Do you vote for a party and ignore who the leader is?

[antelopevalley]

We keep being told we vote for a party, not a Prime Minister. I know that is the official situation. I know some people will vote for a particular party no matter the Leader. But I am a classic floating voter. We decide who wins.

I have voted for different parties at different times. I did not vote for Labour last time because Corbyn was the Leader. I voted against him as Prime Minister as I am sure many people did.

It is simply not true that for many of us when we vote that we just vote for the party.

Then more fool you.

Actually we vote for a local MP, not a Party or PM.

But yes, I agree with your general point, the identity of the leader matters hugely to many voters. However, to me the lack of proportional representation is a much bigger issue than the fact that parties can change leaders.

Vote to keep the self serving, lying Tories out.

But just because you didn't want Corbyn, didn't mean you had to vote Conservative. Plenty of Other parties to vote for.

The area I used to live in was majority Conservative. No point voting Labour there because they had no chance in winning the seat. So I used to vote Lib Dem. Lib Dem did win that seat in the last election we lived there.

I think the sort of people who vote for personalities rather than policies are the sort of people who believe everything they read/hear in populist media and from drunk idiots in the pub, and if it weren’t for my reluctant acceptance that it’s undemocratic, would love it if they weren’t allowed to vote until they’d proved they’d read/listened to something intelligent and objective at least once during the campaign.

Except I did not vote for a personality.
The competence of the Leader matters.

If I usually voted for a particular party, I suspect that if I strongly disliked their leader, then my vote would go elsewhere.

If I were a floating voter, then a party with a charismatic leader I liked - that might be enough.

However, there's no point in even contemplating that round here, as we are a very 'safe' seat with a huge majority (God knows why). Nothing would persuade me to vote for my current MP.

I understand the point, many/most people do the same, whether or not they understand exactly how it works.
The televised leaders debates during election campaigns and all the media coverage focusing on the leaders makes it all about the leaders. That's the way it's sold to people, you can't blame them/us for playing along.

Saying that, my last two votes were cast based on the party in one instance and the MP in another (different parties) for different reasons. Nether mattered much, as we're in a very safe Tory seat.

Given that manifestos are not legally enforceable and can and are changed or ignored at the whim of the party leaders.

There seems little point in looking at either the manifestos or the leaders.

I vote for the party, not the leader. I was always under the impression that's what you (one) did. And surely it is! If the leader dropped dead, the party would instate a new one. Or if the leader is an idiot and is forced to resign, you get a different one. It happens all the time. There have been loads of occasions where it happens so I'm really annoyed every time theily interview someone on telly who says 'I didn't vote for this person, we should have a general election'. I sit there screaming at the TV saying you don't vote for the person, you vote for the party! But I am beginning to think there are clearly a lot of people where that isn't the case. (or at least, they didn't realise that was the case).

If you vote for the party and ignore who the leader is, are you someone who always votes for the same party no matter what?

Like others say, technically you don't vote for either a leader or a party, you vote for an MP. This is why if your MP resigns or becomes incapacitated or dies you get a by-election, but you don't if the leader changes or even if your MP changes party.

Your MP is much more than just a person who runs local surgeries and who might or might not take a useful interest in local affairs, they are your representative in parliament, they serve on committees and ask questions in parliament and ultimately they vote on the laws that affect you. Obviously on many issues they will vote with their party and particularly on manifesto pledges so of course I read the manifestos carefully and will usually vote with the party that best matches my politics but I'm surprised so many people I know don't even know the name of their candidate (much less things like their experience, background, voting record if a serving MP, MEP or local politician). I always look these things up and have been known to vote a different way to how I would have purely on manifestos because I don't think the local party candidate is suitable to me by MP.

I do think the trend towards televised debates and presidential style personal candidacies has been a good thing in engaging more people in politics and elections but a bad thing for understanding how the UK system actually works. It's not hard to see why people thought they were electing Boris personally when he was the one fronting everything and the tenor of the coverage so was so much about the candidates as individuals and their personal politics(frequently not even about their manifestos which seem to have dropped in importance in the public consciousness, possibly because in the 'post-truth era' it's all seen as so much empty promises) - the same thing happened with the last-but-one Conservative leadership election which wasn't even something the majority of the public had any say in, but can you wonder that people felt they did?

I vote for the party whose manifesto I most agree with, but I also take into account a) what I know about the individual candidates in my constituency and b) what I think of the leader of that party (but that only really matters in the caseload Labour and Conservative because they are the only two whose leaders will become PM).

Last time round was the most difficult choice because I didn't want either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn to be PM. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are much better options.

I vote for the party.

So in our constituency if you want to vote Conservative that means voting for JRM.

No, I vote for the policies I most agree with. Generally that leads me to vote for the same party because it's highly unlikely a right wing party would attract me with their policies. But it's not an automatic vote from me.

I've also lived in various constituencies and there is an element of tactical voting - I have voted Lib Dem to keep the Tories out.

I vote for my MP and don't base that on who their party leader is at all. I base it on whether I think they'll be a good MP or not.

I don't vote for a party, I vote for policies. Those are obviously influenced by the party leader. I'd also have to think whether I believed the party leader would carry out those policies or change them after they were elected. So in some ways the party is more important than the leader and in other ways not.

I vote for the party, regardless of the leader. Leaders can come and go, surely you vote for the party whose values are most aligned with your own.

That does not work for centrists like me. Labour and conservatives both swing to the left and right and come back to the centre. At the moment Starmer is a centrist and the Conservatives have swung to the right.

I prefer to vote for policy or main policies. If I had to vote for a specific person I wouldn't because they're all bloody dreadful.

I vote for our local MP because he he is very active in the local area and works very hard for our city. Didn’t like the party leader last time but still voted for him (but made it clear to the door-to-door canvasser that was the case). All the local MPs before him were invisible so I voted based on my favoured party at the time.

Floater here too.
I usually vote on the manifestos, combined with the local candidates.
Last GE, I discounted one party based on their leader, and went for the best guy for the local area.

im lucky that we have a brilliant labour mn, so makes it easy as I vote for him.