so, no threads about how AV has been resoundingly rejected then?

OK - sorry - no intention to be offensive. But is it more offensive to suggest that people don't understand the system or that they voted against for party political reasons?

(I know, I sound arrogant now...)

It is a fact that quite regularly someone will win in FPTP who would lose in a head to head against one of the other candidates.

This can also happen in AV but much less often - and in a case where it does happen in AV it is guaranteed to happen in FPTP.

In the Ed Miliband case - he would have won in a head to head against his brother. So it was right that he got the job. Narrow margins are always going to be uncomfortable whatever the system.

Surely this is a simple enough argument for AV?

Does anyone think we should change the mayoral elections to FPTP? Why does no elected body set up in the last few decades use FPTP? Why does no other country in Europe use it?

I fully accept that people had strong party political reasons for voting against and indeed considered it myself.

It is also possible that the obfuscation by those wanting to get a NO result confused people. But it isn't really hard to understand...

AV was a 'dirty little compromise' and most people evidently agreed with that sentiment.

A year ago I'm sure I would have voted for AV as a step towards PR. I have always thought my vote didn't count in a FPTP election. I am a rare being in these parts.....a labour voter in a very safe tory seat. I have never voted for the winner in any election and that includes parish and borough elections.

Even I voted No! I was voting against the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg. Shame that to do this I had to vote the same as most tories. I voted labour as usual in the local elections and as usual they came a very poor second.

I voted no - party politics aside (it wasn't about that for me!!) - the AV was just another bad choice and seemed to want to elect MOP on a best of the worst type of voting.

People are unable/unwilling to make a mark on a ballot paper every five years - with AV you wouldn't have to just ask them to make a mark but then rank the options ... just too much work and doesn't take into account those we really DON'T want ... almost having to vote UKIP to keep BNP out ...

I would have voted 'no' up to a week or so ago when I heard Caroline Lucas argue with David Owen that although it wasn't as good as PR, it would have signalled a willingness to reform.

In the end, the vote proves only that most people disagree with AV and distrusted the motives of the Lib Dems for championing it (i.e. - self-interest). It doesn't prove that the public prefrs FPTP to PR because that was never the vote. But we'll never know about that, because there won't be another vote on the issue for a generation. Cameron stitched that one up brilliantly, I'm sad to say.

I voted 'no' because I didn't think AV was fairer, I had too many supposedly intelligent people ask me to explain it in the last week or two to think that it was as simplistic as the 'yes' campaign claimed and any advantages that I could identify weren't good enough to justify the upheaval of change. Nothing to do with supporting or punishing anyone.

Someone made the very good point last week that when asking a population to make a very significant change the default position is 'no change'. It is up to those who want the change to emphatically make their case. I simply don't think the 'yes' campaign made their case.

"Now there is nothing to win or lose, why not come out and admit that, yes AV is clearly a fairer system for electing a single constituency MP and that the reasons for voting NO are (a) You are a tory supporter and afraid that it will harm tory prospects in the future (b) you are a labour supporter and afraid it will harm labour prospects in the future (c) you are a labour supporter and want to punish the lib dems."

Sorry, but I find this just a bit offensive. Perhaps you feel AV is "clearly a fairer system" however, not everyone agrees with you - as is perfectly obvious by these recent results. I don't particularly think it's the best approach to demand that people justify their voting preference to you so that you can then attack their decisions. You're certainly not going to win anyone over by that method, IMO.

I voted no as I don't believe the system is fairer. I would rather have the most popular first choice candidate as the winner than the compromise candidate no one really disliked but didn't really believe in strongly.

If someone won in, for example, a similar way the way Ed Milliband won - so had less votes in the first two rounds than the other candidate but had a majority third choice so sneaked through, then I would feel that they had a considerably less mandate to govern than someone who won as first choice under a FPTP system, even if they won by a small majority. So that makes it less fair to me.

You can bang on about what YOU think is fair till the cows come home, but you might have to accept at some stage that the majority of people don't agree with you. Not because they're stupid but because they have looked at the facts and reached a different conclusion to you.

I've heard convincing arguments for FPTP, PR and even for how a non-party base parlimentary system would work. But I've never heard an argument on AV where I thought it seemed particularly convincing, the best I saw on a leaflet was "Vote AV so your MP will have to work harder", which was a pathetic argument really.

Actually I voted no because I think it's a crap system and makes no sense at all, will skew the way people vote etc. Nothing to do with voting tory. MN is too quick to blame everything they don't like on a few tory voters. Just because you don;t agree with someone it doesn't mean their opinion is not valid

I voted No - but I put yes as my second choice...

(Sorry, saw that somewhere and couldn't resist!)

I was thinking of starting a thread, asking for people to honestly say why they voted NO.

Now there is nothing to win or lose, why not come out and admit that, yes AV is clearly a fairer system for electing a single constituency MP and that the reasons for voting NO are (a) You are a tory supporter and afraid that it will harm tory prospects in the future (b) you are a labour supporter and afraid it will harm labour prospects in the future (c) you are a labour supporter and want to punish the lib dems.

I know the NO people went on about people being too thick to understand AV but I think most people probably can understand it, and most people probably saw through at least some of the c**p spouted by the NO campaign - but repeated it because of one of the reasons above.

Not a lot to say really, the result was expected.

If the polls are close towards the next election it will be back on the agenda as a sweetner to (if they are very lucky) a revived and Clegg free LD's.

Things change, Scottish devolution was rejected in a poll 1979 (albeit a gerrymandered poll) yet now the SNP are in power.

Yep, clear result. Voted Yes.

Maybe it would have been better to go for PR.

Gosh, wasn't that AV resoundingly rejected?