Election Predictions

[andrewducker]

My election predictions (after conversation with chuma over here):

Vote results: Conservatives->Lib Dem->Labour
Seat results: Labour->Conservatives->Lib Dem

Public to get very confused and upset.

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The problem is that neither of the three candidates is particularly compelling as a PM.

[andrewducker]

Are they ever? In order to appeal to the masses, and to avoid putting off too many people, you have to end up with someone that looks somewhat like a middle manager.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Thatcher for all her bullshit was a compelling and interesting human being.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Compelling in the sense that the power of Christ compelled her.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

That's a step up from Gordon Brown who seems compelled by the power of inertia.

If he wins I'm going to go as him for Halloween this year. I'll put on a cheap suit and then do nothing.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Did you catch the shenanigans with the mispelled letter he sent to the serviceman's mother?

In our flat, we say 'I wrote a letter' when we mean 'I fucked up'.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

In fairness to him, he has 1 eye and that is fucked up. He probably read the name from a memo and misread it.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anyone in any political party who looks compelling as PM, to be honest.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

This is very true. The current government has been in power long enough to become very unpopular, but the opposition do not seem to be offering anything particularly appealing. In 1997 Tony Blair was charismatic, promised major changes and people bought into that. Cameron seems to have failed to capture anyone's imagination.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I don't want charisma in a leader. Look at Tony Blair. I want a competent manager.

[mair_in_grenderich]

can we just adopt obama?

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

We can probably have Bush if we ask nicely.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

For the love of God, do not joke about that :) I thought after the clusterfuck of the last election Palin would have gone away for good, but apparently not. Britain electing a George Bush party to power might sound completely impossible, but I'm not sure I want to relax my vigilence against ANYTHING no matter how bad...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, (a) he's cool and (b) I agree with him much more than I agree with Bush. But even if you assume he would be responsible on civil liberty, gay rights, etc (which I don't know for sure) I don't know if I would necessarily agree with him on everything else more than the existing British politicians -- it depends what he actually thinks, not just what he thinks he can get through an American house & senate, and I've not listened to enough of his actual opinions to know.

(Or, I suppose, "he's not ACTUALLY socialist, he's just a lot MORE socialist than George Bush..." :))

[simont]

it depends what he actually thinks, not just what he thinks he can get through an American house & senate

Well, no, it would (hypothetically) depend on what he thought he could get through the British legislative obstacles, which would almost certainly differ from what he could get through the American ones and from what he actually thought!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Right, but it's like saying "this picture looks good through a slight red[1] light filter. would it look good through a slight blue one?" It's probably much easier to find out what the picture is like from existing views of it through different filters, and then extrapolate, than try to find any evidence about what it would look like in blue directly.

And finding a picture which looks good to me, is probably the best reasonable approximation to finding a picture which looks good through a slight blue filter. The only exceptions are things which look disproportionately better (or worse) to me through a blue filter than otherwise, but I image those to be more edge cases than normal outcomes.

[1] choice of colours purely arbitrary, not representing political views :)

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the public would get terribly upset or confused. We have had the First Past the Post system for a very long time and it is well understood. The Liberal Democrats would get upset, and Twitter would probably explode, but unless there is a hung parliament, it would surprise me if the same system wasn't in place for the next general election.

[andrewducker]

I don't recall ever having a time where the party with the most votes didn't also have the most seats.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

1974. It happened in 1951 as well.

[andrewducker]

1974 saw a hung parliament and another election 8 months later - people clearly weren't happy with that result.

I don't know how much of a fuss there was in 1951, but I expect there to be a much bigger one this time around.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

In 1974 another election was called because it was impossible to form a stable government. The Liberals had so few seats that neither a Liberal-Labour nor a Liberal-Conservative coalition had a working majority, whilst the Ulster Unionists and Nationalists refused to support either. I wasn't born in 1974, but I have not read any suggestion that public dissatisfaction with the discrepancy between votes and seats that brought about the second election in that year. Rather that it was the inability of any combination of the parties to form a stable government in the Commons.

[andrewducker]

Hm. Interesting. One wonders, in that case, _why_ people didn't see it as an obvious failing.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Because people in the UK have accepted the FPtP system for centuries. It's easy to understand, and each area elects an individual, which again is easy to understand. And since neither of the big two parties want to change the system, it's never seriously raised as a political issue.

[andrewducker]

There are lots of systems that are easy to understand and clearly very silly.

"Let's all do what Bob says" is about as simple as you can get, but even sillier than FPTP. Mind you, a lot of people would defend that too, I suspect, especially if Bob had a flashy crown.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I was 9 in February and 10 in October, and it was during that summer that my interest in politics was born.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Public to get very confused and upset.

Well, this is inevitable no matter what the vote/seat results, I suspect.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I'm obviously very much hoping for the first two in the first option to be swapped (which I don't think is entirely implausible, depending on how the politiX-Factor goes over the next two Thursdays). But aside from that, yes, probably. The last Daily Politics election special on the iPlayer had some nice graphs on the topic.