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UK - Election 2015

Darat said:
Looks like Labour were right, vote SNP get Cameron.
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Labour lost because they' suck,that's it. They re like a crook caught red handed that still blames someone else.
The SNP won in Scotland(hooray) because they dont suck and resonate with the people of Scotland.

Oh by the way,you should check your arithmetic. You would see even if we here in Scotland had went labour then the Tories would still have won. I-and everyone I have spoke to up hear-no longer see the difference between a rich party in red,and a rich party in blue. Well the Tories haw-haw when they talk,and labour bigwigs say "innit" instead of "is it not" but otherwise they are both upper class prats who despise the lower orders in Scottish society.

Let's not forget labours love of illegal wars and turning blind eyes to torture. Yep they stopped being the party of the working class in Scotland long ago. I stayed up all night watching the election. Labour politicians basically said over and over that people were voting SNP because they were dumb. If that does not show utter contempt for the ordinary voter then what does.
They are just bitter that the SNP won. Labour mps are now like the Tory mps in scotland-rarer than pandas.

Well said giz,that's exactly what labour are implying about Scotland.
 
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skeptichaggis said:
Labour lost because they' suck,that's it. They re like a crook caught red handed that still blames someone else.
The SNP won in Scotland(hooray) because they dont suck and resonate with the people of Scotland.

Oh by the way,you should check your arithmetic. You would see even if we here in Scotland had went labour then the Tories would still have won. I-and everyone I have spoke to up hear-no longer see the difference between a rich party in red,and a rich party in blue. Well the Tories haw-haw when they talk,and labour bigwigs say "innit" instead of "is it not" but otherwise they are both upper class prats who despise the lower orders in Scottish society.

Let's not forget labours love of illegal wars and turning blind eyes to torture. Yep they stopped being the party of the working class in Scotland long ago. I stayed up all night watching the election. Labour politicians basically said over and over that people were voting SNP because they were dumb. If that does not show utter contempt for the ordinary voter then what does.
They are just bitter that the SNP won. Labour mps are now like the Tory mps in scotland-rarer than pandas.
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And how's all that going to work out now that the Tories have a majority and can tell the SNP to suck it? SNP were banking on being in a coalition, now they have nothing.
 
Giz said:
Is "politically uneducated" the same as "didn't vote the same way I did"?
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Well a lot of people who I speak to are politically uneducated. They have no idea of what is in the parties' manifestos, haven't even bothered to read the leaflets that have come through the door, don't keep up to date with campaign developments and base their choice of candidate on:

  • The way they have always voted (regardless of how that party may have changed over the years)
  • Gut feel (so-and-so looks shifty)
  • Snippets picked up from the very biased media (i.e. basing their knowledge of the Convervatives on the Daily Mirror or their knowledge of Labour on the Daily Mail)
  • Misapprehensions of what the parties stand for (I've heard people saying they're voting UKIP to help protect the NHS from privatisation)

edited to add.....

Which does not mean that they should not be allowed to vote, nor should it mean that their vote counts any less than someone who has bothered to educate themselves politically but it is frustrating for someone who has invested time and effort. It's like being on a jury and deciding guilt or innocence based on whether you think the defendant's eyes are beady instead of listening and considering the evidence - I'm sure that happens too (certainly was the case with one of the jurors on a case Mrs Don was on the jury for).
 
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If you divide the number of national votes for each party by the number of MPs elected, you find that the Green MP received over 44 votes for each vote received by an SNP MP, and the UKIP MP received over 149 votes for same.

The ratios go like this:

Code: 
001.00 SNP
001.32 Conservative
001.55 Labour
011.55 Lib Dem
044.45 Green
149.21 UKIP
I've not bothered to calculate the ratios for the Irish or Welsh Parties - but I expect they would be near the top of the list.

To put it in terms of total votes, UKIP received 2.66 votes for every one SNP vote - but SNP got 56 MPs whereas UKIP got 1.
 
ceptimus said:
To put it in terms of total votes, UKIP received 2.66 votes for every one SNP vote - but SNP got 56 MPs whereas UKIP got 1.
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They got 2.66 times as many votes but competed in 10 times the number of seats. The vast majority of the UK population didn't have the opportunity to vote SNP (or Plaid or Sinn Fein or DUP or whatever)
 
Giz said:
Is "politically uneducated" the same as "didn't vote the same way I did"?
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Indeed. Much as I believe (and pretty much know) that a huge proportion of the electorate are either a) entrenched for one particular party regardless of circumstances or b) choosing who to vote for based on factors which are largely unrelated to policy issues......


......that's the price one pays for all the benefits of having a proper democratic electoral system. And if/when any one "side" effectively starts blaming the electorate for making the "wrong decision", then that should raise a large red flag.


It's also worth bearing in mind that the extremely exclusive suffrage rules that existed in the UK right up to the mid-20th century were essentially predicated on the notion that only certain people could be trusted to vote "properly", and/or that only certain groups of people had "earned the right to vote". Would anyone really like to revisit those days? Thought not.
 
anglolawyer said:
He called Iraq correctly.
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He might have done so, but I opt for the famous "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" phenomenon to explain that. He was hardly objective on the subject of Iraq, after all.

And who can forget his address to Saddam Hussein in 1994, in which he uttered the immortal words: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." :D
 
LondonJohn said:
Indeed. Much as I believe (and pretty much know) that a huge proportion of the electorate are either a) entrenched for one particular party regardless of circumstances or b) choosing who to vote for based on factors which are largely unrelated to policy issues......


......that's the price one pays for all the benefits of having a proper democratic electoral system. And if/when any one "side" effectively starts blaming the electorate for making the "wrong decision", then that should raise a large red flag.


It's also worth bearing in mind that the extremely exclusive suffrage rules that existed in the UK right up to the mid-20th century were essentially predicated on the notion that only certain people could be trusted to vote "properly", and/or that only certain groups of people had "earned the right to vote". Would anyone really like to revisit those days? Thought not.
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Exactly. The onus is on the parties and politicians to make their case to the electorate. If they can't do it, they've only themselves to blame. Labour cocked this up utterly. Although they do have the additional hurdle of a hostile press. Still, they know that and need to come up with a new way of dealing with it.
 
The Don said:
They got 2.66 times as many votes but competed in 10 times the number of seats. The vast majority of the UK population didn't have the opportunity to vote SNP (or Plaid or Sinn Fein or DUP or whatever)
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Okay then, compare against the Conservative Party who contested every seat (except a few in Ireland).

Nationally, UKIP got one vote for every three Tory votes (actually a trifle over that). So if UKIP MPs had been returned in the same ratio, we would have 113 of them.
 
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lonepinealex said:
And how's all that going to work out now that the Tories have a majority and can tell the SNP to suck it? SNP were banking on being in a coalition, now they have nothing.
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Every time Scotland's elected MPs are ignored by Westminster more Scots will turn on the union,that will have the effect of increasing support for independence at the next referendum-which we all know is coming,the SNP are not even denying that. This could turn out to the SNP good,after all if our elected MPs are being ignored by the union,what's the point of staying in the union.

This was always a win,win for us. Either we would play as a party a big role in UK wide politics, or we would play NO role which would show Westminsters complete contempt for the Scottish voters.
 
MikeG said:
Careful that you don't equate "didn't produce the result you wanted" with "doesn't work". Britain has ended up with the government it voted for. It may not have the opposition it voted for, proportionally, but a one-off nationalist backlash in Scotland has skewed things vastly.
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Oh no, I'm aware of that. I'm talking about those that don't vote because they confess they don't understand the issues, don't know what a 'manifesto' is and believe that UKIP is slightly left of centre.

There's a lot of them.
 
3point14 said:
Oh no, I'm aware of that. I'm talking about those that don't vote because they confess they don't understand the issues, don't know what a 'manifesto' is and believe that UKIP is slightly left of centre.

There's a lot of them.
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There's nothing you can do about that, there always will be a lot of them.

The parties know this though, and should have strategies for dealing with it when it comes to how they campaign and how they deal with the press.
 
LondonJohn said:
Yes - though people are apt to lie to the supplementary questions too.

A better approach might be to look back at poll-vs-actual data in 2015 and 2010, and try to find predictable patterns underpinning the disparity between the popular vote shares given in each case. For example - at a highly simplistic level - imagine if you could see that where the polls indicated a Lab/Con share of 38%/36%, the actual popular vote was 35%/38%. You might (again, hugely simplistically) deduce that next time round, you need to apply a -3% corrective factor to the Lab share and a +2% corrective factor to the Con share, in order to translate the polls onto predicted actual outcomes.
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I'd be staggered if this doesn't already happen. If it doesn't, then of course it should. But I assume that it already does, and even so, they were staggeringly wrong.
 
skeptichaggis said:
So did most of the entire world.

Quick edit to say the person directly below said what is true way,way better than I did.
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LondonJohn said:
He might have done so, but I opt for the famous "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" phenomenon to explain that. He was hardly objective on the subject of Iraq, after all.

And who can forget his address to Saddam Hussein in 1994, in which he uttered the immortal words: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." :D
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Well, this belongs on another thread so I'll just say you are both wrong and leave it at that :D
 
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