First off stop laughing, I’m being serious and though I like the Liberal Democrats I’ve only ever voted Lib Dems tactically once when I lived in an area where Labour couldn’t win, so I have no vested interest in making this sort of stuff up.
I’ve been running a “Who Will You Vote For In The 2010 General Election Poll” since September 2009 and after an iffy start (BNP supporters wouldn’t leave my site alone) things settled down and though the % points for each of the main parties has been lower in my general election poll than official polls (which will be far more accurate), I’ve had the option of “None of The Above” and “Don’t Know : Floating Voter” options which account for over 7% of the vote and that 7% will be shared at the actual election as those options aren’t on the forms.
You can see at Weekly General Election Poll Results I’ve been tracking the poll results weekly since traffic started to pick up to the site as well. Basically I take a snapshot of the current poll results each Saturday (copy and paste exactly what you see) and use them to work out how many people have voted for each party one week later (anyone could do the same thing easily and even do a daily poll if they didn’t mind the effort working out the %s etc… every day).
On Saturday 14th April there had been 40,862 votes in the main poll, at the time of writing this post there’s been 53,634 votes an increase of 12,772 votes over 5 days (the sites getting a LOT of traffic, the site partially crashed due to a traffic surge tonight after the TV debates finished: sites got good rankings for TV debate search results).
I’ll do a full run down of the new traffic on Saturday afternoon, but I was talking to my eldest son online (he’s at University) and he thinks the TV debates could turn British politics upside down like the USA presidential election TV debates has decided who will be President in the past and how one good speech from David Cameron turned a nobody into the Tory leader.
So I took a look at the figures so far for the 12,772 votes since Saturday.
Labour : 21.45%
Conservative : 24.49%
Lib Dems : 29.64%
Well that’s a first!
Last week it was:
Labour : 23.86%
Conservative : 31.08%
Lib Dems : 17.31%
That’s a 12 point shift to the Lib Dems with most of it from the Conservatives!
Now I’m not holding my breath for a Liberal Democrat win on May 6th, but if these sorts of results come through in the official polls that are far more accurate than mine and not as open to manipulation** it would turn politics upside down in Britain!
** since my poll is online and anyone can vote, with enough effort it can be manipulated, for example I had to remove 800 BNP votes (used to have the BNP as part of the poll) as BNP supporters had cheated. Since Saturday my sites logs show over 90,000 unique visitors, so 12,772 votes out of 90,000+ visitors doesn’t sound unbelievable (these are real visitors and they have made me quite a bit of money, I’d know if they weren’t real).
IMO Nick Clegg won the live TV debate tonight with Gordon Brown a far off second place, who is David Cameron again :-) Had a really good laugh at the end when Gordon Brown seized the initiative to shake the TV audience members hands and Nick Clegg and David Cameron dithered not knowing what to do and eventually copied the PM, very funny.
I look forward to seeing the latest poll results this week, I hope for the sake of British politics there has been a big shift to the Liberal Democrats, would throw the general election wide open and make voting far more worthwhile and politics far more interesting.
Like J Francis I agree with Phil Reeves post also, I believe many of us have reached a point of ‘No return’ when it comes to who we want running our country.
I have been loyal to Labour since I was able to start voting, my first vote was the Blair landslide in 1997. Since then I have become somewhat disillusioned with the party, but in the whole I would rather have them in than the Conservatives. Labour took a grip of this country, whereas the tories ran it to the ground and will do it again…. Death by a thousand cuts with a Tory government, believe me.
This time round I’m going to vote Lib Dem. I have recently read their manifesto and agree with much of their plans, they have some good ideas. Also they have a leader whom I believe speaks alot of sense and is actually in touch with the world.
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Britain is going round and round in the same circles it keeps going conservative labour conservative labour. And with each prime minister were not happy, now ask yourself have conservative and labour ever made you happy with how the country is run?. I’m guessing no please give Liberal Democrats a try don’t be afraid as Nick Clegg said to vote for change, it can be done.
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I’m sorry, I have to disagree with many of these posts. I do not have anything against the Liberals and I wouldn’t mind if they did win! I note to the last comment by Rono Kenlin, “Britain is going round and round in the same cirlces, it keeps going conservative labour conservative labour.”
I would like to add, the Conservatives are what made this country great and when Labour took over they destroyed all the work that they done! All of the great British PM’s have been Conservative – Churchill and Thatcher to name a couple. Sure Thatcher closed all the mines and put workers out of a job but she was looking to the future. Did we really want to be stuck back in the industrialized economy we were in? Look at where we were before the Iraqi War and the recession Britain was a prosperous country – a world superpower.
I admit I was too young at the time to experience Thatcher as a PM (I was two years old when she resigned!) but I have done much research on the subject. Yes she made her mistakes, as did many other prime ministers.
I will be voting Conservative at the election.
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“Sure Thatcher closed all the mines and put workers out of a job but she was looking to the future.”
Closing the pits per se when they aren’t profitable has some merit from a strictly business perspective, BUT when the people working in those pits are given no replacement industry, closing pits is not looking to the future as it destroyed entire communities and cost the tax payer heavily in benefit payments.
Had the Conservatives had a long term plan for the country instead of leaving it to market forces and hoping everything will be alright, they would have attracted new industries to Britain, then it wouldn’t have been such an awful thing to do, but Thatcherism is a “your on your own mate” politics with caring a commodity Tories can not afford to have!
As it was it would have made far more sense long term to indirectly subsidise the pits (tax breaks for example) and slowly close them so an entire industry wasn’t destroyed pretty much over night.
This would have protected communities from the destruction they suffered under Thatcher and protect hard working men from languishing on the dole because all they knew in life was hard, manual labor down a pit and trying to find a new reasonable pay job in Thatchers no minimum wage, no workers rights sweatshop Britain with 5 million unemployed is not a simple case of “getting on your bike” to find work.
Looking to the future is what Labour are doing now (though I admit a bit late in the day). They are trying to get 50% of our young people in education or training so we as a nation are ready for the 21st century industries, the green industries that are set to revolutionise the world and Labour wants Britain at the forefront of those new industries.
Historical the Conservatives leave business to market forces. Market forces does not work well with new virgining industries, we need to be the innovators not the followers and that takes government intervention to promote those industries through education and training of a new workforce with the required skills and offering businesses in those new industries a good reason to setup shop in Britain.
13 years isn’t nearly enough time to turn around the damage the Tories did to a generation of young people. Consider 5-10 years just to get infrastructure (capital investment) and legislation in place and a further 10 years to actually educate and train a new generation of workers in these new industries before real change is noticeable.
If the Tories get back in much of the hard work will be lost :-(
David
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Well if you’d done your research properly everyone there is a trend… however this trend is unrecognised… Conservative’s come into power- make a huge mess and the poor suffer- Labour comes into power and fixes all the problems (as promised)-when problems are fixed… Labour runs out of ideas and innovation doesn’t seem to move on… People get sick of no new ground breaking laws or action etc.. then who else to vote for? They will go conservative again… and so the cycle goes… (Well since the 1920’s anyway) and love how you name conservatives as best PM’s(notbaly the ones many refer to as times compared to what was believed to be dictatorships… If you had lived as an adult during that time you would understand why all the middle aged workers/middle/lower-class hate conservatives and all the problems they faced…)- Plus Tony Blair when he started was great! Also if you look into the past conservatives ALSO caused a recession… and brown has brought us out of a recession TWICE as fast as Thatcher did :) however… I must add- I think Clegg has thrown a chink in the chain this time however and we could see BIG changes to our politics… the one strange thing this time however… is all the parties seem to have the same sort of policies for a change… Something going on behind the curtains methinks :/
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“all the parties seem to have the same sort of policies for a change”
Although they sound very similar, we all know what Labour and Conservatives stand for and they are opposites. I have to be honest to admit I’m not completely sure what the Lib Dems stand for, they’ve not had power in my life time, so don’t know what their true face is.
Conservatives are for rich people as is shown with the way they vote: against national minimum wage, against workers rights, against the NHS, against protecting foxes, stags and other animals from barbaric blood sports.
Labour are for the working class as is shown with the way they vote: for national minimum wage, for workers rights, for the NHS, for banning barbaric blood sports.
Doesn’t matter what the parties leaders say today, it matters what their MPs voting records tell us what their parties stand for and their voting records tells us Labour care about the people and the Conservatives care about themselves!
I’ve not looked into the Lib Dems in detail (they seem similar to Labour) like I have Labour and Conservatives, maybe others could and post what they find?
What Labour and Conservatives and to a lessor degree the Lib Dems have learnt is under no circumstances tell the electorate things they plan to do that will LOOSE votes. They’ll tell us the good stuff they think we want to hear, but not the bad stuff that will loose vote.
David Cameron tells us he wants to cut 6 billion in waste this year. That sounds like a good thing, we should all cut waste. He doesn’t tell us some of that money will be used to give the richest families in the country millions in a tax break or that this 6 billion saving will cost jobs.
David Cameron tells us he’ll stop the Labour job tax, what he doesn’t tell us it’s the business part of the NI rise he’ll cancel, which means the NI tax rise will fall squarely on the shoulders of every working man and woman that pays NI contributions and business will not pay their fair share of this tax rise!!!. Cameron is not stopping a jobs tax, he is taxing the workers only and protecting his rich friends.
David Cameron also doesn’t say where the business part of the NI tax rise he won’t bring in will be found if they gain power after May 6th. Will it be VAT that effects the poorest in society far more than the richest? VAT is the go to tax for the Tories, they brought in VAT in the first place and pushed it up to 17.5%!
The Lib Dems made the mistake of telling us they want a 10 year amnesty on illegal immigrants to pull illegal immigrants into the tax system and crack down on organised crime that takes advantage of illegal immigrants. This is not a vote winner, I kind of agree with the concept, but then I understand politics and especially immigration a lot better than your average man in the street and I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, I’m not sure, but it can’t be any worse than having a million illegal workers in Britain! The average man in the street won’t be so generous and will see this as rewarding criminals who are taking British jobs and will loose the Lib Dems votes.
Funny thing is we already have a 14 year amnesty on illegal immigrants with no questions asked. So the difference between the Lib Dems, Labour and the Conservatives is 4 years, making those who become British citizens pay for the 10 years they broke the law and advertising the amnesty. Not exactly a massive policy difference, but Labour and the Conservatives aren’t talking about an amnesty on immigration despite them passing the 14 year rule.
Conservatives voted against the fox hunting ban. if the Tories have a majority on May 7th they will as a block vote to repeal the hunting ban legislation despite polls showing 75% of the public don’t want fox hunting with dogs.
there are massive differences between the parties, but they have learnt if they don’t highlight those differences they won’t loose votes and the election becomes a popularity contest between the leaders instead of a contest of who has the best policies!
David
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Lets not forget… The Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the mid 19th century until the rise of the Labour Party in the 1920s ( 1988, it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form a new party which would become known as the Liberal Democrats). The Liberal Party favoured social reform, personal liberty and an extension of the franchise (right to vote).
Winston Churchill was affiliated with the Liberal Party from 1904 -1924 as he belived they suited his views on economics. After his electoral defeat in 1922, Winston Churchill left the Liberal Party and the leader of the Conservative Party and Winston Churchill officially rejoined the Conservative Party in 1925.
Winston Churchill switched his political parties to suit his needs at differing times in history and that is what we, the voters, should do! Don’t vote for who you always voted for, or who you think everyone else votes for, vote for who can help you NOW! The Lib Dems have a deep rooted history in politics and it strikes me as odd people just dont know much about them and what they stand for! They stand for fairness and this is something we need today. The conservatives ruined everything good about this country in the 80’s and Winston would be turning in his grave! Labour have had their chance and failed so my vote goes to fairness and new ideas and that is Liberal Democrat… the only party in favour of referendums, fair voting system, fair taxes and a genuine desire to listen to the people (maintaining their historical roots!)
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