Living in a 'safe seat' - "My vote doesn't count"

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

A young woman said this on the Question Time special last night. She was in an audience consisting only of people aged under 30, so I don't know how much under 30 she was, but I've heard other people saying this too.

Yes, it's frustrating - I live in a constituency which is held by a very senior Tory and it is very much considered a safe seat.

However, some people don't seem to understand that a seat isn't arbitrarily decided and officially reserved as a guaranteed win for one party - it's like that because every person's vote does count, exactly the same as in the diciest of marginals, but if a large majority of voters in the same constituency invariably choose to vote the same way, leaving you in the minority, then what they choose will win. Your vote did count - to reduce the majority by one vote - it's just that, in a first-past-the-post system, there can only be one winner.

By contrast from a constituency-based election, the man from the SNP also seemed unable to grasp the basics of a referendum, when he complained that Scotland had voted to remain in the EU but was being denied this and thus it was not democracy. As Scotland had already previously voted to stay in the UK, each adult in Scotland, like in the rest of the UK, had exactly one vote. As a city/region, London voted to remain, but didn't get the majority wish, because the referendum was held across the UK as a single whole.

It seems to be a widely-held conspiracy that we do whatever England wants, but whenever UK-wide issues are voted on, whether on a constituency or an individual basis, of course 85% of the say is going to come from where 85% of the people happen to live. Yes, we have four home nations, but how would it possibly have been fair if every Scottish/Welsh/NI vote in the referendum had counted for 6 times as much as every English vote? Even if we had done it on a home nation basis, it was still two either way.

Meanwhile, somebody in the audience complained at not having had ONE vote in the Brexit referendum (as an under-18 at the time) and yet their grandparents (plural and obviously both over 18) had been allowed TWO votes, so how could this possibly be democracy?!

If you don't like the system or if you want national independence, then great - campaign and vote whenever able to change it. But democracy, for good or bad, hasn't been denied to you just because more people in your constituency or country wanted something different from you - this is exactly what democracy is, in fact.

Am I missing something here? Do a lot of people think that democracy = what they as an individual want - or do they have a valid point?

There have also been reports of households where coercion or control is exerted by one family member and the other adults in the household are either 'told' how they must vote or the abuser simply fills them all the forms in and returns them without the other voter(s) ever seeing them.

I have to sign my postal vote - this is so it can be checked against the record of my signature held.

IMHO we should be looking for ways to make it easier for everyone to vote, not harder.

My constituency hasn't changed hands for over a hundred years.
Yes,my vote counts in the sense of being tallied as part of the total vote but it has and will have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election,our future government,anything.
If I don't vote the outcome will be exactly the same.
So no,I don't think my vote counts.
I think PR would improve things.At its simplest I think it is only fair and just that if X per cent of the population vote for Party A then that should be reflected in the number of seats Party A hold in Parliament.

Where my parents lived in the North West a goat with a red ribbon round its neck would get the Labour vote, to paraphrase Jilly Cooper their winning margin was weighed rather than counted.

@InfiniteCurve but by that logic, everyone in the country who voted for a party other than the winning party wouldn't count. And that could be the majority of voters, depending on how the vote is split over constituencies.

If they hadn't voted the outcome would be exactly the same.

I don't accept that voting is pointless if you're not on the winning side. It may feel futile but that's not the same as actually being pointless.

Would much prefer PR.

Well,yes @Lockheart - that's my point really.Country wide,no but at the level of an individual seat then yeah.

* If a seat has 70,000 voters and 60,000 of them invariably vote for Party A every time, that's 60,000 different people in total - i.e. a majority - all individually making their choice and casting their votes accordingly.*
WeBuiltThisBuffet, yes those individuals are making their choice and for them casting their vote results in their views bring represented in government. Their votes count.The votes of those people who vote for the minority parties in that seat do not result in that - their vote has the potential to count and impact the way the country is governed but only the potential.So of equal value in that respect only.
And in the Liberal heyday of my youth the liberal votes did count for less that the votes of the 2 major parties, as the geographical distribution of the voters meant that those votes inevitably gained less seats than if they had been Labour or Tory votes,and less seats =less voice= less power.The same holds for minority parties today.

PR would improve things, as would lowering the voting age to 16.

Given the traditional 5 year election cycle, most people wouldn't get a chance to vote until they were at least 18, and no-one would have to wait until they were nearly 23 as they do under the current system.

I live in one of the safest Conservative seats in the country (thank God!), but will still be voting to swell their majority. Boris for PM!

I won't be voting, partly because I don't really have anyone I want to vote for anymore and partly because I live in a safe Labour seat known for block voting. A donkey with a red rosette would win here. I also disagree strongly with much of what most of the local candidates stand for anyway so why bother, I have work to do so that takes priority.

There is no such thing as a safe seat

There really is. We'd have to be down to 3 Tory MPs before my MP would lose his seat. I actually think he had the biggest majority last time, but the demographics are changing a little bit, so maybe he'd get 55% of the vote instead of the 67% (I think) he got last time. We'll see anyway.

If that happens to be shortly after a General Election, your first opportunity to cash your vote may be when you're 23

Yes. If we'd had the normal 5 year cycle after 2015 and an election next year, my son would have just missed out and had to wait until he was 23 to vote as he's 18 next year but after an election would have taken place.

As it is, he'll be 22 if we now have a 5 year cycle. But perhaps there will be another election in 2021 and he will get the chance to vote earlier than expected

You in Knowsley, BlaueLagune?

One way a safe seat ends up not being safe is if a popular incumbent stands as an independent.

If we had PR then wouldn’t UKIP have been the 3rd biggest party after Conservative and Labour and so would have more representation in parliament than the Liberal Democrat’s and all the other parties

"My Labour MP got nearly 70% of the vote at the last election - voter turnout was also 70%. So I think I'm right to say that even if every eligible voter turned out and voted for a single non-Labour candidate, Labour would still win (that's if all the people who voted Labour in 2017 voted Labour again on Thursday, which is not necessarily a given with the Brexit Factor...)"

70% of 70% is 49%. So 21% of voters didn't vote labour. If those 21% of voters all voted for one candidate, collectively, and if 100% of the remaining 30% of people (people that didn't vote last time) all voted for that same candidate, then the non-Labour candidate would have 51% of the votes and win.

But that's never going to happen!

.

If UKIP - or any other party - had the votes, then they should have seats in proportion.

I strongly disagree with their policies, but that would be much more democratic than first past the post.

I'm in a safer seat (although sitting MP is going today... yippee) and voted outside top two to get deposit back

I don't think there's any such thing as a safe seat, at the moment. I used to live in Blair's constituency. The tories are actually a threat there, nowadays.

Should correct that to no such thing as a safe labour seat. I think brexit is partly to blame for that.

I live in what’s historically been a safe seat constituency. The party currently holding the seat is the one I want to see win.

Realistically, if the margins between the winning candidate and the first runner up are anything like those in previous elections, there’s no point in me voting.

But I’ve still voted. Because I want to minimise the odds of a scenario where there’s a surprise and a candidate I don’t like gets into a formerly safe seat by a handful of votes.

Agree proportional representation would improve things generally too.

I think that if it is a safe seat, it is unlikely that the opposition will put in their star players. Having said that, a young Anthony Blair once stood for Beaconsfield and no, he didn't win.

I think I have just decided who to vote for.

But I’ve still voted. Because I want to minimise the odds of a scenario where there’s a surprise and a candidate I don’t like gets into a formerly safe seat by a handful of votes.

I don't know how true or exaggerated it was, but it was widely claimed that many younger adults who were dead set on Remain thought it would be such a landslide that they didn't bother voting - and were then angry when it didn't go 'their' way - well, what would have been 'their' way if they'd taken the trouble to use their democratic right to express it.

What’s your source on that OP? Doesn’t sound accurate.

What’s your source on that OP? Doesn’t sound accurate.

No official source, just going on some of the anecdotal 'evidence' given by people talking about themselves or friends/family members in the media.

It probably isn't largely accurate, although I guess it might well have been the case with a small number of the entitled sort.

Whether it's true or not, the principle stands that you can never assume that others will agree with you and therefore delegate your own responsibility to strangers.

This report is interesting.

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/brits-who-didnt-vote-in-the-eu-referendum-now-wish-they-voted-against-brexit-a7326401.html