To think there aren't that many 'single issue' voters after all?

[ManchesterBeatrice]

After realising that there are single issue voters from a different discussion, although not as many as I might have thought, it led me to think about 'single issue' voting.

Until Mumsnet I never realised this was a thing, has this always been a thing, I'm 40 ish! I always thought you voted on the beat package so to speak!

My group are mixed, but there are no single issue voters.

The best package, obvs.

I think Prof John Curtice might be better placed to answer this than AIBU on Mumsnet.

I haven't heard of him! Thanks, I'll look him up 😊

You can think of it as necessary and sufficient conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessityandd_sufficiency

For example, I'd like a party whose policies include housing reform and support for Europe and poverty reduction and so on. But if all of those were met and they also had a policy that made abortion illegal, I couldn't vote for them. Am I a single issue voter? Not really. But a necessary condition of me voting for a party is belief in a woman's right to choose.

If all the parties support that single issue, I'm no longer a single issue voter. I think most voters are single issue if the issue is important enough.

That's a really interesting point, I hadn't thought of it that way round.

I was more thinking in terms of single issue meaning voting for because of one single thing.

But equally I couldn't vote for a party that wanted to make fox hunting legal for example.

Or give women no right to choose an abortion like you say.

So I suppose I would be a single issue voter, in that way. The other way round I guess.

Personal opinion only: It's never taken off in the UK because we don't have Proportional Representation (PR) or Alternative Vote, or similar. We have 'first past the post'.

There are exceptions like Martin Bell who became an (one term) MP - but that was against a background of ousting an unpopular incumbent and being well-known and squeaky clean.

The thread that led me to post this has been resuscitated into another thread after filling up to 1000 posts on the first one.

The single issue for that original poster was what is a woman and the Tory's knowing, but it seems that there are still not that many single issue voters posting!

A lot of senior Tories have been fucking abysmal on gender identity though - Theresa May was ready to approve self-ID ffs.

It was Johnson and his (then) Minister for Woman & Equalities Liz Truss who blocked it, much to the fury of Crispin Blunt (MP, Con), the opportunistic chagrin of Penny Mordaunt (MP, Con), and the disappointment of Select Committee chairs Maria Miller (MP, Con) and Caroline Nokes (MP, Con). The Tories are riddled with gender crap and so is the civil service and NHS they have presided over.

So women on MN see this and they see Labour's duplicity on the matter, and are politically homeless in an electoral system of first-past-the-post.

It's all such a mess.

Where I live we have proportional representation, which means single issue (or voter group) parties can be set up. Hard right, hard left, farmers, old people, students, animal rights, extreme anti EU, extreme pro-EU etc. The centrist parties still tend to get most votes but have to work with the extremes, who just need to get enough publicity to get a few percent of the votes

Sunak claimed the general public were being “bullied” into thinking “people can be any sex they want to be”.
He claimed: “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”

The Tory Party just know it's a divisive topic and they can get votes from those for whom it is a single issue vote. Given they need as many votes as they can get, they're happy to pay lip service.

Angela Rayner: We have biological women and we have trans women. And they’re both women: one is a biological woman through sex, and one is a trans woman who has transitioned. Most of the public can get that.”

The Labour Party also know it's a divisive topic and they can get votes from those for whom it is a single issue vote. Given they should in theory win by a landslide, they're also happy to pay lip service.

Voting for a party that's not 100% your view on every issue is just grown-up compromise. It's how things get done.

Love it or loathe it, but the huge strength of First Past The Post is that it keeps extremists out of power.

People like to point out the workings of coalition governments in other countries. Well the UK itself always has a coalition government! How come? Because the FPTP system requires the mainstream parties to be broad churches encompassing a range of views ie coalitions. Narrow parties don't work under FPTP. And the parties know that the one thing guaranteed to deter voters is extremists, so they work hard to kick them out.

Under FPTP you usually get to see the form of the coalition before the election, not whatever's cobbled together afterwards by giving disproportionate power to extremist parties.

A single issue can mean I absolutely will not vote for a party, but it's a balance of other multiple issues that make me more likely to vote for a party as I have more than one thing that matters to me.

For instance I will not even consider voting for Labour because they think women should ever let any man into female spaces, roles or awards/funding if they just say they are a woman, so no matter what other policies they have I'll never vote for them.

I don't know any single issue voters in real life. I've only encountered them on here.

I've voted for candidates as individuals before because I know them personally, irrespective of Party, and I knew/know them to be decent people who'll take the role seriously. Tends to be local elections though.

Never voted Conservative though at a local or general election. I've voted Green, Labour, Lib Dem (before they all went nuts), and Independent.

I can't be that unusual. A classic female swing voter who cares about children's safeguarding.

Unfortunately our new crop of independent candidates where I live are an unsubtle reincarnation of the Brexit Party, or Reform Lite.

I won’t be voting Labour purely because of the VAT on school fees, without that single issue I probably would. It means an extra £1k a month for our family and I’m also vehemently against taxing children’s education.

That’s because in RL people won’t admit to it. A bit like people don’t admit to voting Tory.

So you say. In real life I find that the women I know agree with the wider electorate - there are more important issues to consider.

I think the women rights stuff may stop me voting Labour but won't make me vote Tory.

If everything else looked fantastic with Labour and their polices I still think it would be putting me off but that's not the case they currently look slightly less bad than Tory and really bad round women's rights issue - so will have to look at other options available.