Two polls have shown No's lead down to "just" 10 points. Also, "Yes" is in the lead in Scotland - which might be a shard of hope for the "Yes" campaign, as Scotland should have a much higher turnout than most of England due to their Parliament Elections.

The same in Northern Ireland, where the AV campaign seems to be falling down community lines. All the nationalist parties (Sinn Fein, SDLP) plus the non-committal Alliance Party are all in favour, whilst the unionist parties (DUP, UUP and TUV) are all against AV. Quelle surprise.

Yes is in the lead up North because it's actually simpler than the system we use at Holyrood :lol:

 

I'm hoping the surprising display of common sense from Scotland will see it pass as you are right, voter turn out down south is going to be diabolical.

 

 

Voting should be compulsory like in Australia.

There are local elections in many parts of England. However polls also show a Yes lead in London where there are no local elections so that could wipe out the advantage from Scotland.

 

The polls have to be treated with a great deal of caution. When people are asked whether they will be voting over 50% say yes. However nobody seems to think turnout will be anywhere near as high as that.

 

Meanwhile, here's Dan Snow with a video version of the poster Mark posted earlier

 

 

An interesting fact I thought might be relevant - In Papua New Guinea, before they adopted the AV system, candidates were winning first past the post elections with only 9% of the vote in some cases.

 

 

Another No campaign broadcast, same old pack of lies.

After his "Calm down dear" moment Cameron has been displaying his arrogance once again. This time he's told John Humphrys to "Go back to school". Unfortunately Humphrys got his facts wrong in part of the interview but he was right about the "Some people get more votes than others" nonsense. Cameron again described AV is complicated. If he thinks that then perhaps he should be the one going back to school and his father should be asking for a refund of all those fees he paid.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/polit...sh-2278231.html

After a few weeks of wavering between voting "Yes" or not voting atall, I've decided to vote "Yes". I'm a believer in proportional representation, and I don't actually think AV would be much of an improvement on the current system atall - but I've been persuaded that a victory for "No" would shut the electoral reform debate down completely, which I don't want.

 

With that said, my respect for the Lib Dems has sunk to an alltime low during this campaign. The fact that THIS is what they've decided to throw a hissy fit about - not the massive cuts, not the tuition fees rise, not the EMA scrapping, not the NHS reforms (which Clegg and Huhne were happily defending until the Lib Dem grassroots went nuts) - speaks volumes about how unprincipled and self-serving they are. Even as someone who believes in electoral reform, this clearly ain't the biggest issue right now.

No it isn't the biggest issue. However, the reason for Lib Dem anger is that the entire No campaign has been a pack of lies. That includes the Prime Minister himself telling blatant lies in a radio interview. If the No campaigners had actually been prepared to discuss the issue there wouldn't have been so much anger.

I've given my electoral requests to my proxy (aka. my mum) and asked her to vote 'Yes' in the referendum. It will make elections a lot more fun and I'm used to the basic system behind it, given that NI has had PR for years (not the same thing I know, but it's got the same principle behind it)

 

One thing I found interesting is that the Northern Irish Green Party are against AV, as they believe it will lead to more polarization between the nationalist/unionist parties in NI. I thought the Greens would be the sort of party that would pick up many 2nd preference votes, and be in favour of it.

First AV result in from Sunderland has 75% No, 25% Yes. Clegg has only himself to blame.

First AV result in from Sunderland has 75% No, 25% Yes. Clegg has only himself to blame.

There were a couple earlier results with a slightly lower No vote.

 

How is it Clegg's fault? Without the coalition there would have been no referendum. The only question mark is over the timing. I don't support the idea of having votes for several different things on the same day so I was opposed to the choice of yesterday for the referendum. However, I'm not sure that there would have been a Yes vote if it had been held in the autumn.

There were a couple earlier results with a slightly lower No vote.

 

How is it Clegg's fault? Without the coalition there would have been no referendum. The only question mark is over the timing. I don't support the idea of having votes for several different things on the same day so I was opposed to the choice of yesterday for the referendum. However, I'm not sure that there would have been a Yes vote if it had been held in the autumn.

 

Three huge mistakes Clegg made. First, by choosing to go into Coalition and sell out on everything, rather than taking the Tories' offer of a supply-and-demand deal and an AV referendum, he's made "hung parliament" dirty words. Although a hung parliament wouldn't be anywhere near as common under AV as the "No" campaign claims, they would still be a bit more likely, and, because of Clegg, people now think hung parliaments would ALWAYS mean broken promises, rather than it just being Clegg unprincipled.

 

Second, the timing of the referendum. Having it on the same day as local elections meant the referendum became even more party-politicised than it would've been otherwise.

 

Third, Clegg apparently refusing to accept he's about as popular as AIDS, and constantly wading into the campaign. I don't actually think the "No" campaign's misrepresentations had much effect on the result atall - most people either didn't believe or didn't care about this £250m figure or the "one person, one vote" thing - all they saw was that the big winners from AV would probably be the Lib Dems. Labour voters were always going to be the decisive block, and Clegg is electoral poison to them. It was impossible for electoral-reformers within Labour to reach out to Labour voters when the whinges from Clegg and Huhne kept reminding them that this was a chance to give the Lib Dems a kicking. If they'd had the sense to just sit down and shut up, it might not have been so difficult.

Dundee East just thumped AV with a 65% No vote.

 

It's all going wrong in Scotland for AV. In Scotland the Yes campaign should have been based on the fact that it's far easier than the already fair system they use for Holyrood.

It's official: a rout for the "Yes" campaign as the UK says "No" to AV by a margin of more than two to one. Only five areas out of more than 800 in the entire country did a majority of people vote "Yes".

not best pleased by this.

 

only 29% yes in my area :(

I wanted "Yes" to win, not because I think AV is particularly good (I don't think it would've made barely any difference atall in practice), but because I want full PR and didn't want the debate to be closed down. But if AV had to lose, I'm glad it lost big - it means Clegg's well-deserved bollocking from his party will be all the greater. :)

I still consider AV to be the best of the systems I have a decent knowledge of, so naturally this result upset me greatly. I do agree about Clegg sticking his nose in, simple maths dictates that if nearly all Tory voters said No and nearly all Lib Dems said Yes, there would have to be a resounding Yes vote from the Labour voters for it to scrape through.

 

You'd have thought the Lib Dems would have been more prepared for this outcome - this referendum was one of the key criteria for them entering the Coalition and Clegg et al knew exactly what the Tories were going to do when they got a sniff of power. So my only conclusion is that the top Lib Dems simply didn't see their massive drop in support coming.

I live in one of the 5 areas that voted yes so that makes me feel slightly happier! the thing that upsets me most about this is the fact that it demonstrates that you can win through lies and deceit

I live in one of the 5 areas that voted yes so that makes me feel slightly happier! the thing that upsets me most about this is the fact that it demonstrates that you can win through lies and deceit

Agreed. Given the success of a campaign based entirely on lies, I hate to think what the next general election campaign is going to be like.