Tag archives for Politics - Page 3
How to Properly Spoil Your Vote
How to Properly Spoil Your Vote What if I don't like any candidate? You might be one of the many people that doesn't like the main parties, and none of the other candidates standing in your area represent your views either. There are several things you can do. 1. Stand for election yourself (or help someone else to run) 2. Vote Tactically 3. Spoil your vote by writing on the ballot paper Spoil Your Vote Properly When it comes down to it and you realise that you really cannot commit to any candidate. Don't be disheartened. Do go to the polling station. Deliberately spoil your vote. Be Deliberate There is received wisdom that most ballot papers are spoiled accidentally. Personally I've spoiled a number of ballot papers and none of them has been accidental. So if you decide to spoil your vote…
Tactical Voting 101
Why you should consider tactical voting, and how to vote tactically. What is Tactical Voting? Share of the vote received by Conservatives (blue), Whigs/Liberals/Liberal Democrats (orange), Labour (red) and others (grey) in general elections since 1832. Table "Summary Results of General Elections 1832–2005 (UK)", British electoral facts, 1832–2006, by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, 7th edition, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-2712-8, p. 59. Election 2010 Results, BBC News. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This is nothing to do with military tactics, no need to dress in combat gear or sneak around. Tactical voting is about looking wider than just your own constituency and trying to understand the best outcome for the party that you believe supports you across the country. Why would I want to vote tactically? Mostly this comes about when the candidate that would best represent you is quite unlikely to win the seat…
General Election Opinion Polls
All the opinion polls that you look at for the UK General Election in May show a hung Parliament as the most likely outcome. However, things are likely to crystallise a bit more over the next few weeks now that Parliament has been prorogued and the election officially called (although we've not had any doubt over the date this time). If you read my previous series on the opinion polling for the Scottish Independence Referendum then you might be familiar with the graphs I produced. However that approach isn't really helpful for the General Election. With the Independence Referendum there was a single binary question, and the aggregate national answer was what counted. So to predict the result you could simply track the polls and look at the trends. The 2015 General Election is a series of 650 first past the…
Warning! Politics and Elections Ahead
A ballot paper used in the 2005 UK General Election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in the UK it won't have escaped your notice that we have a General Election in a few weeks (on Thursday 7th May). Campaigning hasn't moved into high gear yet, but it will next week when Parliament is prorogued. (Maybe that word implies a lot about our politicians, pro rogues!) don't care about politics? Voting isn't mandatory in the UK. However, t if you don't vote don't expect anyone to listen to you complain about the government or anything affected by what it does. That includes the economy, housing, immigration, defence, policing, traffic, trains, prices of things, the NHS, public services, or just about everything else. In fact you can probably only talk about the weather, reality TV and football. I personally don't want…
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Scottish Independence – Make Sure You Vote
August and September 2014 opinion poll results on Scottish Independence I've scoured the Web for all the Scottish Independence opinion polls I could find. My conclusion is that it's pretty much neck and neck in the final straight. So if you've got a vote it's vital that you use it. There was a slew of polls released on 11th & 12th September, and as you can see from the graph they basically overlap. This means that the differences between them are all down to the margin of error in the polling methodology. Given how close it is every vote will count. If you haven't yet made up your mind then it is time to do so, see my previous post on cutting through the bias inherent in every campaigner's rhetoric. You might also want to skim Robert Hutton's Would They…