UK Election Poll

[OzzyKP]

Instant Run Off voting would be even better than PR I think. Especially for voters who pretty much want to vote anti-Labour or anti-Tory.

[MikeH]

Yeah, I'd favour some form of single transferable vote over full PR.

[Ben Kenobi]

Instant Run Off voting would be even better than PR I think

It would be because it's all about what's best for the Lib Dems and not for the UK.

Good thing the electorate does not want PR, or they would have voted Lib Dem in this election. I think it's funny that when you can't win you change the rules...

[MikeH]

The Lib Dems are best for the UK and the rules are maintained by the other parties to maintain the 2 party system so the Lib Dems can't win.

[Ben Kenobi]

The Lib Dems are best for the UK and the rules are maintained by the other parties to maintain the 2 party system so the Lib Dems can't win.

In your opinion. In my opinion the UKIP would be the best.

The real issue isn't the conservatives, it's that Labour, with 29 percent of the vote is still sitting on 258 seats. Instead of charging at the conservatives, you should be saying that Lib Dem deserves to replace Labour as the vote of the worker, and unite the Left.

Then you would form government legitimately.

Instead, Labour is going to bend you guys over once again.

[giblets]

Conservatives win 36% of the popular vote, labour and liberal democrats combined have 52% of the popular vote, and the conservatives have almost as much power. This might be the most ****ed up "democracy" on the planet. People who complain about Bush becoming president of the US in 2000 should look at the UK.

[OzzyKP]

Well then there's your argument for PR. UKIP has what, 0 seats right now? But 3.1% of the vote. Under PR that'd give them 20 seats! Even BNP would get 12 seats out of PR.

Also, think of the races where the Tories narrowly lost to Labour. Think also of the people who voted for UKIP and possibly handed the seat to Labour. If they could pick Conservative as their second choice under IRV then the Conservatives would get those seats.

[C0ckney]

mobius, i understand what you're saying, but i don't agree with your conclusion. cameron in his statement ruled out three areas for compromise, defence (trident), europe and immigration, to me that suggests that there's room for negotiation on a whole raft of issues. including, one presumes, the ones that the liberals hold most dear. he's left a lot of room for manoeuvre, which is only sensible, for both parties. there's going to be a lot of discussions between the two parties over the coming days and i think it will be very interesting to see what comes out of it.

when it comes to electoral reform itself, what exactly do people mean, PR, alternative vote, av plus etc.? personally, i would favour a PR system with a regional element. however, a lot of people have very different views about it and there needs to be a genuine debate in the country before the system is changed.

i agree that labour would be more willing to compromise than the tories, but this is because they haven't really got a choice if they want to remain in power. i don't believe that it would be of long term benefit to the liberals to a deal with labour, even with very favourable terms, because it's clear that the losers in this election were labour and it wouldn't look good to be seen to be proping them up. also, given the parliamentary arithmetic, a lib/lab/nationalist/whoever pact doesn't look likely to last long and i don't know if they could deliver electoral reform within that time. this is especially true because while it's in labour's interests to promise electoral reform, it is most definitely not in their interests to deliver it.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well then there's your argument for PR. UKIP has what, 0 seats right now? But 3.1% of the vote. Under PR that'd give them 20 seats! Even BNP would get 12 seats out of PR.

Silly rabbit, PR is for liberals.

Cutoff of 5 percent of the vote in order to qualify for a seat.

They will never do a truly proportional system because they aren't really interested in giving representation to anyone who achieves 0.4 percent of the vote or the equivalent to one seat.

What they are interested in is destroying the concept of a riding, where a geographical area is represented. They are interested in replacing voting for a candidate with voting for a party, and a party list deciding who will be your representative, not you.

Think also of the people who voted for UKIP and possibly handed the seat to Labour. If they could pick Conservative as their second choice under IRV then the Conservatives would get those seats.

Right, I'm concerned about the one riding out of 650 where this was a factor.

Under this system.

Voter 1:

Labour
Lib Dem

Voter 2:

Lib Dem
Labour

Voter 3:

Conservative
Lib Dem

Voter 4:

Conservative
Labour.

The result?

6/8 votes to Labour/Lib Dem.

Perpetual Labour/Lib Dem governments from now until the end of time. No thanks please.

[DanS]

If anyone here remembers Iain Lindley, he came a creditable second place in what is far from being a traditional Tory seat.

Excellent. Good for him.

[C0ckney]

krill, well that's fair enough. for me the erosion of civil liberties under labour is one of the things i'm most angry about.

i don't see however, how there could be a budget, which a) all three parties could agree on and b) sell to their respective voters. it's just too big a hurdle.

[Krill]

Yeah, I agree on the budget, but with one caveat. A budget is for one year. PR is until it can get repealed, so i can see LD voters accepting the compromise if they get a few bones (or at least, I would).

[C0ckney]

Not much different to the Tories ****ting all over our civil liberties for the preceding years. Remember Michael Howard as Home Secretary?

BTW It's a good question, this was the major reason I didn't tactically vote Labour.

that's a fair point, but i think the tories today are better than labour in this regard. for example they opposed ID cards and 90 day detention for terror suspects.

[OzzyKP]

Silly rabbit, PR is for liberals.

Cutoff of 5 percent of the vote in order to qualify for a seat.

They will never do a truly proportional system because they aren't really interested in giving representation to anyone who achieves 0.4 percent of the vote or the equivalent to one seat.

What they are interested in is destroying the concept of a riding, where a geographical area is represented. They are interested in replacing voting for a candidate with voting for a party, and a party list deciding who will be your representative, not you.

I agree with you about PR wrecking the connection between representative and district. I'd much rather do IRV than PR. Much, much rather.

Right, I'm concerned about the one riding out of 650 where this was a factor.

Perpetual Labour/Lib Dem governments from now until the end of time. No thanks please.

I think you are wrong to assume that Labour & Lib Dems will always work together. Clegg made no secret over his distaste for Brown this time around and it is no surprise that he is going to the Conservatives first for a coalition. I think there would be a great number of Tory-Liberal coalitions under IRV.

[Ben Kenobi]

FPTP isn't perfect, but I think it's important to retain the connection between a district and it's representative. I live in a very rural area and we just went over this same debate ourselves, where PR was defeated twice.

PR works much better for urban areas, but urbanites aren't very open to an urban/rural split. If you limited PR to cities over 100k, the system would probably work very well here. You'd have more 'natural' representation as representation would be city-wide, and you'd retain the district-representative system for more rural areas. You'd also avoid the use of party list by having the party run candidates in the city only.