What drives the British electorate?

Having had an interest in politics from way-back I have been watching how the face of British politics has changed over the last few years and this has encouraged me to think about what drives the British voters.

I know that a lot of us come from fixed political philosophies and people like those are liable to keep voting for the candidates that wear the correct colour of rosette rather than looking deeply into the policies of each candidate. Having said that I have also noted that many voters now come from the demographic known as the "floating voters" and it is these voters that often have the making or breaking of potential governments in their hands when they go to lay their little crosses.

The question I really want to ask is: Do the voters, ( if not voting in a traditional left or right direction ), vote for the party that promises them the most at the time rather than voting for any specific party philosophy, or are the British voters actually far better educated about what each of the parties stand for and they vote accordingly ?

In other words... Are the great British electorate BOUGHT each time that they go to the polls or in the main do they think carefully about what will be the result of where they lay their individual crosses ?

Regards....

Papaumau.

Good question Papa, personally I tend to vote for my local mp and what he promises for my area. On the wider basis I hold right wing tendencies with a social conscience and there is no party that truly represents me and my views. In my view the 3 main parties are wannabe socialist/tories and as such none of them give the voter a view of a promising future.

"Bought" is an ugly word which officially ceased to mean influencing Voters directly at the end of the XIX Century.

Realistically, however, self-interest is never very far away in Politics, human nature being as it is. MPs hope to sell The feel-good factor to an electorate only too happy to buy.

As Party Politics increasingly disputes only the middle ground, so voters come to believe it doesn't matter how they vote, and will ultimately stop bothering.

The British electorate needs to know that many MPs have secret second identities. Take Sir Tony Baldry, for example, who you may know better as his alter ego Sir Les Patterson...

(oxfordmail.co.uk)

" It is, naturally, a great privilege to represent the Conservative Party in Parliament"


(adelaidenow.com.au)

" Strewth mate , and dangle me didgeridoo- it's fair dinkum being a bloody Tory MP , no dangers..."

Banbury MP Sir Tony Baldry lost control of his car after he opened his door to pick up a dropped parking ticket
He hit a portable toilet before careering into a Poundland store wall, a van, three stationary cars and a concrete bollard

Toilet paper was plastered to the car
Sir Baldry said it was 'a very scary incident'
He returned a negative breath test to police




By Alex Ward

PUBLISHED:13:31, 8 September 2012| UPDATED:13:52, 8 September 2012


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200200/Tory-MP-Tony-Baldry-crashes-car-portable-toilet-Poundland-parked-cars.html#ixzz2LwTfSoH0
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" He returned a negative breath test to police"



(libdemvoice.org)

"Blimey, Cobber and wobble me wombat- I swear I'd never touched a drop of the electric soup for several minutes before the prang..."

Do you know who I am, Constable????

Yeah, all very amusing cobbers....BUT....I think the fact still remains that much of the electorate, ( that do not follow a blind party-political path ), almost always, ( as tlttf says ), vote for the party or individual that promises them the most.

As the hustings for the next general election get more intense we are going to see rightist and leftist candidates promising things that such people from such directions should not really offer if they were to stick to their party philosophies, but they KNOW that the greatest amount of votes potentially available to them will come from the centre-ground and not from the extremist right or left wings.

The sad thing is that once these party-political animals are back in power they will almost instantly revert to type and will gather together in leftist and rightist enclaves and once again will serve the ones that will only also give them the most from any particular political direction.

In my estimation, a perfect example of this is coming from the Tories at this precise moment as David Cameron tried like a bear to show the Tories as centre-ground moderates while his feet are being cut from him by his Eurohating and xenophobic pals on the extreme right. Everything that Cameron tries to do that will attract centre-ground voters to his side is being destroyed by the back-benchers in the 1922 Committee; and therein lies the true power in the Tory party.

Knowing this means that every vote that goes to the right will finish up being controlled by the hard-right and will NEVER serve the ordinary people of Britain and that is why I unashamedly vote Labour because almost all of the extremists in the once Communist-led unions are now dead and gone and the only possible way forward in the future will be with Ed Miliband and his truly middle-ground Socialist, ( not Blairist ), supporters.

Regards....

Papaumau.

I am always amazed to see news footage of Candidates and their supporters knocking on peoples doors to ask for the residents support at the up coming election.....

Having lived in the same house for the past 23 years this has never happened to me......all we ever get is a leaflet pushed through the letter box...This even happens in local elections.....

Then people say the the electorate are not interested in voting!

Our local MP seems to spend every opportunity asking questions about conditions for service men and women..Whilst I know that he is an ex-officer I was under the impression that he was the MP for this constituency not the Armed Forces......

astradt1 wrote:I am always amazed to see news footage of Candidates and their supporters knocking on peoples doors to ask for the residents support at the up coming election.....

Having lived in the same house for the past 23 years this has never happened to me......all we ever get is a leaflet pushed through the letter box...This even happens in local elections.....

Then people say the the electorate are not interested in voting!

Our local MP seems to spend every opportunity asking questions about conditions for service men and women..Whilst I know that he is an ex-officer I was under the impression that he was the MP for this constituency not the Armed Forces......

Are you a regular voter for a particular party, mate? Having done a fair bit of door-knocking, and because it's rarely possible to knock on absolutely every door, the prioritisation done by at least the Labour party is more or less as follows, based on notes from previous campaigns (which are kept on a database and circulated to door-knockers):

1) Likely to vote but undecided as to for whom
2) Previous Labour voter but thought not to have voted last time according to previous doorstep campaign notes
3) Unknown
4) Strong Labour voter

It's not an absolute list, as days are organised around neighbourhoods, but if you're a solid Labour voter and live in a strong Labour area, for example, chances are fairly high that you won't have anyone knocking on your door.

In our by-election last November, we were proud that we did actually knock on every door in the constituency - but lots of people were out/didn't answer, so they still might not know they received a visit.

The LibDems, bless 'em, knocked on a lot of doors in the neighbouring constituency without realising they were in the wrong place. We didn't disabuse them of their misunderstanding!

Not what he promises Papa, rather what he/she have proven as fact over many years. Personally I wouldn't mind a euro/xenophobic party in power for a term or two having watched the socialist/labour party steadily destroy the fabric of this country. In my eyes both those in power and those waiting in the wings are left/centre politics and other than a few word changes neither offer the electorate anything new, all want the centre ground all suck up to the financial sector once in power.

"In my eyes both those in power and those waiting in the wings are left/centre politics ...."

Grateful for that explanation, tlttf. Not sure what the 1922 Committee will make of it but I hope they have a defibrillating machine on standby.

The 21st century and the British electorate still avail themselves to the whims of aristo toff bully boys.

We've come a long way in a few centuries......not!

On the subject of political canvassers knocking on doors, the local Conservative Party hereabouts learned some time ago that it was not the best use of their time to seek to discuss the prospects for gaining my support for their candidate...

A bowl of washing-up water dispensed from an upstairs window can be very informative.

But I still ask the Tories to provide me with transport to the Polling Station where I can register my vote for their opponents.

"A bowl of washing-up water dispensed from an upstairs window can be very informative"

Call me old-fashioned, but I do prefer the politeness of the personally-delivered message face-to-face. Witnessing the reaction of the recipient is the principal pleasure...

Papaumau. Maybe the first thing to say is that the electorate at the time of the 2010 election was 45.6 million people, of whom about 29.7 million bothered to vote. There’s scope there for an awful lot of reasons as to why people put their crosses where they do!

Fifty or sixty years ago, people tended to vote as their families always had, and 90% of the population voted either Labour or Tory (that figure had fallen to 65% by 2010). Most, but not all, people voted according to class divisions, the better off voted Tory and the less well off voted Labour. That old division is still there, as any political map of the UK will demonstrate (just compare who represents the large northern cities with who represents the southern shire counties), but less markedly so.

Yes, some of us do have fixed political philosophies. I’d rather cut off my right arm that vote for the Tories, since I detest an ideology which deliberately creates inequality, encourages greed and selfishness, and is underpinned by a series of lies such as “everything is better in private hands”. H. G. Wells said he was a socialist because he “didn’t think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else”. I believe that all but the poorest should be taxed on a progressive scale for the privilege of living in a society, which in return will provide our needs for healthcare, education, welfare if it’s required and protection via the police and fire services. I also believe in a big state – and so does everyone else when a natural disaster or terrorist atrocity occurs.

Of course, not everyone delves into politics as much as some of us do, and their responses are a lot simpler and easier to manipulate. Murdoch’s incessant campaign against Gordon Brown in the run-up to the 2010 election showed the frightening power of the media. Enough people were duped into seeing Brown as a ‘baddy’, not stopping to realise that the arrogant, sleazy toff who was to replace him was a thousand times worse. Sadly, tabloid readers are the most gullible of all, and as George W. Bush told us: “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on".

This will no doubt offend some, but it appears that more intelligent people are likely to vote for left-wing parties and policies. Research at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, has suggested that “those with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate towards socially conservative right-wing ideologies”. (John Stuart Mill had a slightly different observation: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives".)
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t334-are-atheists-and-left-wingers-more-intelligent

We don’t have a presidential system in this country, but too many people have been dumbed down and have an ‘X Factor’ mentality after years of watching crap on television. We had ‘Cleggmania’ (although it didn’t last long), partly because Nick Clegg was perceived as being the best-looking of the party leaders at the last election. In the 1940s and 1950s, nobody bothered about what Attlee and Churchill looked like, but we now have an obsession with personalities that has led quite a few commentators to conclude that a party led by a bald man is very unlikely to win an election. On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s electoral success is because he achieved celebrity status posing as an affable idiot on television programmes such as HIGN4U. The truth of course is very different; as Marcus Brigstocke reminded us: “On the occasions when Boris's buffoon mask slips, you catch a glimpse of a truly ruthless, boorish, blinkered, over-privileged thug.”

Some selfish people will happily vote Tory it means their council tax might be cut or frozen, regardless of whether that means other people lose their jobs in the process. Others will vote Labour if they use state services like education and the NHS and they want to see them well financed. No doubt most people vote for whoever they think will look after their best interests, whilst probably pretending to themselves that what is best for them is also best for the rest of the country as well.

Some people may vote for a candidate because they know him or her personally, regardless of political affiliations, and maybe because they think the person has the interests of the constituency at heart. All the evidence is that this form of voting has only a marginal effect; when there is a strong national swing, it largely eclipses any local factors. If you’ve recently lost your job as a direct result of government policies – and I’m thinking of people like those 710,000 public sector workers – you are unlikely to vote for those responsible for your situation. Catholics may be inclined to vote for a candidate who opposes abortion or equal marriage. As I started by saying, in an electorate of over 45 million people, there will be many different reasons why people vote the way they do – that is, if they feel inclined to bother to vote at all.

Excellent post, Ivan.

Thank you.

Yes Ivan, it is obvious that you are a very thoughtful and aware individual. I do wish that more of the electorate were like you.

There is no doubt that there are still enclaves of rightist and leftist opinion and that these enclaves cleave to the society from which they originate. That is normal and will always be so.

The ones I think about are the ones that float around the centre-ground waiting for the crumbs that might come down from above as it is they that make or break political parties and governments.

Of course the politicos know this and that is why they always appear to be reasonable and centrist when they come knocking on our doors as the more people they persuade that they are centrist the better chance they will have of getting elected.

The trick, I believe, is to see past the plausibility of the political workers/canvassers and to ask pointed questions of them that they cannot veer away from. Only then will we know who they are going to truly serve.

IT is an easy-out to believe that all political candidates are liars and con-men/women and that they only tell us what they think we want to hear, but again, if we can see past this plausibility we can find out exactly what these people stand for and who they are going to support when and if they do eventually get the power.

Of course this is much easier to do if we hold our desires safely inside the political visions of the left or right as then we do not really have to think very much when we go to vote.

Sadly, it is true that the British electorate - in general - are not only rather jaundiced now, but they are also quite tired when it comes to actually making their brains work at times of general elections. That is why I think it is essential that the people who want to truly treat us with fairness should get across what they plan to do to make this come about.

As has already been said above, many politicos and their servants during election hustings only go to the doors of the people that they think will vote for them anyway and that is why we never see candidates from different parties coming to doors that are what they see as within any particular negative social-demographic.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

It may be reasonable to expect that this thread will explode into commentary once the "Eastleigh" result has been declared.

Who will claim to be the first to say, "I told you so."?

Eastleigh - the Defeated Tory Candidate Speaks Out

(sodahead.com)

" I knew I was doomed once those Cabinet Ministers came down to 'help' my campaign..."

(standard.co.uk)

"Even Kermit wouldn't have voted for me..."

Hello Phil,

After the recent Rennard allegations it's refreshing to see people questioning dated, and sexist, attitudes to women in politics, don't you think?

Yes, I am all for it , sickchip! Count me in for any campaign you are considering waging...

"Q."What drives the British electorate?

"A." Sex. It's never far from their thoughts.

It was quite clear from last nights result that what drives the British electorate is 'None of the above'

blueturando wrote:-
It was quite clear from last nights result that what drives the British electorate is 'None of the above'

Thank you for that detailed and profound analysis, though I’m not sure if you can extrapolate the motivations of ‘the British electorate’ from one seat out of 650. Furthermore, the turnout was quite high for a by-election, with 52.8% of the Eastleigh electorate deciding to vote for 'one of the above'.

The constituency of Eastleigh was created in 1955 and the Tories won it at every general election up to and including 1992. Then in 1994, the Tory MP died whilst having an erotic experience with an orange, and the Lib Dems won the by-election and have held the seat ever since. Labour has never won in Eastleigh, even coming third when Tony Blair won a landslide nationally in 1997, and boundary changes have moved the most Labour-inclined part of the constituency into a neighbouring one in Southampton.

The Tories thought they were going to win back Eastleigh yesterday. The national opinion polls have shown for ages that support for the Lib Dems has dropped much more than support for them. So they ordered all their MPs to go to Eastleigh at least three times. The result – their appalling gaffe-prone candidate, ‘the Sarah Palin of the south coast’, finished third, losing 14% of the Tories’ 2010 vote and leaving Cameron humiliated.

The Lib Dems retained the seat, despite the impending incarceration of the outgoing MP, the bad publicity surrounding the Lord Rennard allegations and a 14% drop in their support as well since 2010, which was broadly in line with the opinion polls. Most of the left-inclined Lib Dems have already voted with their feet, but maybe the rest will stay loyal and help the party prevent a complete wipeout in the next election. If so, they will prevent the Tories from winning in 2015 many of their 38 target seats where they were in second place to the Lib Dems in 2010.

UKIP will claim that it’s the real winner of Eastleigh. The party increased its share of the vote from 3.6% to 27.8%, which is spectacular however you view it. But this was a by-election, and the traditional ‘protest vote’ which used to go to the Lib Dems has now gone to UKIP. Sadly, it was achieved by playing up the “immigration is a problem” card, causing one wag on Twitter to describe UKIP as “the BNP of the Notting Hill set”.

However, those who think that UKIP will achieve anything other than split the right-wing vote at the next general election are deluding themselves. Scrutinise the party’s policies – on the EU (which isn’t a priority for most people), immigration (which never achieved anything for the BNP), the flat tax (a deeply unfair and regressive measure likely to cause rioting just as the poll tax did) and education (vouchers for parents) – and you can soon see why UKIP is likely to win no Westminster seats in 2015. How many UKIP politicians can you name? Apart from the pompous Mr Toad (‘The Daily Mail’ made flesh), they now have Mr Neil ‘cash for questions’ Hamilton and a skinhead called Nuttall, but you’d be hard pressed to name anyone else.

Labour came fourth in Eastleigh, suffering from the traditional ‘squeezed third party’ syndrome, just as the Tories ended up fourth in Middlesbrough and fifth in Rotherham. Nevertheless, in a curious sort of way, Labour could be the real winner from Eastleigh. The Lib Dem vote collapsed in Corby (‘third party squeeze’), enabling Labour to defeat the Tories easily, and if that’s repeated in a general election, it will swing many Tory seats to Labour. If the opinion polls are right about the Lib Dem vote nationally, Labour will defeat them in places where they are currently second, such as Cambridge and Norwich South. Meanwhile, if Eastleigh turns out to be typical of what happens in Lib Dem/Tory marginal seats, the Tories will gain few or no seats.

However, rather than get carried away, I’ll let an expert, Anthony Wells of YouGov (writing before the Eastleigh result was known) have the last word:-

“The result won’t tell us anything about the national picture that we can’t get a much better handle on from national polling. By-elections happen in only one constituency, in this case one where the Lib Dems are overwhelmingly dominant at a local level and have an unrivalled network of local deliveries and supporters; there is an intensity of campaigning and campaigning spending that dwarfs that in any general election and, most importantly, it makes no difference at all to the government of the country. By-elections are either different from national polling, in which case it is a result of the unusual circumstances of by-elections themselves and the particular circumstances of the seat, or they are very much in line with national polling, in which case they don’t tell us anything new.

While the by-election won’t actually tell us much, that definitely doesn't mean that it's not important. On the contrary, I think whatever the result it will be extremely important in terms of party morale and the political narrative. For the Conservatives to win a majority at the next election, the party needs to win a substantial number of Lib Dem seats. If the Tories win Eastleigh, Cameron can reassure his MPs that they can take Lib Dems seats, if they fail to do so it risks increasing the unrest on the Tory backbenches and putting further pressure on Cameron and Osborne (especially if UKIP run them close – if UKIP beat the Conservatives then Tory backbenchers risk having a nervous breakdown).”

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/

sickchip wrote:Hello Phil,

After the recent Rennard allegations it's refreshing to see people questioning dated, and sexist, attitudes to women in politics, don't you think?

Was that posted only yesterday? Time flies when you're having fun watching Cameron get royally stuffed.

But on this question of sexual attitudes in Politics, it's likely that the sudden "puff" about Lord Rennard's penchant for the Ladies was a crude Tory dirty-trick to poison the well for their Coalition partners at Eastleigh.

Distilling that story to its essence, a few Liberal gels were distressed at being chatted-up in a Bar.

Who ever heard of such a thing!?

Eastleigh, proof that people really don't trust the tories and have even less belief in the non-policies that Mili's labour offer. Vote independents, you know it makes sense.

Eastleigh, proof that people really don't trust the tories and have even less belief in the non-policies that Mili's labour offer. Vote independents, you know it makes sense.

Another piece of trite ‘analysis’, ignoring the psephological evidence about ‘squeezed third parties’ and the expert who reminds us that “the result won’t tell us anything about the national picture that we can’t get a much better handle on from national polling”. Labour coming fourth in Eastleigh is of no more significance than when the Tories came fifth in Rotherham.

Voting for so–called ‘independents’ makes no sense whatsoever and is tantamount to handing a blank cheque to candidates who will still have their own personal preferences and prejudices.

If you can't vote for an independent Ivan, vote for UKIP, you know it makes sense (it's known as unblinkering). Time to move on from (I'll vote for them because my parents did or I've always voted for them). Nothing trite about my remarks. What does psephological mean

To return to the original question - my experience (not extensive I agree) tends to make me feel that people vote from a sense of 'class' loyalty.

I have always voted Labour because Labour is traditionally the party of the working class, and I continue to see myself as working class. Labour's policies over the years have seemed to me to support the aims of the working class; fair conditions of work, a welfare state safety net, free-to-access health care, free access to all levels of education for all - all policies that will help to minimise inequality and maintain a healthy citizenry.

Many of the people I was at Grammar School with, imagining that their A-Levels provided them an entree into a 'higher' social class, now vote Tory, on the premise that this will help protect the prerequisites of the class they aspire to, which are to have the sense of belonging to an elite of some sort. Lots of these people are now spending their retirement going on cruises and playing golf, and have thus achieved a level of access to what they see as an elite lifestyle that satisfies their aspirations. Most rich people will also tend to vote Tory, because of Tory policies of small government, taxation etc, which it is clearly in their interest to support.

Others I know, many of whom I was at University with, see themselves as an intelligentsia, and will vote Green, or Lib Dem, or may adhere to one of the nonsense single-issue parties like UKIP, as a means of demonstrating their superior knowledge and understanding.

Each and every one of us will seek earnestly for evidence to support our voting preferences, and will seek to ignore any evidence that seems to contradict what we believe, and there are always demagogues, of each political persuasion, to help us maintain our prejudices.

At the moment, I'm torn between thinking Ed Miliband should 'man up' and start to employ more of the usual opposition tactics of smear and sneer, and respect for the fact that he does seem to be wanting to base his policies and his rhetoric on something approaching the simple truth.

The result of the Eastleigh by-election will have given the Tories a fright as they had the idea that maybe they could take that previously Lib-Dem seat, due to the reason why the incumbent had to fall on his sword.

That did not work and the fact that UKIP came second - and by that act stealing a lot of votes away from The Tories - has highlighted that many people in England do not trust the Tories to do right by their wishes for Europe and immigration.

The fact that Labour came fourth is neither here nor there as they knew that they had no chance of getting that Liberal Democrat seat, ( It is interesting to note that the Lib-Dems got in by a much-reduced majority.

Regards....

Papaumau.

So true Ivan, but this is one single-issue and minority party that has the power to do the Tories a great deal of harm wherever they split the right-wing vote.

The fact that they came second - to the Tory third - in a solid Lib-Dem seat tells us that this one extremist, right-wing organisation can do the Tories a lot of harm anywhere they choose to compete with them, in any election.

Regards....

Papaumau.

Papaumau wrote:So true Ivan, but this is one single-issue and minority party that has the power to do the Tories a great deal of harm wherever they split the right-wing vote.

The fact that they came second - to the Tory third - in a solid Lib-Dem seat tells us that this one extremist, right-wing organisation can do the Tories a lot of harm anywhere they choose to compete with them, in any election.

Regards....

Papaumau.

Papaumau I have been in Eastleigh for the last week of the campaigning for John O'Farrell, the dedication shown to the campaign from all walks of life was amazing and was very proud to count myself one of them makes me even prouder to be a Labour party member, what I did see was there is no difference between a Tory MP and a Tory voter they are all the same NASTY, but it does worry me at the amount of support that UKIP have they have the people of Eastleigh believing that one Ukip MP could get the UK out of the EU so its a pity Ukip did not win then the people would have seen what a Prat of a party they are.

A labour win would have been awesome though ---

There are seats that each of even the three major parties will never win, because of the culture of the particular area in which they reside.

To see the Tories gloat that Labour did nothing at Eastleigh simply demonstrates how bereft of any more positive message of their own they are after their trouncing by UKIP ( a refuge for the more rabid form of Toryism). Labour were never going to make any significant inroad in Eastleigh and will not ever do so, even if they achieve a General Election landslide.

What should cheer Labour supporters - like the admirable redflag - is the fact that Cameron and his slimy henchmen are now haunted by the prospect of the right-wing vote being split by UKIP in more seats than they dare to contemplate. One has the feeling that the battle for the 2015 election starts now, with the Tories not even clear as to where best to aim their fire.

Hopefully they will disappear up their own backsides in trying to spray their customary spite in all directions at once...

boatlady wrote:A labour win would have been awesome though ---

Of course it would have been great for Labour to have won the seat but now they know what it is going to take to win a seat in the South of England and get on and do the job so we are ready for the fight in 2015, if Labour had won I would not be sitting at home right now I would have stayed on for a few more days and not acted my age a Hooligan let loose.

Never mind - come 2015 you can act the Hooligan

Yeah, I've got that pencilled-in too!