General Election 12/12/2019 - How are you voting?

[Manchester]

How are you all voting?  Will be interesting to see the political demographic among our UK contingent.

[UK Dancer]

I will note that my vote was tactical as, I suspect, will many others be among the forum, so this may not be great as a measure of ideologies/demographic, but interesting nonetheless.

[dashuk]

I will note that my vote was tactical as, I suspect, will many others be among the forum, so this may not be great as a measure of ideologies/demographic, but interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, this ^.

[Moonwaves]

Is it possible to add an option for "I'm not from/in the UK but want to see the results of this poll" or similar, please? :-)

[Vashy]

“Other” because I’m an EU immigrant. I’d bite tactically Labour though.

[maizefolk]

Is it possible to add an option for "I'm not from/in the UK but want to see the results of this poll" or similar, please? :-)

There is a button you can click on right below the poll which is "show results" (look at the bottom of this screenshot).



...I had the same reaction...

[Moonwaves]

Is it possible to add an option for "I'm not from/in the UK but want to see the results of this poll" or similar, please? :-)

There is a button you can click on right below the poll which is "show results" (look at the bottom of this screenshot).



...I had the same reaction...

Thank you! I cannot tell how often I have overseen this and been kind of annoyed to not be able to see poll results.

[May2030]

Only four candidates from Tory, Labour, Lib Dem or SNP in my area. All as bad as each other. 

[never give up]

Grrr a Tory has spoilt the chart :-) Just kidding.

I am in a very safe seat. If I could vote tactically to oust a Tory I would but I can’t. So I’m voting Green as a protest vote. I’m hoping the Greens can double or treble their vote count so whichever lot we do end up with may just take the environment more seriously.

Also I don’t want to live in a country where the Brexit Party gets more votes than the Green Party. Please, please, please let’s have more people voting for the well being of our planet over an issue very few cared about before the referendum. It’s a second competition within the bigger competition. Get some popcorn and enjoy. Come on the Greens!

[InterfaceLeader]

I'm a member of the Green Party, but I voted Labour this time as it is the main non-Tory party where I am.

[Serenity]

Only four candidates from Tory, Labour, Lib Dem or SNP in my area. All as bad as each other.

Snap. I feel obliged to vote and had no option but to vote tactically for the least worst option. Sigh.

[shelivesthedream]

Also a tactical vote here based on the constituency I'm in. Otherwise I probably would have voted Green, although the Lib Dems are more my natural home (once I've forgiven them for the coalition...maybe next time)

[PhilB]

Peter Mandelson summed it up best in the middle of the night on Radio 4.  If you make people choose between a Marxist and a buffoon they'll go for the buffoon.  It's tragic for labour that the Corbynite wing are blaming everything on Brexit and the media and refusing to acknowledge there was anything wrong with their policies.  With Momentum's hold on the levers of power in the party it's hard to see a route back to being an electable centre-left party.
I'm hoping that the size of his majority will genuinely let Boris govern as a moderate one-nation conservative.  We shall see.

[SpreadsheetMan]

Peter Mandelson summed it up best in the middle of the night on Radio 4.  If you make people choose between a Marxist and a buffoon they'll go for the buffoon.  It's tragic for labour that the Corbynite wing are blaming everything on Brexit and the media and refusing to acknowledge there was anything wrong with their policies.  With Momentum's hold on the levers of power in the party it's hard to see a route back to being an electable centre-left party.
I'm hoping that the size of his majority will genuinely let Boris govern as a moderate one-nation conservative.  We shall see.

Spot-on.

[UK Dancer]

It just depends which dichotomy you choose though... I can understand the mindset where if you think that the choice PhilB is referring to is the only one, but there are so many different ways to have made this election a binary choice I can't believe that there were a majority thinking like that.

The thing that bugs me is how people can be told empirically that one party is lying in the vast majority of their political adverts and the other isn't, yet still choose to endorse the blatant liar.

[Bloop Bloop]

I guess it's true that at the end of the day you can only spend so much of other people's money before the populace catches on.

[UK Dancer]

I guess it's true that at the end of the day you can only spend so much of other people's money before the populace catches on.

Empirically, if that was true, neither Labour nor Tory would have got in, both of them have spent more of other people's money than any realistic comparative...

[ExitViaTheCashRamp]

I voted lib dems, it was a protest vote if I am honest.

 I live in a very safe tory seat, it has only been labour during the Blair landslide. I am probably more right of centre politically, but the tory mp is a giant arse and I couldn't vote for them. The Labour candidate was as poor as the previous three elections. The literature sent around made them out to be 'just another blue collar working everyman' - but I don't want an everyman to represent me, since the vast majority of people would have no means to get to grips with complex national issues from transport to policing. They would have even less chance of understanding complex trade agreements and foreign policy.

 Sure, the civil service is there to educate and guide them - but the mp is the person with the vote and has the possibility to shape what the government will do through Hoc votes, select committee membership or even holding a higher office. So for me at least, I want someone who is smart or at the very least some successful experience in complex matters that affect sizable groups of people.

 I'm not even going to go into what the top brass of Labour have been tied to ... or their offers of vast spending, partially funded by taking 10% of every UK company my pension is invested in and being entirely vague about any compensation.

 End result, Labour lose a huge number of votes. Lib dems gain enough not to lose their deposit. Tory MP walks away with a majority that is now bigger than several of the towns they represent.

[PhilB]

Anyone in a company with say 260 employees should be heaving a sigh of relief that they aren't now about to be made redundant to get the headcount below 250.  Anyone holding off from hiring new employees for fear of going over 250 can now afford to invest and expand their company.  Silly, silly plan.

[never give up]

In the main battle the Greens nearly doubled their vote and ending up beating the Brexit Party in terms of votes and seats. Yay.

[maizefolk]

I think the greens are the only party that actually won seats and has a worse ratio of votes to seats than the liberal dems.

It seems weird that the Liberal Dems got 3x the votes of SNP, but SNP gets 4x as much say in the future of the UK. But then again we use the same terrible first past the post voting system in the US, so I'm not throwing stones.

[daverobev]

I think it's fascinating just how many previously Labour strongholds voted Conservative. Absolute madness.

Also how much places like this, and say Reddit's UKPolitics, really are echo chambers - the scale of the Conservative win is astounding.

People I spoke to since the result are in shock. Absolute shock. Yes, "more people voted for Remain parties than Leave ones", but in various places - just, landslide in switch from - basically - the same election two years back.

If only Labour voters had managed to force a leadership change. I mean - you can blame Boris for lying and whatnot - but you HAVE to blame the opposition too.

After nine years in power, people are looking at a known liar (amongst other things) and saying, yeah, he's the one for me.

It's grim. Very saddening indeed.

[shelivesthedream]

I live in a Labour target seat that increased its Conservative majority. The local Labour campaign was... I dunno. Was there a local Labour campaign? Didn't seem like it. One toys-put-of-pram style leaflet through the door that was basically "Boo hoo, the Tories are big fat meanies led by a clown".

[maizefolk]

Also how much places like this, and say Reddit's UKPolitics, really are echo chambers - the scale of the Conservative win is astounding.

People I spoke to since the result are in shock. Absolute shock. Yes, "more people voted for Remain parties than Leave ones", but in various places - just, landslide in switch from - basically - the same election two years back.

If only Labour voters had managed to force a leadership change. I mean - you can blame Boris for lying and whatnot - but you HAVE to blame the opposition too.

Folks I've talked to about the election here in the US seem to be focusing on this part, and its analogy to next year's election which seems all but certain to feature Trump vs a business-as-usual democrat. The vast majority of what one hears from people online is anti-Trump and anti-Brexit, but cannot count on that impression from personal interactions to reflect what will happen with people across the country walk into a voting booth.

Sobering all around.

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

I think it's fascinating just how many previously Labour strongholds voted Conservative. Absolute madness.

Also how much places like this, and say Reddit's UKPolitics, really are echo chambers - the scale of the Conservative win is astounding.

People I spoke to since the result are in shock. Absolute shock. Yes, "more people voted for Remain parties than Leave ones", but in various places - just, landslide in switch from - basically - the same election two years back.

If only Labour voters had managed to force a leadership change. I mean - you can blame Boris for lying and whatnot - but you HAVE to blame the opposition too.

After nine years in power, people are looking at a known liar (amongst other things) and saying, yeah, he's the one for me.

It's grim. Very saddening indeed.

I'm not sure you can call Labour a "Remain Party" when Corbyn was waffling on that issue (let's maybe vote again and hope for a different outcome?). The polling was pretty clear for a while on what to expect and I was not surprised, especially now that I've embraced judging the viability of political campaigns based on the quality of their memes. I would stress how terrible a candidate Corbyn was but it looks like others have already covered that ground in this thread.

[shelivesthedream]

I'm not sure you can call Labour "a party" at the moment.

[ExitViaTheCashRamp]

The option 2nd referendum bothered me a lot. I think leaving the EU is madness... but it was what the people wanted. Yes, there are an huge amount of problems in the last run - but getting a one all draw in a 2nd referendum wasn't going to make all the leavers go 'All right, its a fair cop'. Surely we would need a 3rd referendum to make a 2 - 1 result ?

 Is Angela Rayner the right person to lead Labour now ? How many votes should we have to confirm ?

 No... what is done is done. We should withdraw as best we can, we are already looking at 10 months overdue (not that the country was remotely prepared in March). Once we withdraw we can then negotiate our future. I have no doubt that this would leave us poorer financially, culturally and socially and possibly even end the union. However the brexit train has long since smashed through every safety device and there is no way to stop that does not lead to ever more social unrest. It's time to endure the pain and look to make the best of the future. Kicking the can down the road helps no one in the long term.

[nancyfrank232]

Congratulations to Boris Johnson and the Tories for their decisive victory

[PhilB]

I'd be interested to hear from those who voted labour on their thinking regarding labour's proposal of confiscating 10% of all private companies with over 250 employees.  To me that was clearly going to be immensely damaging to the economy and lead to business flight, capital flight and a huge brake on future investment and employment.  Did you believe:
a) They wouldn't really do it (yet people called Boris a liar!)
b) It wouldn't really do much damage (if so how would that be avoided?)
c) It would, regrettably, do lots of damage, but you had other reasons to vote for them which outweighed the damage to the economy
d) It would do lots of damage and good thing too.  Smash the capitalists!  The means of production must always be in the hands of the workers.

[vand]

People I spoke to since the result are in shock. Absolute shock. Yes, "more people voted for Remain parties than Leave ones", but in various places - just, landslide in switch from - basically - the same election two years back.

Only they didn't, because Corbyn/Lab never officially endorsed Remain as they wanted to be all things to all people. So by my calculation, 47% voted for Leave parties and about 20% voted for Remain parties.

And this encapsulates why the Tories won so convincingly and everyone else except the SNP lost so abysmally... Because Remainer choose to assume that everyone who doesn't shout "Death To The Tories" from a church Spire is natually politically aligned with them. Newsflash: it's not that simple.

[Chuck Ditallin]

For every person shouting 'how can you vote for Boris the liar?' there are several people looking at the Labour party and quietly wondering 'how can you vote for Jeremy and his disorganised, economically illiterate Marxists, who can't even formulate a coherent policy on one of the biggest issues ever in British politics?' See also the '251 employees' debacle for an idea of the level of thought which had gone into the Labour manifesto.

Meanwhile, Boris clears the Remainers from his party, giving the Conservatives a clear direction on Brexit. Now, there is no such thing as 'No deal', because even if we leave without a deal in place, the EU are major trading partners, so of course we will strike a deal with them. However, even people who haven't worked that out are inclined to back him.

Back at Labour Towers (or Twitter, as it's also known) Labour supporters, shouting into their echo chamber, are convinced they're going to win, clearly disregarding every poll. There were such hashtags as 'youthquake' and other blindly optimistic nonsense. I even saw one tweet circulating where a breathless leftie claimed to have have heard the Boris Johnson was 'in trouble' in his own constituency; Boris was eventually returned with 53% of the total vote and 10 seconds' research would have shown that this was always going to be the case.

Whatever your political views, Boris tactically annihilated Jeremy; now, with a whacking majority, he just needs to be clever with the introduction of popular 'one nation' policies; he has the opportunity to improve the outlook for the nation (and keep Labour out of power for a generation.)

Back at Twitter, Labour supporters are incoherently bemoaning their defeat, calling all Tories rude words often beginning with 'C' and completely missing the point that they were totally outplayed. Meanwhile, Diane Abbott turned up to vote wearing two mismatched left shoes. It's certainly the sort of gaffe which leads people to suggest that you're not fit to govern*.

In short, to lose against a party which had been in such a mess under Theresa May such a short time ago takes spectacular incompetence.

* It's also the sort of thing someone with early dementia might do; I genuinely hope she is in receipt of a thorough check-up.

[InterfaceLeader]

I'd be interested to hear from those who voted labour on their thinking regarding labour's proposal of confiscating 10% of all private companies with over 250 employees. 

Can't speak for anyone else, but C.

I view the coming climate catastrophe as the single biggest issue facing humanity, and voted for the only party that had a small chance of getting into power that might do a moderate amount about it. Now I will go back to supporting the Green Party and environmental charities as much as possible.

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

Looks like Labour lost in particular among the working class

[shelivesthedream]

@PhilB :
a) In that they would try but be unable to "get it done"
c) It was a complicated choice to vote Labour this time, and I only did because they were the only real contenders in the constituency I live in and had stood a chance of ousting the Conservative MP...but didn't.
and e) that they wouldn't actually be elected

I'm a lefty metropolitan elite, I suppose, but not really a Labour voter. More of a natural Lib Dem on one of their good days, although lately I've voted Green. But these days, seriously, what even is "the Labour party"? You've got Corbyn and Momentum, then you've got longstanding traddy working class type Labour MPs, then you've got Blairite leftovers... Jeremy and his disorganised Marxists are only one wing of what at the moment is a huge mishmash. And that's not even touching whether Labour is a remain party or a leave party. I can well imagine people wanting to vote for a different aspect of the Labour party of today.

[vand]

One thing that I have noticed down the years is that when it is expected to be close, the relative ratings of the leaders is usually worth 20-30 or so seats than the raw eve of election polls suggest; hence why Major outperformed in 1992, Cameron outperformed in 2015, Corbyn outperformed in 2017 and Johnson outpeformed this time around.

[Chuck Ditallin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50785442, if you ignore the Trump obsession of the BBC, sums it up very nicely for me.

These traditional Labour voters felt that a Conservative MP (and by extension, government) would serve them better.

I am amazed that my left-leaning, tolerant friends still cannot see that people may hold a different opinion. They have despised (albeit they try not to show it) white, working class, Leave-voting people as thick c****, yet are stunned (sorry "shocked and saddened") that the same people have viewed Labour's policies as London-centric, swivel-eyed, unaffordable, too-good-to-be-true Marxist claptrap*. If the Labour party don't take this lesson on board, they will be out of power for a generation and we will have no effective opposition, which is terrible for democracy.

What's that Biblical quote about motes, beams and eyes?

* Yeah, that's hyperbole, hopefully for mildly comedic effect.

[cerat0n1a]

I'd be interested to hear from those who voted labour on their thinking regarding labour's proposal of confiscating 10% of all private companies with over 250 employees.  To me that was clearly going to be immensely damaging to the economy and lead to business flight, capital flight and a huge brake on future investment and employment.  Did you believe:
a) They wouldn't really do it (yet people called Boris a liar!)
b) It wouldn't really do much damage (if so how would that be avoided?)
c) It would, regrettably, do lots of damage, but you had other reasons to vote for them which outweighed the damage to the economy
d) It would do lots of damage and good thing too.  Smash the capitalists!  The means of production must always be in the hands of the workers.

Pretty sure the ECHR would have ruled it illegal and clearly the EU/US/China would not have countenanced it. If it had happened, it would largely have had the same effect as a hike in corporation tax i.e in broad terms taking money out of pension funds and into HMRC. From the point of view of my ex-employers, a bad thing, but not as bad as Brexit.

[cerat0n1a]

I am amazed that my left-leaning, tolerant friends still cannot see that people may hold a different opinion. They have despised (albeit they try not to show it) white, working class, Leave-voting people as thick c****, yet are stunned (sorry "shocked and saddened") that the same people have viewed Labour's policies as London-centric, swivel-eyed, unaffordable, too-good-to-be-true Marxist claptrap*. If the Labour party don't take this lesson on board, they will be out of power for a generation and we will have no effective opposition, which is terrible for democracy.

I'm not amazed, to be honest, but it is noticeable how many of my friends have been posting some variant of "how could people be so stupid/evil/callous/self centred." Doesn't strike me as the best way to persuade people to vote differently next time round.

[cerat0n1a]

Folks I've talked to about the election here in the US seem to be focusing on this part, and its analogy to next year's election which seems all but certain to feature Trump vs a business-as-usual democrat. The vast majority of what one hears from people online is anti-Trump and anti-Brexit, but cannot count on that impression from personal interactions to reflect what will happen with people across the country walk into a voting booth.

Around a third of people who voted "Leave" in the Brexit referendum have never used the internet. The median age of voters for the Conservative party at the 2017 election was 64.  Haven't seen the figures for 2019 yet, but in the 2017 UK election, more than 50% of the working age population voted Labour, but almost 80% of the over-70s voted Conservative. It's hardly surprising that online discourse is typically to the left of the electorate as a whole, or that social media (and twitter in particular) gives a different opinion to the ballot box. If you were instead to sample, say, people who read a newspaper every day, you'd get a pretty different impression.

[PhilB]

I'd be interested to hear from those who voted labour on their thinking regarding labour's proposal of confiscating 10% of all private companies with over 250 employees.  To me that was clearly going to be immensely damaging to the economy and lead to business flight, capital flight and a huge brake on future investment and employment.  Did you believe:
a) They wouldn't really do it (yet people called Boris a liar!)
b) It wouldn't really do much damage (if so how would that be avoided?)
c) It would, regrettably, do lots of damage, but you had other reasons to vote for them which outweighed the damage to the economy
d) It would do lots of damage and good thing too.  Smash the capitalists!  The means of production must always be in the hands of the workers.

Pretty sure the ECHR would have ruled it illegal and clearly the EU/US/China would not have countenanced it. If it had happened, it would largely have had the same effect as a hike in corporation tax i.e in broad terms taking money out of pension funds and into HMRC. From the point of view of my ex-employers, a bad thing, but not as bad as Brexit.

The inventors of the policy may have thought it was just equivalent to a permanent 10% hike in corporation tax, but the impact if they had put it into place would have been much, much worse due to the steps that people would have taken to avoid it.  Anyone can get caught out by the law of unintended consequences, but in this case they were pretty glaringly obvious.

[vand]

Yougov's dissection of how people voted:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

I think this is the most revealing graphic:

[PhilB]

I am amazed that my left-leaning, tolerant friends still cannot see that people may hold a different opinion. They have despised (albeit they try not to show it) white, working class, Leave-voting people as thick c****, yet are stunned (sorry "shocked and saddened") that the same people have viewed Labour's policies as London-centric, swivel-eyed, unaffordable, too-good-to-be-true Marxist claptrap*. If the Labour party don't take this lesson on board, they will be out of power for a generation and we will have no effective opposition, which is terrible for democracy.

I'm not amazed, to be honest, but it is noticeable how many of my friends have been posting some variant of "how could people be so stupid/evil/callous/self centred." Doesn't strike me as the best way to persuade people to vote differently next time round.

The reported case of the lecturers at Cardiff describing all Tories as 'Vermin' and similar rants are something of a case in point.  It seems like some on the extreme left are so obsessed with not allowing anyone to be offended based on race, religion (ahem), gender, sexuality, physical or mental difference, etc, etc, that they have ended up with these huge vats of steaming vitriol and nowhere left to vent it except upon anyone who dares to vote Tory or suggest there could ever be anything sensible about any of their policies or politicians.  It's hardly surprising that we have the phenomenon of the 'Shy Tory' in the face of that. 
The word 'fascist' keeps being thrown about regarding the Conservatives, but any Conservative member who used the kind of language and direct incitements to hatred we frequently see directed at them by the left would be thrown out immediately.  There definitely are fascists out there, but largely confined to rightly despised lunatic fringe parties - yes they keep turning up in UKIP and the Brexit party, but they get thrown out even from those parties once identified.  Their extreme left wing equivalents need to be looked upon in exactly the same way.

[cerat0n1a]

The word 'fascist' keeps being thrown about regarding the Conservatives, but any Conservative member who used the kind of language and direct incitements to hatred we frequently see directed at them by the left would be thrown out immediately. 

Not really convinced about that at all - pretty easy to find hundreds of counter-examples.

It is quite difficult to understand how we went from a situation of having two relatively sensible main political parties to two pretty extreme parties neither of whom seem to have much concern for the economy, truthfulness or good government, in under a decade.