. That significant increase for Reform is a much bigger waste than the 1% increase for the LibDems.
Now head South to another Walton which really couldn't be much more different - Esher & Walton. The Reform vote there has grown even more - from absolutely nothing (because they weren't standing against Tory candidates) to 11.9%, but they're all still worthless, as a much smaller increase for the LibDems from 44.6% to 46.2% will almost certainly take the seat as the Tories tumble from 48.3% to 25.2%!
Reform's curse is that of the Greens and the LibDems in overdrive. Whilst Labour and the Tories typically do either really well or really badly in the majority of constituencies, the smaller parties all tend to have fairly even distribution across the entire country, meaning they need a far higher share of the national vote for each seat they win.
If that's not enough to tell you that our electoral system is a sick joke, just consider the fact that Labour are being forecast to win over 70% of the seats they're standing in with less than 40% of the national vote. Our electoral system is a sham pretending to be democracy.
What do you think your fellow Committee members would say if you pitched an idea to them where one party is going to win 70% of the seats with 40% of the vote whilst another is going to win less than 1% of the seats with 18% of the vote?
You'd be quite rightly laughed out of the room! You can claim we live in a democracy until you're blue in the face, but until such time as we have an electoral system where every person's vote carries as close to an even weight as possible, sorry but we quite simply are not living in a democracy.
Kermit power said:
turbobloke said:
Kermit power said:
JagLover said:
Kermit power said:
That's just bizarre! Not a single poll out there sees Reform winning more than a couple of seats, so what justifies the short odds on them compared to the Tories or LibDems?
Not a gambler but aren't they on 50/1 and the Tories are on 40/1 and therefore have a higher chance?Betting odds depend on volume of betting, but in any case that looks about right, relatively speaking, given how the campaign has gone so far.
Electoral Calculus, for example, are calling 19.9% of the vote for the Tories, 17.8% for Reform and 11.6% for the LibDems, which makes sense of those betting odds until you look at their seat projections - 76 Tories, 66 LibDems and just 3 Reform.
Take the prediction for Liverpool Walton as an example and you start to see why. Labour are still expected to romp it, but their share of the vote is forecast to drop from 81% to 77% with Reform increasing from 2% to 9.4%. That significant increase for Reform is a much bigger waste than the 1% increase for the LibDems.
Now head South to another Walton which really couldn't be much more different - Esher & Walton. The Reform vote there has grown even more - from absolutely nothing (because they weren't standing against Tory candidates) to 11.9%, but they're all still worthless, as a much smaller increase for the LibDems from 44.6% to 46.2% will almost certainly take the seat as the Tories tumble from 48.3% to 25.2%!
Reform's curse is that of the Greens and the LibDems in overdrive. Whilst Labour and the Tories typically do either really well or really badly in the majority of constituencies, the smaller parties all tend to have fairly even distribution across the entire country, meaning they need a far higher share of the national vote for each seat they win.
If that's not enough to tell you that our electoral system is a sick joke, just consider the fact that Labour are being forecast to win over 70% of the seats they're standing in with less than 40% of the national vote. Our electoral system is a sham pretending to be democracy.
What do you think your fellow Committee members would say if you pitched an idea to them where one party is going to win 70% of the seats with 40% of the vote whilst another is going to win less than 1% of the seats with 18% of the vote?
You'd be quite rightly laughed out of the room! You can claim we live in a democracy until you're blue in the face, but until such time as we have an electoral system where every person's vote carries as close to an even weight as possible, sorry but we quite simply are not living in a democracy.
Back to the earlier bizarre claims - the uk electoral system isn't a sham, we are indeed living in a democracy, one where some people don't like the voting etc system (FPTP).
turbobloke said:
Imagination is wonderful, but it's not reality. The route to a destination depends on the starting point as well as the means of travel, and your fictional story isn't the uk's starting point.
Back to the earlier bizarre claims - the uk electoral system isn't a sham, we are indeed living in a democracy, one where some people don't like the voting etc system (FPTP).
So you honestly think that you can defend FPTP in the real world? Back to the earlier bizarre claims - the uk electoral system isn't a sham, we are indeed living in a democracy, one where some people don't like the voting etc system (FPTP).
Go on then, give it a shot based on the last General Election results!Lets make it easy and look at the results for England alone so that we don't get the distortion of the regional parties only standing in their regions.
Obviously all 545,172 votes for the Brexit Party were wasted as they didn't win a single seat. For every 545,172 votes the Conservatives won, they got 14.8 seats in parliament. Can you justify that?
Similarly, the LibDems got 7 seats for their 3,340,835 votes. The Conservatives? They got 90.68 seats for every 3.34 million votes. Is that democracy?
You claim we have democracy in the UK simply because the system we use is the system we use, and (here's a surprise!) neither of the political parties who benefit from it have decided to change it and (here comes another surprise!) none of the parties who want to change it because they get completely screwed by it can ever win enough votes to get elected and change it!
Our system has about as much integrity as Zanu PF's victories in Zimbabwean elections. The only difference is that neither the Conservatives nor Labour have to illegally rig individual votes because the entire system in this country is overwhelmingly rigged in their favour in the first place!
Kermit power said:
So you honestly think that you can defend FPTP in the real world? Go on then, give it a shot based on the last General Election results!
...
Obviously all 545,172 votes for the Brexit Party were wasted as they didn't win a single seat. For every 545,172 votes the Conservatives won, they got 14.8 seats in parliament. Can you justify that?
Of course FPTP can be justified. You seem to think only proportional representation is justified, but it frequently gives power to smaller, minority parties, more coalitions which are representative of nothing anyone voted for and weaker links between constituents and their representative. The representative of course, being the point of a representative democracy. Go on then, give it a shot based on the last General Election results!...
Obviously all 545,172 votes for the Brexit Party were wasted as they didn't win a single seat. For every 545,172 votes the Conservatives won, they got 14.8 seats in parliament. Can you justify that?
A supporter of direct democracy might say we should do away with representatives and that representative democracies are impossible to defend. They'd probably be right that they're less "true" democracy, that doesn't mean they don't have advantages. Every variant of democracy has trade offs.
768 said:
Kermit power said:
So you honestly think that you can defend FPTP in the real world? Go on then, give it a shot based on the last General Election results!
...
Obviously all 545,172 votes for the Brexit Party were wasted as they didn't win a single seat. For every 545,172 votes the Conservatives won, they got 14.8 seats in parliament. Can you justify that?
Of course FPTP can be justified. You seem to think only proportional representation is justified, but it frequently gives power to smaller, minority parties, more coalitions which are representative of nothing anyone voted for and weaker links between constituents and their representative. The representative of course, being the point of a representative democracy. Go on then, give it a shot based on the last General Election results!...
Obviously all 545,172 votes for the Brexit Party were wasted as they didn't win a single seat. For every 545,172 votes the Conservatives won, they got 14.8 seats in parliament. Can you justify that?
A supporter of direct democracy might say we should do away with representatives and that representative democracies are impossible to defend. They'd probably be right that they're less "true" democracy, that doesn't mean they don't have advantages. Every variant of democracy has trade offs.
As for coalitions of smaller parties that don't directly represent what anyone voted for, isn't that just representative of the fact that we have diverse societies with diverse views? Having diverse views in society means having to accept compromises. Where is the compromise in Labour being able to implement absolutely everything they want for the next five years if, as some polls are suggesting, they only get 37% of the vote?
As we saw at the 2015 GE, if a party in coalition gives up more than their voters are willing to tolerate, they will get punished at the next election. It wouldn't take long for parties and voters to get used to what is or isn't acceptable, and we get far fairer government than we have now.
Kermit power said:
You can still have representatives under PR. You just have FPTP in the constituencies, then have second list used to balance up the proportionality. In fact, you can make a good case for even stronger links between representatives and their constituents if you move ministers off the constituency list and onto the floating list, as constituencies then get a change of representative for another MP of the same party whose only job is to represent them. How much time do you think a cabinet minister has to dedicate to constituency matters?
As for coalitions of smaller parties that don't directly represent what anyone voted for, isn't that just representative of the fact that we have diverse societies with diverse views? Having diverse views in society means having to accept compromises. Where is the compromise in Labour being able to implement absolutely everything they want for the next five years if, as some polls are suggesting, they only get 37% of the vote?
As we saw at the 2015 GE, if a party in coalition gives up more than their voters are willing to tolerate, they will get punished at the next election. It wouldn't take long for parties and voters to get used to what is or isn't acceptable, and we get far fairer government than we have now.
What's your best estimate for when the UK will have PR?As for coalitions of smaller parties that don't directly represent what anyone voted for, isn't that just representative of the fact that we have diverse societies with diverse views? Having diverse views in society means having to accept compromises. Where is the compromise in Labour being able to implement absolutely everything they want for the next five years if, as some polls are suggesting, they only get 37% of the vote?
As we saw at the 2015 GE, if a party in coalition gives up more than their voters are willing to tolerate, they will get punished at the next election. It wouldn't take long for parties and voters to get used to what is or isn't acceptable, and we get far fairer government than we have now.
turbobloke said:
What's your best estimate for when the UK will have PR?
Who knows. A lot will depend on results under FPTP.Things could just carry on as they are with the presence of the regional parties helping to disguise how obscene the situation actually is, or we could see something seismic which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the ideal scenario, Reform will beat the Tories in terms of % of the vote won without winning a single seat whilst the Tories still manage to scrape 100.
If that were to happen, I just don't see how we could ever have another GE under FPTP?
Kermit power said:
Who knows. A lot will depend on results under FPTP.
Things could just carry on as they are with the presence of the regional parties helping to disguise how obscene the situation actually is, or we could see something seismic which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the ideal scenario, Reform will beat the Tories in terms of % of the vote won without winning a single seat whilst the Tories still manage to scrape 100.
If that were to happen, I just don't see how we could ever have another GE under FPTP?
In that case, why would Starmer scrap FPTP? Things could just carry on as they are with the presence of the regional parties helping to disguise how obscene the situation actually is, or we could see something seismic which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the ideal scenario, Reform will beat the Tories in terms of % of the vote won without winning a single seat whilst the Tories still manage to scrape 100.
If that were to happen, I just don't see how we could ever have another GE under FPTP?
I'm pleased we have FPTP in the current situation, Brexit has created economic and political chaos in the country, Reform and their supporters are political arsonists hell bent on finishing the job they started with the referendum but FPTP ensures they will get hardly any seats and that's a very good thing for country.
With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
Wills2 said:
I'm pleased we have FPTP in the current situation, Brexit has created economic and political chaos in the country, Reform and their supporters are political arsonists hell bent on finishing the job they started with the referendum but FPTP ensures they will get hardly any seats and that's a very good thing for country.
With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
Have Labour indicated that they’ll move closer to the EU?With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
Wills2 said:
I'm pleased we have FPTP in the current situation, Brexit has created economic and political chaos in the country, Reform and their supporters are political arsonists hell bent on finishing the job they started with the referendum but FPTP ensures they will get hardly any seats and that's a very good thing for country.
With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
Look this one up regarding recent and highly relevant comments about 'the bloc' (EU style) from Capt Flip Flop. It's in The Guardian online 22.6.2024With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
Starmer insisted while campaigning in south London on Saturday he would not rejoin the bloc either in the short or longer term. “We are not rejoining the EU, we are not rejoining the single market or the customs union,” the Labour leader said. Asked if he would ever reconsider this, he added: “No. It isn’t our plan, it never has been. I’ve never said that as leader of the Labour party and it is not in our manifesto"
Patience is needed as The Guardian article starts off on another planet, visits another galaxy and finally comes home to some reality. Here's a free ticket out to the OBR office on Planet Zorg and back.
Outward https://thecritic.co.uk/why-the-obr-is-wrong-about... (worth going the distance)
Return https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/06/ob...
Mr Penguin said:
Kermit power said:
Who knows. A lot will depend on results under FPTP.
Things could just carry on as they are with the presence of the regional parties helping to disguise how obscene the situation actually is, or we could see something seismic which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the ideal scenario, Reform will beat the Tories in terms of % of the vote won without winning a single seat whilst the Tories still manage to scrape 100.
If that were to happen, I just don't see how we could ever have another GE under FPTP?
In that case, why would Starmer scrap FPTP? Things could just carry on as they are with the presence of the regional parties helping to disguise how obscene the situation actually is, or we could see something seismic which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the ideal scenario, Reform will beat the Tories in terms of % of the vote won without winning a single seat whilst the Tories still manage to scrape 100.
If that were to happen, I just don't see how we could ever have another GE under FPTP?
If we do see a situation which is so egregiously wrong that it makes FPTP seem untenable, the momentum for change will be pushing at an already relatively open door.
Wills2 said:
I'm pleased we have FPTP in the current situation, Brexit has created economic and political chaos in the country, Reform and their supporters are political arsonists hell bent on finishing the job they started with the referendum but FPTP ensures they will get hardly any seats and that's a very good thing for country.
With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
I'm not convinced Brexit would have happened in the first place under PR.With a huge majority labour can start to move closer to the EU get us back in the customs union and start to rebuild the country.
I don't think many people voted Leave because they were truly ideologically opposed to EU membership. That Lord Ashcroft poll from last week showing that almost 1 in 5 couldn't name a single story about politics from the previous seven days, and amongst those who could, D-day and poor little Rishi not having Sky as a kid were by some.margin the most widely recognised.
To my mind, Brexit was a kneejerk response to decades of voters feeling politically disenfranchised as the two main parties fought over an artificial centre ground whilst taking their support for granted, because who else could they vote for? Under a properly working PR system, those mainstream parties would've either had to adapt to embrace those voters, or alternative parties would've risen up to represent them. The fact that they didn't is, in my opinion, what led to Brexit.
I say "properly working PR" because I don't see that in much of Europe at the moment. Their mainstream parties have taken an arrogant, paternalistic approach to voters there who are increasingly expressing their malcontent and voting for the far right by refusing to recognise that disenfranchisement and effectively replicating our own situation by refusing to either change their own policies or work with the Far Right in coalition. It should really come as no surprise that all that does is to exacerbate the situation even further.
Kermit power said:
I say "properly working PR" because I don't see that in much of Europe at the moment. Their mainstream parties have taken an arrogant, paternalistic approach to voters there who are increasingly expressing their malcontent and voting for the far right by refusing to recognise that disenfranchisement and effectively replicating our own situation by refusing to either change their own policies or work with the Far Right in coalition. It should really come as no surprise that all that does is to exacerbate the situation even further.
PR, like communism works better in theory than in practice because neither factors in human nature. It does work, honest, but it's just never been done properly. Now if my communists were in charge.....
EmBe said:
Kermit power said:
I say "properly working PR" because I don't see that in much of Europe at the moment. Their mainstream parties have taken an arrogant, paternalistic approach to voters there who are increasingly expressing their malcontent and voting for the far right by refusing to recognise that disenfranchisement and effectively replicating our own situation by refusing to either change their own policies or work with the Far Right in coalition. It should really come as no surprise that all that does is to exacerbate the situation even further.
PR, like communism works better in theory than in practice because neither factors in human nature. It does work, honest, but it's just never been done properly. Now if my communists were in charge.....
Unless they work with human nature in mind (greed, self interest, ambition) eg. Capitalism,
rather than against it (everyone is equal, all wealth is shared, all for the common good) eg. Communism, then they will fail or become corrupted.
We are what we are, so may as well go with it.
EmBe said:
Kermit power said:
I say "properly working PR" because I don't see that in much of Europe at the moment. Their mainstream parties have taken an arrogant, paternalistic approach to voters there who are increasingly expressing their malcontent and voting for the far right by refusing to recognise that disenfranchisement and effectively replicating our own situation by refusing to either change their own policies or work with the Far Right in coalition. It should really come as no surprise that all that does is to exacerbate the situation even further.
PR, like It does work, honest, but it's just never been done properly. Now if
PR is quite blatantly and demonstrably better than FPTP, but is itself not perfect. We should have the best system available, and not let perfect be the enemy of good.
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