If there was a general election this week, how would you vote?

[TheDullWitch]

OK, quick poll inspired by David Willetts thread. Answer...

1. How you would vote
2. Who you usually vote for
3. Main issue/personality/event which has made your decision.

1. Tory
2. Labour
3. How Labour have screwed the NHS whilst tweaking the figures and moving the goalposts annoys me. The fact that IMO Labour have been instrumental in creating a welfare state that is now a lifestyle choice for many rather than a safety net. That education has been messed up so that teachers are more administrators than teachers.

1. labour

2. labour

3. I remember Mrs T. Gordon is good and I've seen massive improvements in the last decade in the public sector area I work in. Cameron is a smarmy Etonian. Our Tory MP is OK though (Greg Clark).

Lib Dem
Lib Dem/Labour
I'm disillusioned with all parties but I could not bring myself to vote for Cameron

Thingmajig - I respect your pov but how do you feel now that everything is being 're-nationalised'? How would the Tory's deal with the current situation without doing similar? Let the market manage itself? Genuinely curious (though dd crying so may not be around to offer any counter arguments).

I think that the current situation is an exceptional one, nothing like the current financial meltdown has happened for years; even banks in Switzerland and Belgium are in big trouble. I think that the Tories would call in asset strippers and administration, flog off all the debt they could, but things have been so bad that perhaps even that would not work and nationalisation would be the only option. DH gives the analogy that you may be anti war, but agree in exceptional circumstances to intervene in a Rwanda situation.

So basically I fudge the answer and say I am a lifelong tory on principle, just as many on this thread have professed to be lifelong Labour supporters, though disillusioned with the current administration.

1 SNP
2 SNP
3 - The only party that is actually doing anything for the benefit of people in Scotland.

Could never ever ever vote Tory, after what they did to this country.

SNP
Labour/SNP/LibDem

Never Never Tory, Portillo was my MP, poll tax.
Not Labour, hundres of thousands of people in Iraq are dead and trident.
Scotland could look after its citizens and resources much better independent of a London centric government.

1. I always go thinking Lib Dem but usually bottle it and vote Labour in fear of a split vote letting Tories back in.

1. See above

1. I think it would be good to give someone else a chance but basically they are all as policy-lite as each other.

1. Tory
2. Tory
3. Actually think Labour have done some good things - flexible working policies, maternity leave etc. But think they overspend every time they're in power, and the subsequent Tory government have to reign in the expenditure making themselves unpopular.

1: Tory
2: Tory

3: Always have voted Tory since 1984, when I could first vote. Several reasons - I don't trust Labour, never have, never will.

Second, they have totally screwed the Armed Forces over, and don't understand Defence (by GB's own admission).

The amount of unnecessary expenditure/quangos/jobs for the boys/creation of a client state piss me off as well.

Also, the inequality of the education spend across Local Authorities. Strange how Labour authorities do well, whilst places like Cornwall (firmly Lib Dem unfortunately), get far less per child per head. That's sheer bloody hypocrisy especially when they bang on about level playing fields...only if you vote Labour!

They have sold us out to Europe and I think that is a big mistake, which hopefully a Tory administration will reverse, or at least let us have a referendum on.

I had flexible working and maternity leave under a Tory administration in 1995 Cosette, so the foundations were already in place.

thingamijig - what about the 18 years before that?

Lib Dem (purely tactical - conservatives are only opposition here)
Labour
Because Cameron / Osborne only seem capable of criticising Brown's character, and have no reasonable policies (they seem to change to suit the weather, and don't have any idea how they would actually have managed crises like northern rock had they been in power) I think GB is an honest decent person who doesn't have an easy charisma (tbh, I don't think this is more important that knowledge, experience and core values) and probably isn't prepared to arse around carrying coffee mugs and wearing woolly jumpers to appeal to middle england voters. Really don't trust the "compassionate" conservatives - all style and no substance.

Labour
Labour
I genuinely like G Brown. We've just been hyped and soundbited into thinking he is incapable. I would like to see smarmy arse Cameron deal with all this.

1. Labour
2. Green/Labour
3. protest vote against Tories getting into power. Could never vote Tory though I would rather go down the pub with Dave than Gordon. Labout are v bad at publicising the good things they have done (as Polly toynbee always points out).

1. Labour
2. In GEs, Lib Dem or Labour.
3. Fear of Tories. Also, Labour's record really hasn't been so bad.

dh does a good Vince Cable impersonation

SNP
Lib Dem

1. labour
2. Labour. Labour - would rather stick pins in my eyes than vote Tory.

In my view you're either inherently a scopialist and therefore care for the needs of those less fortunate than yourself or you're not. I don't buy all this 'I used to vote Labour but they let me down. You don't change just when the going get's tough and New Labour has lost it's shine. You don't suddenly become right wing!!

clearly meant to say socialist in last post not sure what a scopialist is!!

This is why you don't vote tory.
uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20081001/tuk-tory-apologies-for-prescott-joke-6323e80.html

1. Lib Dem (it wouldn't make any difference in my constituency but I want to encourage them!)

1. Labour (I think as a party it has and continues to attract, people with similar ideologies to me. Plus I've found local Labour run council to be excellent.

Would take something fairly extreme to happen to me to make me vote Conservative.

Do you vote for the party you want to be in government or the MP you want in your constituency?

ie. who do you have in your mind as the representative of the party you're voting for? If I lived in a Conservative constituency and it was well run and narrow margins, think I would still vote Lib Dem

1. Tory
2. Tory
3. Never trust a Labour government - people easily forget just how bad they are and Chancellor's never make good PMs, it's been proven.

I work for 2 Tory MPs who have been elected for years and do damn good jobs.

1. SNP
2. SNP, but originally Labour
3. Iraq, ID cards and the fact that any relationship between New Labour and its socialist roots is purely coincidental. The Labour party are doing things that the Tory party only ever dreamt of doing. ALthough I do also blame Mrs Thatcher as she was the one who moved away from consensus politics and effectivelty a dictatorship of the Government/Cabinet and Parliament may as well go home after the election.

If/when Scotland gets its indepedence, then I might go back to voting for a true Labour Party.

Have to mention as well that the Libdems (who would have been my fallback if I lived in England) really went down in my estimtation when they went down the "lwer tax" route. Even though I am a higher rate tax paer, I recognise that if I want decent public services, then they have to come out of taxation.

Labour
Labour
NHS -massive improvements in services-under the Tories people could wait up to two years for operations-now maximum wait is eighteen weeks-with 85% seen before that time limit.
Minimum wage- Tories were totally against this.
Education- school buildings were crumbling under years of Tory under investment.

1. Liberal Democrat

1. Liberal Democrat

1. Sensible attitudes and sensible policies. (I joined in 2003).

I'm totally opposed to Labour statism, centralisation and control-freakery. I'm on the centre-right economically, but am not fond of the Conservatives and find Cameron... I would previously have said empty, but now increasingly sinister.