The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

Myranda

Well, unless I grow 30,000 more rights to vote I'm note sure I *can* make a non-conservative difference here

Fretwired

Budgie said:

Derbyshire Dales? 

Bidley

North East Cambs!

Fretwired

Bidley said:

North East Cambs!

Myranda

Do we ALL live in conservative safe seats or is the maths skewed?

ICBM

Sporky said:

ICBM said:

Sporky said:

And if everyone voted for what they wanted, instead of following all this "x can't win" crap, we might have something better approaching a democracy.

Not under this electoral system we wouldn't.

We would have rule by the largest minority, overriding the majority - which is not a real democracy.

Well, (a) I did say "better approaching a democracy", and (b) we'd be much more likely to have hung parliaments so more views would have to be taken into account and more consensus decisions struck.

No, not at all - people voting for what they want in a FPTP system usually produces rule by the largest minority,  is unlikely to produce a hung parliament, and especially unlikely to produce one which has a large third party and no possibility of a minority government.

The only time this has happened since WWII was the 2010 coalition government.

Under FPTP it's actually much more democratic to vote tactically if you can - that would ensure that the government is the first or second choice of the most people. What tends to happen when people vote for what they really want is that you get the third choice of the most people.

So really, we just need a better electoral system...

NickBotfield

Lancashire West please.

Cirrus

@Fretwired  can I see Birmingham Northfield? It's a bit closer a race, I think...

english_bob

Myranda said:

Do we ALL live in conservative safe seats or is the maths skewed?

I live in Leicester West. At the last election every other party on the ballot combined polled about 2000 more votes than Labour.

Fretwired

NickBotfield said:

Lancashire West please.

Sporky

ICBM said:

So really, we just need a better electoral system...

I'm not going to disagree with that!

Fretwired

Cirrus said:

@Fretwired  can I see Birmingham Northfield? It's a bit closer a race, I think...

TheBigDipper

Fretwired said:

Diane Abbott pranked ...

Ms Abbott was caught out by an email prankster who sent her a message purporting to be from Seumas Milne, Mr Corbyn’s director of communications. She apparently said in a response: “Do you still want to add colour to the illness story? If so maybe we should speak.” In reply to a second email from “@Sinon_Reborn”, she said: “I am not sure what colour I can add . . . I am worried about telling untruths about my health which are easily disproved”.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4578646/Diane-Abbott-fooled-Seumas-Milne-email-prankster.html?ITO=1490

Just to play devils advocate here. I've no love for Ms Abbott, but I'm disturbed by this...

Assume she really is ill for a second. Her reply to email one could merely be a sick person refusing to go along with a PR embellishment and wanting a conversation about it instead. Her second reply is possibly saying "I won't lie about the details of my illness, and it would be easy to get found out even if I agreed to it". 

What people will will remember from this is that she isn't ill and is lying. That could be true, but the selective bits of these emails don't prove anything. 

Another new low...

Bidley

Fretwired said:

Bidley said:

North East Cambs!

Almost makes me want to stay at home and have an extra wank tomorrow

fields5069

Fretwired said:

fields5069 said:

Are any of them reputable? I'm struggling to find it in the Guardian.

The Times ... Google is your friend

Found it! Surprised The Times isn't making more of it, I had to go hunting. It's only "apparent" news still.

fields5069

Newport West please.

stickyfiddle

ICBM said:

Sporky said:

ICBM said:

Sporky said:

And if everyone voted for what they wanted, instead of following all this "x can't win" crap, we might have something better approaching a democracy.

Not under this electoral system we wouldn't.

We would have rule by the largest minority, overriding the majority - which is not a real democracy.

Well, (a) I did say "better approaching a democracy", and (b) we'd be much more likely to have hung parliaments so more views would have to be taken into account and more consensus decisions struck.

No, not at all - people voting for what they want in a FPTP system usually produces rule by the largest minority,  is unlikely to produce a hung parliament, and especially unlikely to produce one which has a large third party and no possibility of a minority government.

The only time this has happened since WWII was the 2010 coalition government.

Under FPTP it's actually much more democratic to vote tactically if you can - that would ensure that the government is the first or second choice of the most people. What tends to happen when people vote for what they really want is that you get the third choice of the most people.

So really, we just need a better electoral system...

The german system is very good. IIRC you get 2 votes; one for your local MP, and another for the national level (ie the party/person you want to be in charge). Each winning local gets a seat based on the total of #1 votes in each constituency, then extra parliamentary seats are added from a "reserve MP list" until the ratio matches the makeup of #2 votes, and the winning party at the national level gets to have its leader in power.

There is no point voting tactically because there isn't really any way to do so. The issue is that it's complicated and not in the interests of any majority-holding party to bring in.

The issue is much like Warren Buffet's idea to fix the government budget deficits - simply bring in a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. But no-one in power will ever vote for it. I would actually argue that deficits can be ok in order to continue investment in infrastructure, but longer-term sustained deficits are ultimately going to cause problems.

Cirrus

Thanks for that Fret. I must not be understanding the top left graph though, as Labour won in 2015? Or is that graph showing "of those who voted in 2015, how do they plan to vote now?" or something else?

LoFi

Could you do Winchester please? Used to be LD, heavily Con last couple of times, but all of the likely Lab voters I've spoken to have said they're voting tactically for LD.

Emp_Fab

@Fretwired ...before you end up being asked to do the entire country! - could I ask you to do Gower please - it is the most marginal constituency in the country (as well as mine!).  We've been Labour for 90% of the past century with a couple of Liberal MPs waaay back, but only went Tory by 27 votes for first time ever in the last general election.  Ta.