I think despite the party faithful being slightly horrified at the prospect of a Tory led coalition, it would be the best result. We would be getting an incremental change towards a Single Transferable Vote in the shape of A.V. as well as a full debate and referendum on the subject so that the public can be informed.
It will be interesting to see what the increasingly frustrated Tory press make of it all as the Tories won't be obliged to campaign in favour of AV and yet most ofthe general public will be in favour of reform. It could be another nail in the coffin of the newspapers dictating politics to the masses. After the bluster of "The Sun what won it" we now have a Hung parliment because people DIDN'T listen to the tabloids, which is refreshing.
Whilst under normal circumstances I would much prefer Labour and Lib Dems in power together, the position is currently untenable; Tories got the biggest vote and Labour are without a leader. Clegg is in a horrible position of being damned by the party or damned by the rest of the public if he chooses Tories or Labour respectively, but this is ALL about getting reforms through and once that happens it is a game changer. In a year's time when the coalition enevitably collaspes, Lib Dems will gain far more marginal seats and the "wasted vote" brigade will be fair less effective.
True, but I still doubt the majority of the electorate will vote in favour of voting reform, especially as both the major parties will campaign against it.
Question asked again in a YouGov poll today, no significant change. I suspect the fate of any referendum would depend even more than usual on how it was worded.
Electoral reform was in Labour's manifesto, although admittedly only Alternative Vote. So in fact at least 52% of the votes were for parties in favour of reform.
I'll take AV at the moment. It's a nice first step towards a fairer system and less likely to come up against the full ire of the main political parties and their respective newspapers.
It's all about progression. I doubt that either of the big two are going to offer STV or PR at the moment. Once we start down the road of making the system fairer, it opens the door to further reform. Personally, having discussed most of the available alternatives with people over the last few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that partial PR is the best approach which would allow for larger constituancies but still retaining local politics and reducing the political tourism of putting MPs from outside of a constituancy in because it is a safe seat.
Depending on how difficult it is (made) to change systems, one change may be all that happens for a long time, making it important it's the right one. There could be the argument "we've already done this issue once, there isn't the parliamentary time to revisit it this parliament", which happens with other issues from time to time.
I'm not convinced that can account for a large percentage of the electorate. Of course some people vote tactically, but there are also bound to be constituencies where people voted tactically for the Lib-Dems to keep another party out. Even if it doesn't even out, given that only about a third of the constituencies could be considered a close contest I find it difficult to see how it could account for a significant percentage of the vote.
oh, i'm not suggesting they'd've done massively better, but just suggesting there's a margin of error in your quoting exact shares of the vote, even ignoring labour's fairly recent "conversion".
Is anyone in favour of AV? Apart from people like me who want to put the Tory LAST (or lower if possible)? (And presumably a decent proportion of Tories that want to put the Labour candidate last ...) Labour use it for Leader/Deputy elections where it is great fun to be able to rank the candidates.
However, returning from my puerile amusement to issues of mere national importance, it's not proportional, is it? I don't know enough about it (must google) but I've heard some pro-PR people saying "It's WORSE than FPTP".
I have yet to hear anyone say it is the system they want. I have seem some (admittedly rather speculative) analysis in the Guardian that seems to suggest it would have had very little effect on the Lib-Dem number of seats in last week's election. The suggestion was that the only beneficiary would actually have been the Labour party, but obviously we can't put too much faith in analysis that attempts to predict how people would place their 2nd vote.
The Guardian item suggests that Labour would gain 4 seats (not a tremendous boost), the Conservatives would lose 25, and the Lib Dems would gain 22. The suggestion that a 39% increase in the number of seats counts as "very little effect" I believe evidently shows that the Garuniad's arithmetic skills are even more lacking than their spillchucker skills.
AV is certainly better than the existing system - perhaps not much better, but better nonetheless. Certainly, had it been in place in this election it would have made the past 5 days much more interesting, as the Lib Dems could then grant a majority to both the Conservatives and Labour, so the flurry of negotiations may well have been much more intense, with the Lib Dems holding a much stronger hand.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-05-11 09:04 am
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It will be interesting to see what the increasingly frustrated Tory press make of it all as the Tories won't be obliged to campaign in favour of AV and yet most ofthe general public will be in favour of reform. It could be another nail in the coffin of the newspapers dictating politics to the masses. After the bluster of "The Sun what won it" we now have a Hung parliment because people DIDN'T listen to the tabloids, which is refreshing.
Whilst under normal circumstances I would much prefer Labour and Lib Dems in power together, the position is currently untenable; Tories got the biggest vote and Labour are without a leader. Clegg is in a horrible position of being damned by the party or damned by the rest of the public if he chooses Tories or Labour respectively, but this is ALL about getting reforms through and once that happens it is a game changer. In a year's time when the coalition enevitably collaspes, Lib Dems will gain far more marginal seats and the "wasted vote" brigade will be fair less effective.
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I'm not sure that is the case. 78% of the electorate did not vote for a party in favour of electoral reform.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7697099/General-Election-2010-half-of-voters-want-proportional-representation.html
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But does anyone really want AV? By all accounts, it seems to make little difference in terms of fair representation for smaller parties.
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However, returning from my puerile amusement to issues of mere national importance, it's not proportional, is it? I don't know enough about it (must google) but I've heard some pro-PR people saying "It's WORSE than FPTP".
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AV is certainly better than the existing system - perhaps not much better, but better nonetheless. Certainly, had it been in place in this election it would have made the past 5 days much more interesting, as the Lib Dems could then grant a majority to both the Conservatives and Labour, so the flurry of negotiations may well have been much more intense, with the Lib Dems holding a much stronger hand.