The results of the last opinion poll I can find, which I shall take at face value, are as follows:
Yes - 32%
No - 41%
Undecided - 22%
OK, the 'Yes' voters are most likely to turn out and vote, the 'No' voters less so and the 'Undecideds' are unlikely to vote, so that's not looking good, but if you are 'undecided' at the moment, why not cover your bets by voting 'Yes'?
IF at the next General Election you can't quite make up your mind which candidate you like best [dislike least] THEN at least you have the option of casting a 'conscience vote', a 'comedy vote' and a 'compromise vote;
ELSE IF you support one candidate, and one only THEN you still have the option of casting your first and only vote for that candidate, safe in the knowledge that this is exactly the same as casting your first, second, third etc. votes for that candidate.
ELSE IF you heartily disagree with all the candidates on offer and want to register a protest vote THEN you can look up the results of the previous election and cast your votes in reverse order of how likely they are to win, leaving the most likely candidate blank.
ENDIF.
Footnote: Even if it were the case that under AV, the BNP would grab a couple of seats in Parliament, would that be the end of the world? However little you like the BNP's policies, they are after all a political party which claims* that it wants to get into power first and then start killing people; they are not the political wing of a distinctly anti-British guerilla movement which actually has killed hundreds of people over the decades**, and the UK Parliament has had a handful of Sinn Fein MPs for years without anything terrible happening.
* I don't think their leadership, i.e. Nick Griffin, seriously imagines they ever will, it's just him and a few other cynical racists making a living off the backs of lots of little people.
** I actually agree with the Irish republican cause, but the means they have used (and the way that the USA sucks up to them) turn my stomach, and I'm not impressed with the way things are going in Northern Ireland.
Stormlight
1 hour ago
7 comments:
Not convinced at all. I'd like to have voted on a raft of election proposals rather than one which will probably put the Lib Dems permanently into government.
AV seems to have split the population into the usual left-right divide, so the result will depend upon motivated Labour and Tory supporers getting off their arses and into the voting booth.
But, there are more "right wingers" that support AV then there are lefties that support FPTP. On HPC at the moment the Yes's have ~65% while the No's have 24%, and HPC is obviously Tory biased.
From UKIP's perspective AV will be a good thing, which is a bit of a hedge fo me, but overall I think it's a bad move for the UK.
QM: "I'd like to have voted on a raft of election proposals..."
Yes, I'd have preferred Multi-Member Constituencies or an in-out referendum on the EU, so what?
"... rather than one which will probably put the Lib Dems permanently into government."
Who says? What if we end up with a few dozen Green, UKIP and BNP MPs along with a few dozen SNP or Plaid Cymru MPs and the usual suspects from Northern Ireland? That way any coalition will need at least a few of the above, and that'll be fun :-)
CD, does HPC mean HousePriceCrash? Link?
"From UKIP's perspective AV will be a good thing, which is a bit of a hedge fo me..."
Correct. AV is a hedge against much anything, that's the whole point. I fail to see why a die-hard Labour [Tory] FPTP-er will think "Ah well, maybe FPTP has given us a Tory [Labour] government elected by a minority of voters because of FPTP, but don't worry, our time will come..."
Here's the link:
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=162853&st=0
I take it you don't frequent the discussion forum?
Maybe I'll put a bet on AV just to make it my official hedge.
CD, thanks, no and good, respectively.
On the voting paper, do I show my order of preference for AV and FPTP?
VFTS, under AV, you would be able to do so :-)
Which raises an interesting point. In some constituencies, there will only be two candidates in future - under AV, how many people will actually rank them "1, 2"?
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