Can I ask a question about AV please?

[goldenticket]

My issue is this - I've just watched the Dan Snow video on Youtube and followed the analogy about the pubs vs coffee.

But isn't this different because you don't get to change your vote after each round? I've read comparisons with the Tory and Labour leadership elections but don't they get to vote again after the least popular candidates drop out?

Can anyone follow what I'm saying and explain it to me please??

You are putting your choice in order - your lower prefernences only get used if your higher ones were for something very unpopular.

If you vote for a popular one first time round then your vote is likely to stick with that all the way through.

It just saves the time of having to rerun elections after eliminating some (which is what happens in the leadership elections). You don't get to change your choice in light of a first round - you make your choices up front and they get counted only if relevant.

You're quite right. It's not quite the same as the leadership election process. You get to pick your 1, 2, 3, 4 once and your choices remain the same throughout the contest. If you vote for one of the higher-polling candidates your 2, 3, 4 choices are probably not going to come into play. If you vote for one of the minor parties, your second choices are more likely to influence the eventual outcome.

Oh OK, thanks very much. Hmm, worrying...

It's one of the reasons I don't like AV, personally. There could be a candidate that polls a respectable 40%+ in the first round, for example, but ends up losing because they didn't get enough 2nds and 3rds. Looking at Caroline Lucas' result in Brighton Pavilion last year, she won her seat with something like 31% of the vote. To get the other 19% she'd have had to be placed 2nd by all the people who voted UKIP, LibDem and Socialist Labour... and quite a few of the Conservative voters as well. Everyone heralded her election as a great success but ironically, under AV (which she supports), I don't think she'd have won it.

There could be a candidate that polls a respectable 40%+ in the first round, for example, but ends up losing because they didn't get enough 2nds and 3rds.

but isn't that fair enough though in that it reflects opinion. $0% really like a candidate, but the rest can't stand them. FPTP give the 40% their choice, AV might give the other 60% someone who is not their first choice but at least someone they don't mind.

AV is precisely what is used in all party leadership elections (and students unions, trades unions etc etc). No you don't have what is called an exhaustive ballot where someone drops out each time and you vote again (X Factor style).

AV has exactly the same effect - although you can't change your mind between rounds. You express all your preferences at once and then during the count the losers are eliminated and your ballot paper moves according to your preferences if necessary.

It may well reflect opinion but it's always going to favour middle-of-the-road, inoffensive, trying-to-please-everyone parties. My fear is that we wouldn't get a Caroline Lucas or some plucky independent like Martin Bell winning through and Parliament would become even more beige & homogenous than it already is with everyone battling to be centre-ground. Up until 2010 you couldn't get a credit card between the policies of all the main parties. Now we have more polarised politics again we have to take sides and it's far more invigorating. One of the 'yes' arguments I don't agree with is that it would engage more people and make politics more interesting and accountable. I'm more motivated to participate if I can't stand some of the candidates than if I think they're all much of a muchness.

but if most people are middle of the road in their opinions then middle of the road governments is what we should get - bot swinging between two extremes who are trying their darndest to appeal to enough middle of the roaders to get in for long enough so that they can enact some of their more radical ideas.

The current proposals for the NHS are a case in point - not what most people want and deliberately not mentioned before the election where they were determinedly middle of the road.

not rather than bot by the way.

I don't think many tory voters were surprised at NHS reforms. Or they shouldn't have been :) We all expect popular button-pushing (and damned lies and statistics) from all parties in the run-up to an election but if you vote tory you're banking on tax-cuts, spending being trimmed, public service reform, favourable business conditions etc. and would be disappointed if it didn't happen.

I don't think people are as middle of the road as the choices they've been offered recently. I don't like the BNP, for example, but can see how they garnered popular appeal. The Greens, UKIP... none could be described as wishy-washy. LibDems suffered in the past because, as my uncle put it, 'they're neither nowt nor summat' and didn't inspire much emotion. But now the Tories and Labour have rediscovered their battle-axes, the choices are far clearer than they have been since 1997

I think I would prefer consensual rather than confrontational - in the hope that more of the things most people car about get a priority.