To think voting for the Green Party is a wasted vote?

[Rebecca2014]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30829222

For one thing you will be giving a greater chance of the Tories and UKIP winning the election due to the fact votes are being taken from Labour and the Lib Dems. You are not taking votes from UKIP, you are taking votes from Labour the party more likely to win the election.

Second my family live in Brighton and the Green Party have been awful there, the rubbish collections...the roads, do not talk about what they done for the motorist in that town.

If you are voting for the Greens, why???

Sacking someone for drinking a can of drink on the job (thread from yesterday - made me so upset for the lady concerned?)

You mean the thread where someone says that they stole a can of drink from a room/minibar in a hotel where they worked?

The nasty Conservatives government didn't have anything to do with that. equating the two in your mind is just weird.

Otherwise, Yes, I do think that we'd still have a national minimum wage, after all increasing that was a manifesto pledge of the Conservatives at the last election, and increasing it is exactly what they've done.

however what I am pretty sure of is that there would be even bigger problems inside the NHS at the moment is the Libdems had not been inside the coalition in order to stop wholesale privatisation.

Lib dem - pathetic party, backtracked no end. Should never have joined the Tories. What a waste of my vote that was. So many good ideas and vertually nothing to show for it
the breakdown of the last election was.
Conservatives won but not by enough to form a working majority government.
Labour did not win, and did not have enough seats to win a majority government.
Lib dems came in third.
Other carried on.

I'd have had less respect for the Lib-dems had they decided to form a government of loosing parties in order to gain majority.
fair enough they could not fulfil all of their election manifesto pledges. (because they were not in government and had to work with a party that had in some cases promised the opposite) but that doesn't make them liars. it just makes them people who had made the best of a bad situation.

I'm an undecided voter at present. in so far as I haven't decided to to vote for. If the choice is only between labour and Conservative then it's a grim choice.
which can be summed up as:
selling off everything we have in order to have enough money to pay for what's left.
Or borrowing more, and letting future generations pay for us being comfortable now.

I once did a back of a fag packet calculation based on the 1987 election when I was at Uni. It was terrifying how few people actually decide who governs this country. You get it by adding up the number of votes in the most marginal seats it took to get the required number of MPs to exceed the majority threshold (326). As I recall it was the low tens of thousands. (Because I have no machine that can read a 5¼" disk ).

I even started writing a piece of fiction where a group of computer whizz kids (you'd never guess what I was studying ) were able to identify the individual voters and thus create a mailing list for voter bribery for sale to the highest bidder ...

No vote is a wasted vote. If I vote for a smaller party and they get a seat then we are diluting the influence of the main parties like Labour and the tories which quite frankly they deserve as they are a bunch of self serving career politicians very out of touch with us mortals.

This kind of thinking makes me so fucking angry.

No vote is a wasted vote. If people voted with their minds rather than trying to second guess the system then I think the political landscape would look very different.

This kind of talk puts some off voting and not using your vote is shameful.

I normally vote Lib Dem but may go Green. Undecided at the moment.

30somethingm

I would imagine a Green voter would rather hold their nose and vote Labour

quite an imagination there . You'd see Satan on skis before I voted Labour again.

If people don't vote for the people they actually believe in, then we'll never get out of this hideous 2 horse race. Yes, the green party aren't going to win the general election this time round, but the more people do vote for them (or your party of choice) then the more people will have the courage to vote for them in the future. Minority parties need loud supporters in order for them to grow. So don't be swayed by this ridiculous scaremongering.

I agree with Lurking too.

A Green voter would not necessarily vote Labour as a second choice.

Most people I know would rather destroy their ballot than vote Labour.

...its not like Scottish MPs can do much in WM.
I wouldn't be so sure. They could certainly hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. Which raises all sorts of fascinating constitutional questions (for those interested in such things).

I wouldn't be so sure either!
It was Scottish MP's that voted in favour of increasing tuition fees for English students. making it much more expensive/difficult for English students to attend further education. but reducing the cost of the education budget, and thus meaning overall the budget (that they share) is bigger.

At the same time Scots decided to keep further education well funded within their own borders.
Had the largely Labour and Lib-dem Scottish MPs (there was only 1 conservative MP is Scotland at the time) abstained, not voting in an issue that only affected English people, the government would have been defeated and tuition fees would still be mostly paid by government.

It's easy for Labour and Lib dems to blame the Conservatives for putting up tuition fees, but they voted FOR it.

I'm probably going to vote for the Greens as their policies are the closest to my views on a number of key issues.

There is zero chance of the Tories, Lib Dems or UKIP winning my local seat.

I'm voting Green so I can state my opinion that we need change and we want alternatives. The only wasted vote IMO is an unused vote.

Well fair enough - if we have a Tory minority government propped up by UKIP on a confidence and supply basis, I reckon a lot of people will be annoyed they didn't vote to keep T/U out.

Well, where I live, Labour are in and they have been awful for motorists, renters, schools etc and they are plagued by corruption. The Greens seem to be the only real left-wing alternative to LibLabCon.

The old guard who were die hard labour or tory are dying off and we are in for some big changes. Maybe not this election but ask yourself who the next generation will vote for. Lots of young people are getting interested in politics thanks to the work in schools to stop apathy. I think the Greens will be very popular.

JoanGalt

this isn't from any underlying bias ("oh, I'm conservative with a small 'c'" or whatever).

It's because I am old enough to remember being fucked over by Labour and Tory, then Labour again to last a lifetime. So, as I say, hell would freeze over before I voted for either of them.

All my life, I've felt more Liberal-LibDem than anything else. But I have no time for a party which went into power without clearly marking a red line over their manifesto promise, and which has supported some clearly undiluted Tory policies.

And (apologies to the Bard) there's the rub !

Does anyone recall the Blackadder episode where they are trying to marry off the Price Regent. Blackadder is reading through a list of European princesses, and discounts them for various reasons ...

Blackadder: There are only two princesses in Europe available. The first is Grand Duchess Sophia of Turin. We'll never get her to marry him.

Baldrick: Why not?

Blackadder: Because she's met him.

There's an awful lot of voters who have now met Labour and Tory, and don't much like what they find.

I do always vote even though it feels a bit pointless. The constituency I live in has only ever been conservative. Unless we switch to some form of proportional representation, my little vote is extremely unlikely to have any effect.

LoisWilkerson15

The old guard who were die hard labour or tory are dying off and we are in for some big changes

Good point. When asked why ideas in science change, Arthur C Clarke replied "Old people die."

It's interesting to speculate how the Lab/Tory divide works. It's rare to ever hear a Labour voter admit to voting Tory or LibDem. But I know a few Tories (looking at you mother) who would happily vote LibDem to keep Labour out. So it's an asymmetric skew.

Not so sure about young people though. DS is a bright lad, as are most of his friends. But none of them have any intention of voting, thus far. Thats from 3 doing apprecticeships, one at Uni, and 2 doing BTECs at college. Obviously not a meaningful sample, but that's 100% of 18-19 years I know .

It's not a wasted vote. You vote for whomever you choose.

One thing I will say again is that given that this is a site for parents, I'm absolutely astounded by the support for a Labour government that took us to the brink in the expectation that our children and grandchildren would foot the bill.

There are many things I would like. Not least a swimming pool and at least another holiday each year. If I work hard and save, I might be able to afford those things. What I would never to though is get them on creidt and expect my children to pay for them - even if those self same children swam in the pool and came on the holidays (which I chose).

Regardless of your politics, you must surely vote for whichever party ensures that each generation lives within its means. At the moment, it's none of them as none can convince turkeys to vote for Christmas but the Tories, to my mind at least, are heading in the right direction.

My vote is "pointless" because I live in a safe Tory constituency. I have no idea if the Greens will have a candidate in my area but I really hope they do, otherwise I will just be doing a spoilt ballot (I can't bring myself not to vote at all). Small parties only grow if people vote for them. They won't win this election, but maybe if they get a significant percentage increase this time they'll be considered a more significant party next time and get more coverage in the media etc. Change takes time. And Labour are just a watered down version of the Tories, so I don't really see the point in tactical voting. They're all the same.

Just for balance, it's worth highlighting that this "Green is wasted" view is a peculiarly English one. The Greens are quite a force in European politics.

lurking Odd isn't it? I was at my most political as a teen! Here in Scotland there has been a big drive to encourage young people to vote which was in part because if the referendum. The party that rolls up its sleeves and gets into schools is the one to watch.

MaliceInWinterWonderland78

^...the Tories, to my mind at least, are heading in the right direction*

are you disabled, unemployed, or homeless ? Or do you care about the disabled unemployed and homeless ?

If so, explain how voting for the Tories helps anyone in those categories ?

(I would have asked exactly the same questions if you thought Labour were heading in the same direction, since the answers are the same.)

If everyone took that view (that they live in a safe seat so why bother voting) then the vote would be split say 20000 : 0
fair enough you may not get 10,000 descenting votes, but if you can at least turn the result into a 15000 : 5000, or a 11,000: 9000 you start telling the MP that they aren't safe, and can stop kicking back and taking it easy.

Also, parties have to pay to stand in elections, (they call it a deposit), when peopel get enough votes they get their money back even if they don't get into power, where they get enough votes they get their deposit back.

When you decide not to bother voting because you don't think that you'll win, you cost you party not only some votes (where if enough people stopped doing this then they might get in anyway), but you possibly cost them money as well, money that could be better spent.

Lurking Do you mean in other European countries, or within the EU?

It's our FPTP system which disadvantages marginal parties like the greens.

If you live in a safe seat, it can be argued that pretty much any vote is a wasted vote. I could vote for anyone, safe in the knowledge that our MP will continue to be a labour MP. I live in Tony Blair's old constituency. One of the safest labour seats in the country.

That does at least mean that I can make whatever protest vote I like without worrying about giving a vote to UKIP or the Tories by default, though. I have voted green, in the past, but I don't think their policies reflect the need to redress the chronic infrastructure underfunding we've experienced in the Northeast. At the last election, they wanted to stop funding road improvements and put the money into public transport. Well great, but major trunk roads up here are already unfit for purpose and it would take a very expensive funding miracle to provide public transport that would take sufficient pressure off the roads for improvements to no longer be needed.