Hexus OFFICIAL 2015 General Election results thread

[kalniel]

I agree, but 3.8m votes is a lot! That's roughly the same as SNP and LibDems added together!

England didn't vote for them either

[scaryjim]

I think memories are long and labour haven't been forgiven for the Ed Balls up of the economy. Of course, had the Lib Dems won the referendum bid for electoral reform, we would now probably have a much larger UKIP presence in Parliament.

Makes you think....

Under AV I could see a lot of Lib Dem, and even Labour, supporters throwing a second vote to the Tories in seats where UKIP might have had a chance. Without going through every result it's hard to be sure, but I don't think UKIP came a close second in many seats, and I can't see them getting many second-choice ballots from the parties they'd be likely to beat.

In fact, I suspect the biggest losers in this election were it fought under AV might be the Lib Dems themselves....

EDIT:

England didn't vote for them either

Technically "England" didn't vote for anyone, as the country doesn't get a vote The UK electorate voted for all of those people, and got them in various propprtions, not necessarily related to the weight of public opinion behind them.

The real winner over all was, unsurprisingly, apathy: 15.7m people didn't vote. regardless of your opinion on non-voters, that a huge unheard voice...

[peterb]

I don't have much sympathy for the apathetic unheard. They had the opportunity, they 'chose' not to exercise it.

[outwar6010]

A friend told me that there is apparently a record number of phallic doodles on ballot papers, which makes me laugh on so many levels. Unfortunately I cant find any official info on it myself.

http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Vote...ail/story.html found this

[Jowsey]

England didn't vote for them either

Perhaps the point people are trying to make is if you spread out the conservative's seats to its votes and multiply that by UKIP's votes (if we ran a theoretical 'linear' system)(327 /11.4m*3.85m=110) it returns a scary number!

(I understand the many flaws in that argument, but humour me...)

[ik9000]

Perhaps the point people are trying to make is if you spread out the conservative's seats to its votes and multiply that by UKIP's votes (if we ran a theoretical 'linear' system)(327 /11.4m*3.85m=110) it returns a scary number!

(I understand the many flaws in that argument, but humour me...)

More importantly if you do that with Scotland - bastion of wanting PR... then you get far fewer SNP and more of the others. 50% of the vote didn't want SNP, yet they only have 3 MPs to represent them out of 59. Hardly fair!

[peterb]

Bahahahahahha:

http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdo...ies_will_give/

The first act of the new government - more snooping!!

The first act of the new government, protection of the vulnerable, and greater protection from the law breakers and others who seek to undermine the right of individuals to live without the fear of crime and the overthrow of the democratic process through violence and terrorism!

[kalniel]

Have you stolen my devils advocate t-shirt peterb?

[peterb]

Have you stolen my devils advocate t-shirt peterb?

Just borrowed it!

However, this made me smile

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EdStone-8f...item43dc377e21

(Ed's tablet of stone)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The first act of the new government, protection of the vulnerable, and greater protection from the law breakers and others who seek to undermine the right of individuals to live without the fear of crime and the overthrow of the democratic process through violence and terrorism!

Right,so I assume they don't mind having us snoop on their private lives and the people doing the snooping?

Makes me laugh at all the whining from the same lot about China and their mass surveillance.

PS:

I also lived in a country with a nasty civil issue. You don't want to be going down the line of governments trying to make lame duck excuses.

[Noxvayl]

I might be wrong, but I'm fairly certain labour redrew boundaries when they were in control. Around Hammersmith etc springs to mind.

If I understand correctly the proposal is to aim to make each MP represent approximately the same number of people which seems like a reasonable thing to do, though I'm probably missing some subtlety that means it isn't.... No doubt someone will correct me.

Yes they did, which many seem to think favours them. Doesn't seem to favour them enough though...

I'm not opposed to having the number of MPs being proportional to the number of voters, ie having each constituency of equal population density. What I was illustrating was that the Conservatives are looking to change the system just enough to satisfy desire for change but not enough for the change to be meaningful. I feel they are more than happy with First Past The Post (FPTP) voting because they seem to benefit from tactical voting, much like Labour when they changed constituency boundaries.

Using a system like Single Transferable Vote (STV) would make the issue of gerrymandering and tactical voting moot as the system gives the voters the MPs they voted for in proportion to how they voted rather than the current FPTP giving us minority winning candidates. Under FPTP voting for who you'd want to represent you can lead to you being represented by someone you wanted least. It is understandable why so many people are apathetic, they can't vote for who they want because who they don't want is likely to get in... or they can vote for whoever they like but will have no chance of getting the representative they want.

Be careful what you wish for - if seats were distributed to parties based on share of the Vote, UKIP would have 82 seats and significant influence in a Tory/UKIP coalition. Just about the only benefit of FPTP is that it tends to suppress extremist movements. As much as I dislike the thought of another 5 years or Tory austerity and the damage they're likely to inflict on the most vulnerable in society, I'd rather they could do it on their own terms than be pushed around by a significant UKIP block *shudder*...

What about the effect of tactical voting? You allude to change in voting behaviour under the AV system...

Under AV I could see a lot of Lib Dem, and even Labour, supporters throwing a second vote to the Tories in seats where UKIP might have had a chance. Without going through every result it's hard to be sure, but I don't think UKIP came a close second in many seats, and I can't see them getting many second-choice ballots from the parties they'd be likely to beat.

In fact, I suspect the biggest losers in this election were it fought under AV might be the Lib Dems themselves....

While I may not agree that the Lib Dems would lose in an AV voting system I do agree that the votes would be very different from what we have. While the threat of UKIP is concerning I doubt it would be a threat under different voting conditions. There would likely be a party more sensible to vote for that has similar views because they would get regular support rather than being a rising protest party feeding off anger at the established parties.

I would imagine the Greens would be far less idealistic and unrealistic with their manifesto for the same reason. Outlying parties with aims that seem crazy to most of us would be forced to be more reasonable if they were actually engaging in the political system.

So I am careful with what I wish for, I just feel that the threat of extreme parties is significantly lessened when there is no more protest voting. Once they engage in the system their survival would depend on their goals being achievable, which to me would mean that they are appealing across the political spectrum in order to get passed. A proportional system leads to lower numbers of MPs from individual parties, no more single majority of the house, so co-operation becomes essential to success, and with co-operation I imagine there is less room for extreme ideas. The change in Liberal Democrat policies from last election to this one is testament to how engaging in co-operation encourages change of goals.

[peterb]

Right,so I assume they don't mind having us snoop on their private lives and the people doing the snooping?

Makes me laugh at all the whining from the same lot about China and their mass surveillance.

PS:

I also lived in a country with a nasty civil war. You will don't want to be going down the line of governments trying to make lame duck excuses.

Who are 'they'? Personally I'd rather know what the controls are and under what conditions communications can be intercepted. But to give unrestricted and uncontrolled communications to those who would destroy democracy is as ludicrous as selling weapons to anyone without control or asking any questions.

The Internet (and othe communications media) is used by those pursuing unlawful activities. Should that be permitted without giving law enforcement authorities controlled powers to monitor them?

And as we have seen, politicians and civil servants are not above the law, they are not immune from prosecution when they break the law.

[peterb]

I wonder if we will see David Miliband return to UK politics? He isn't eligible to stand in the leadership election as he is not a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party, but he could return in the event of a by-election or at the next general election.

[scaryjim]

... What about the effect of tactical voting? You allude to change in voting behaviour under the AV system...

There is a fairly strong groundswell of opinion that we have a majority Tory government because of tactical voting to avoid the SNP having an undue influence in Westminster as part of a left-wing coalition. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's certainly being mooted as a reason the Tories did better than expected.

AV is basically just formalised tactical voting. I don't think voting behaviour would change for first choice candidates, but the whole point of AV is you get to express opinions on who you want if your first choice isn't available. The Lib Dems trashed their reputation so badly in coalition that I could see a lot of people using those later choices to try to avoid letting Lib Dems back in. Of course, it could have worked the other way - in Lib Dem marginals with other parties, both Labour and Tory voters might have backed LDs as second choice to avoid the other main party getting in. I'm pretty sure that's why LDs wanted AV in the first place: with a better reputation it could easily have worked out in their favour in seats where they were traditionally placed second behind one of the big two.

But my pronouncement on UKIP is down to a simple proportional assignment of seats to parties, assuming that we're not voting on individual seats (a situation which will *never* produce a proportional result, regardless of the voting system used). The house would be fairly evenly balanced between left and right wing parties, but UKIP would be a really significant voting block on the right wing. As an aside, despite getting a kicking in the polls the same calculations would give the Lib Dems almost as many seats as they started with from the previous parliament. Although the party split would be very different, ideologically the house wouldn't look that different....

[HalloweenJack]

oh the wonder of hindsight


http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...ml#post3462703

[HalloweenJack]

I wonder if we will see David Miliband return to UK politics? He isn't eligible to stand in the leadership election as he is not a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party, but he could return in the event of a by-election or at the next general election.

well the union choice failed - the voters are sick and tired of being held to ransom and this is what happened - kicked out of Scotland and kicked out of safe seats.....


UNITE need to take the message