Gen Elec. Vote for local or national party?

[SnuffyAndBigBird]

Posting here for traffic.

I do not know who to vote for.

I am not voting Conservative, and I am not voting Labour.
I have beef with the Lib Dem’s, and The Greens, and it is unclear what exactly Reform stand for.

I would hold my nose and vote for one of the other parties, but not the main 2. However, is this a wasted vote?

Secondly, I do not know if it is more important to me to contribute to the ousting of my local MP. They are a high profile Tory who has done NOTHING for our local community, and in fact has held contempt for their constituency. At this point they may retain their seat, but at a lesser majority as they did last time. I consoled myself that they were too busy with government to deal with their constituency, but they won’t be in power on July 5th, so they will be neither use nor ornament to us locally.

So, vote for the party which is left on the list after I have crossed off the ones I have beef with, or vote tactically to improve things locally, which means voting for a party I don’t like but the local candidate would be better than the crap we have now?

AIBU Vote local
YANBU Vote National

I would say if your local MP has done nothing for you ( Is it Liz Truss? She's been utterly useless and contemptuous to her constituents) vote for whichever party is more likely to oust them. What's the point of having a local MP if they couldn't care less about their constituents? It's their actual job. I would vote local.

This is why we need “none of the above”

I didn’t vote last time.

i would vote Lib Dem in your position, if you decide to vote

What would be the point of a none if the above option? Why do you think "we need" it.

It's a waste of time voting for anyone other than the Tories or Labour as one of them (Labour) will be the biggest party. In the absence of a "none of the above" option or some joke candidate running (Loonies etc) it's best just to not bother voting, or spoil your ballot if you really "must" make the effort.

Whatever you do, don't vote for "least bad" and don't vote for someone you don't fully understand the policies of. If they win, and they are bad, you can easily end up with blood on your hands (see 1997 Blair and 2019 Johnson).

Vote tactically

Labour have very little chance of winning here so I'm going to vote Lib Dem

I think it would be good provided there was a rule that parties and candidates who were rejected by a majority of "none of the above" were barred from standing again in the rerun. Without that of course "none of the above" is just a "fuck you" to the existing candidates without any real effect

That's not necessarily true. There are plenty of constituencies with an incumbent Tory where the best way to get rid of them is to vote Lib Dem (ie - if they have a stronger second place position than Labour). So if your main priority is a change of government (putting local issues and personnel issues to one side), look at one of the tactical voting sites to see how your vote can be used to do this.

I've been in your exact position stop with an absolute useless incumbent conservative MP. I held my nose and voted for the only party that would oust them, at that point (Lib Dem), it helped and the useless sod was beaten. The next MP was considerably more proactive about local issues so it ended up being a win-win. And I didn't particularly like the lib dem manifesto I much preferred having them as our MP

No idea why that random stop is there 😂

Not a total waste of time. In the south West the lib dems are going to pick up a lot of seats I think. The more seats they have, the bigger their influence in the national debate.

I would (and have) vote tactically in that case.

This is the predicament I'm in, I'm in Bournemouth and my MP is Tory but the area I'm in is veerrrrry studenty so the only way of ousting that godforsaken mp is by tactful voting lib dems as theyre the closest running contenders. Ive never had any interest in tactful voting but if it manages to shake off the Tory hold in this area I'm all for it tbh!

I’d vote tactically to get that MP out, even if it meant holding my nose when voting for whoever else.

I will feel obliged to vote LD yet again this time, even though I have ‘issues’ (mostly gender-related) with them. It’s always a toss up between Con/LD here - Labour come nowhere. Not sure it’ll be nearly so close this time though - certainly not recount territory - which we’ve had before,

If your local MP is useless or has some other factor that makes you never want to vote for them, then vote for whoever is most likely to come second in a safe seat, or to defeat them. Reducing their majority by a lot may make them take a bit more notice of issues locally.

My MP who is a Brexit supporting Tory started to take some interest in local issues when the majority reduced a great deal.

Ok, I’ve made my decision

If the tactical vote is Lib Dem, I’m voting for them. If it’s Labour, I’m not giving them my vote. In fact if they look like they could take the seat, I’ll tactically vote against Labour.

Confusing eh?