London Mayoral Poll: 1st and 2nd prefs

[scifisam]

Why? It forces people to vote for a mainstream candidate or waste their vote, which makes it very difficult for small parties to record any sizeable vote ever, which makes it very difficult for them to establish themselves as a credible alternative. With FPTP you can either make a protest vote, or you can vote for the least worst option out of those with a chance of winning. With this system, you can do both.

The system would be a lot better with two entirely separate rounds of voting, and better voter education about what their options are, but FPTP is shite.

If it's too complicated, just vote as normal and leave the second choice blank.

Perhaps that helps for the Assembly, but you can't have proportional representation when it comes to Mayors, unless you cut bits off all the candidates according to how many votes they got and then stuck all together to make a Frankenmayor.

 

[Badgers]

http://standardonline.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

 

[Harold Hill]

in the poll immediately before an election, yes, I think you're right. But polls conducted weeks or months before the day can't be measured, they can only be compared against other polls. To some extent they're used as campaigning tools by those that commission them, used to bolster or undermine the resilience of candidates.

I don't think it's an exact science, so repeatedly showing BJ as front runner may help strengthen the vote for KL, which would backfire on the ES beautifully.

Isn't there also a belief that polls are unrealistic because both Labour and Tory voters will say don't know or undecided because of a stigma attached to either (Iraq, sleaze etc)

 

[han]

Ken first, Sian Berry (Green) second. I'd ideally put Sian Berry first, but keeping Boris out is just so important in this one, that's my reasoning.

 

[Badgers]

Only a few days left now till the vote...

Guess that by the weekend we will know if we live in a comedy city or not!!!
Was met by some suited jokers distributing 'Back Boris' leaflets outside Oval tube station this morning. They seemed to be getting ignored in the main!

 

[Roadkill]

I posted this on a thread in General, but maybe it's worth putting here as well:



Juvenile, perhaps, but it made me laugh.

 

[Matt S]

han,

Huh? The whole point of the first/second pref system is that you *can* put Sian first and Ken second, and your vote for Ken will still count!

Matt