It's just a few months away now.....and already the game is afoot. In the first of a series of deeply maddening polls.......I invite you to indicate your intent, and your reasons.
I tend to believe that a high proportion of regular voters are fixed already - and probably always have been. Floating voters by definition are swayable, but party electoral "bribes" can be dangerous, with a tendency to backfireCould it be that they are fixed in their intent already? If that is the case, what would sway them (if anything)?
This is an argument I've always been irritated with.....how many other voters (who voted red or blue) felt the same way? You either vote for the party who closest meet your views, or accept that what you are doing is voting tactically - against the party you don't want. The number of people I've met over the years who've told me - "I'd vote Liberal but it'd be a wasted vote" ......I've always considered the Liberal option, but being pragmatic - once I achieved voting age, it was clear to me that (living in a historical marginal) my vote would be wasted in that context.
I think you are unusual if not influenced by national personalities - after all, if your chosen party are elected you know who's going to be Prime Minister......I'm sure that most people vote for a party rather than whoever is standing locally - probably sensibly, since most MPs toe the party line when it comes to voting in the House, although I would be much happier voting for an MP who was active in promoting constituency issues rather than one pursuing their own political promotion interests.Personalities at a national level never come into it. Locally I'm not sure they would either. Having said that, when I started voting our local MP was Michael Fallon and if ever there was a little twerp who might be well-placed to reinforce anti-Tory feeling, he was it.
There's still time for you then :lol:People are arguably liable to develop conservative behaviours and outlooks in later life.
But what would you want to happen when none of the above win?<Start rant> I'd like to vote for a proper alternative to the big parties. I put Green in the poll, and I'm really not sure about that (as a car driver, lol). But I can't bear to vote for any of the normal parties, mendacious, self-serving, hypocritical, souless, corporate-sellouts that they are. And don't get me started on Farage and his party - look under that false bonhomie - that man is not your friend ! <End rant > (Mods - feel free to repost this to the Rant thread -)
As some background for Steveisfrowning's research into our choices and thoughts in going forward to the election, I always used to vote Labour (and further left if the option was available), but after Blair and the Iraq war, I just can't. I once voted Libdem, but will never vote for that bunch of Quislings again after what they have enabled the Conservatives to get away with.
I'd be surprised if any of the main parties can promise anything that would change my mind and even more surprised if they did, then actually enacted it in office! I'm more likely to change from a green vote and just go spoil my ballot paper. Still, quite some time to go, and my revulsion at the Tories (and Osbourne in particular) may just make me vote for "not remotely red Ed" as some sort of damage limitation.
I seem to be a bit of an exception to the supposed rule that you get more small "C" conservative as you get older...I seem to get angrier and more disillusioned with the whole of our political establishment. The expenses scandals, secret trials legislation, super-injunctions, gratuitous use of D notices, outsourcing of services, creeping privatisation of the NHS, lack of accountability on grounds of "commercial confidence", and the ever increasingly intrusive "security" legislation all of the principal parties are pushing are some of the many reasons why I have no trust in them any more.
I've always gone to the polling booth and voted (well, once I spoilt my paper) and consider it my duty as a citizen to do so, but ideally, I'd like to see a "none of the above" option on the ballot paper, and to have that number counted and listed at each election.