Bye Bye Nigel Farage

From the IBT:-

When asked if he would stand down in the event of the party not returning any MPs to the House, he said: "I would have thought so, good lord yes. I would be out the door before you could say Jack Robinson."

I'll gladly take a bet with Nigel Farage, and I'll go as high as 1/10 that UKIP won't get a single seat.

Under the FPTP system the way for new parties to win seats in a general election is to concentrate power. So, there's Dr Richard Taylor down in Kidderminster that won a seat by campaigning on a local issue which meant that even though Health Concern won less than 1/1000 of the total vote, they won enough in one place to get the seats. Parties like SNP and Plaid Cymru are likewise based on localised politics. The only exception is the Green Party seat in Brighton Pavillion which was won by the rest of the vote splitting and them sneaking in and even then in was close.

UKIPs small vote is broadly spread. You get 10% in every seat get no seats.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for small parties - it's the only way to express what you really want and is more likely to get you the sort of government you want than tactical voting. If the Tories lose lots of seats and do the math that they could have won far more seats by being genuinely Eurosceptic rather than paying it lip service, they will have to eventually become so or continue to face electoral defeat.

h/t The Boiling Frog