Poll: General election voting intentions poll

semi-pro waster · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:12

This is an early chance to indicate your voting intentions. If you're not going to vote or you're going to spoil your ballot then please don't vote in the poll, by all means post in this thread and explain why you're not voting but the poll is meant just for people who are intending to vote.

It covers all parties who currently have at least one seat in the House of Commons but if you're going to vote for another party that isn't listed then you can indicate that with the "other" option and explain (or not). It's anonymous so unless you want to say who you're voting for there's no need to post it.

The option in alphabetical order are are:
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
Conservative
Democratic Unionist Party
Green Party
Labour
Liberal Democrat
Other party (not named)
Plaid Cymru
Respect Party
Scottish National Party
Social Democratic and Labour Party
Sinn Fein
UKIP

The poll runs for 20 days from today, after that point there might be another poll to see if the voting intentions change.

Mynight · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:20

I haven't even heard of three of those parties :eek:

.

Yaayuh! · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:21

Green unless I need to vote tactically then Labour.

Caged · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:21

I think we should have a 'spoil ballot' and 'undecided' option to cover all bases, because then this poll can be run every few weeks and the change in % each option receives can be tracked. At the moment you aren't capturing people who are sure they will vote but aren't at the point where they can pick a party.

Nitefly · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:25

Pipped me to the post, I was going to do this soon

In b4 "I'm spoiling my ballot coz none of them are gud enuff btw I have never raised my lazy bum of my chair to campaign for a single cause I'm purportedly passionate about".

Danthus · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:26

Spoiling your ballot is a perfectly legitimate ting to do.

Mynight · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:28

OldCoals said:
Spoiling your ballot is a perfectly legitimate ting to do.

Yes fam!

I'm not convinced it is a valid thing to do. What's the point in spoiling a ballot you may as well just not vote.

Caged · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:31

Mynight said:
Yes fam!

I'm not convinced it is a valid thing to do. What's the point in spoiling a ballot you may as well just not vote.

In the absence of an official "none of the above" option it will do. It's a shame that there's no way to differentiate it from people who can't use a pen though.

Nitefly · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:31

OldCoals said:
Spoiling your ballot is a perfectly legitimate ting to do.

I'd say spoiling a ballot paper by itself is equivalent to claiming that tweeting a hashtag is being part of a movement.

Absolute minimum effort, absolute minimum effect \o/

Really though, my point is best stated in my first post ^

So... er... disregard this one.

robgmun · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:31

Caged said:
I think we should have a 'spoil ballot' and 'undecided' option to cover all bases, because then this poll can be run every few weeks and the change in % each option receives can be tracked. At the moment you aren't capturing people who are sure they will vote but aren't at the point where they can pick a party.

The 'spoil ballot' and 'undecided' doesn't show or count in the real world, why should it here?

Caged · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:31

Nitefly said:
Absolute minimum effort, absolute minimum effect \o/

A bit like an individual vote then

robgmun said:
The 'spoil ballot' and 'undecided' doesn't show or count in the real world, why should it here?

Because this is an opinion poll and not some sort of let's play parliament. It's interesting data. I'd argue that people not voting definitely counts in the real world, but without the numbers to show how much it counts. Numbers that we could collect here.

The Geezer · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:34

Thanks for the poll. The only problem is in our first past the post system votes don't translate to seats. Someone will have to explain that to robgmun when he converts the votes cast ......

Glanza · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:36

Voted, will be interesting to see what the results are after reading through some of the threads on here.

semi-pro waster · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:38

Caged said:
I think we should have a 'spoil ballot' and 'undecided' option to cover all bases, because then this poll can be run every few weeks and the change in % each option receives can be tracked. At the moment you aren't capturing people who are sure they will vote but aren't at the point where they can pick a party.

True, it's not perfect but the idea here is to capture the people who have already determined who they want to vote for. Possibly for future iterations of the poll then an undecided or spoil ballot option could be included as they would have more validity set against the national picture (albeit a spoiled ballot is recorded in the same way as votes where the voter forgot which end of the pen was correct) but this poll is in response to a specific request.

Nitefly · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:39

Caged said:
A bit like an individual vote then

Ha - yes!

I suppose my point is then that spoiling your ballot paper by itself is surely the worst and laziest way of letting the candidates know they fail to impress you. I mean, do it, but if you really care that much that you walk to a ballot box and intentionally spoil it, really, just do something better with your time.

Danthus · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:41

Nitefly said:
Ha - yes!

I suppose my point is then that spoiling your ballot paper by itself is surely the worst and laziest way of letting the candidates know they fail to impress you. I mean, do it, but if you really care that much that you walk to a ballot box and intentionally spoil it, really, just do something better with your time.

How else do you register your objections?

Nitefly · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:43

OldCoals said:
How else do you register your objections?

Write letters to MPs? Campaign for issues you believe in? Donate your time in other ways to causes you are passionate for?

You know, things that take actual effort

Burnsy2023 · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:44

OldCoals said:
How else do you register your objections?

Spoiled ballots aren't recorded, so it's not exactly a good way to register your objections.

Danthus · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:48

Burnsy2023 said:
Spoiled ballots aren't recorded, so it's not exactly a good way to register your objections.

And neither is not voting at all so maybe we need a way to officially record our objections?

Mynight · 3 Feb 2015 at 22:49

Well not voting is recorded by turn out but it doesn't differentiate between too lazy or would have spoiled ballot. There should be a way but it doesn't really count for anything at the end of the day it wouldn't change the result.

Would be interesting to see how many though.

My prediction;

Conservative win. Ukip in second(on these forums anyway).

Poll: General election voting intentions poll

Voting intentions in the General Election - only use the poll if you intend to vote

Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Conservative

Democratic Unionist Party

Green Party

Labour

Liberal Democrat

Other party (not named)

Plaid Cymru

Respect Party

Scottish National Party

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Sinn Fein

UKIP