Posted April 23, 201412 yr The European Elections will be held on Thursday 22nd May. So who will be getting your 1st preference vote in less than a month time, if anyone? Which party will gain the most UK seats in the elections? Will Ukip top the poll, or will their steady rise in support come crashing down come election day?
April 23, 201412 yr 80% chance of UKIP winning imo. If they do, it will be the first time since 1906 that any party other than Labour or the Conservatives has won any UK-wide election.
April 23, 201412 yr I will be voting Labour. This may be a wasted vote in the South East region (I'm not 100% sure how the voting system works in the Euros) but so be it.
April 23, 201412 yr I will likely end up voting Lib Dem as I'm aiming for a pro-Europe (and anti-UKIP) vote. Could still be persuaded to vote Labour (I don't really mind either way between the two at the moment), but as I'm in the South West constituency I'm not sure whether that'd really work, then again with the LD collapse in support... We'll see how I feel on election day.
April 23, 201412 yr I'm voting Greens. Gods knows why anyone would want to vote UKIP when they do nothing to stand up for people's rights in the European Parliament.
April 23, 201412 yr Author I will be voting Labour. This may be a wasted vote in the South East region (I'm not 100% sure how the voting system works in the Euros) but so be it. In European Elections, it's a party-based Proportional Representation, so it is likely that more than one party will end up getting seats in your region. In Northern Ireland, it's slightly different, as there are three seats, with each party only fielding one candidate (unlike the rest of the UK, where each party has multiple candidates in each region). At the moment, I'm very much a floating voter, as I really have no idea who I'm likely to vote for. Of the parties up for election in the rest of the UK, the only ones that are standing in NI are the Conservatives (who have never polled more than a handful of votes here), UKIP, who are unlikely to do well, even with their growing support, and the Greens, although they're more or less a separate entity over here. Other than that, there's Sinn Fein, SDLP, Alliance, DUP, UUP, TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice, a party that thinks the DUP are too liberal) & NI21 (a new party that broke away from the UUP, claiming to be a modern party of the 21 century, whatever that means). I can rule out 6 of them straight away, so it's a choice between one of four.
April 23, 201412 yr I will be voting Labour. This may be a wasted vote in the South East region (I'm not 100% sure how the voting system works in the Euros) but so be it. Nah. The d'Hondt system used in Euro elections makes it one of the few elections where you can vote for most parties and it won't be wasted (unless you're going for, say, the Christian People's Party/TUSC or some other bollocks non-entity party). We'll definitely get one seat and we're aiming to get it to two down in the SE, so if anything it's one of the more vital votes as I imagine we're going to be tussling hard with UKIP and the Greens (if they're still competitive after the hash they've made of Brighton council) to take at least one of the Lib Dems' two seats (if not both).
April 23, 201412 yr I will likely end up voting Lib Dem as I'm aiming for a pro-Europe (and anti-UKIP) vote. Could still be persuaded to vote Labour (I don't really mind either way between the two at the moment), but as I'm in the South West constituency I'm not sure whether that'd really work, then again with the LD collapse in support... We'll see how I feel on election day. If it helps at all, the Tories have 4 seats in the SW, the Lib Dems have 2 and Labour have 1. At a guess, UKIP are almost certainly going to end up with at least two in the SW, but they'll be mainly nabbing those off the Tories I imagine. Between those 3 seats Labour and the Lib Dems have, your vote will probably go towards deciding which of Labour or the Lib Dems get a second seat.
April 23, 201412 yr Oh, and I'm voting Labour. *shock-related stress decimates the nation* 80% chance of UKIP winning imo. If they do, it will be the first time since 1906 that any party other than Labour or the Conservatives has won any UK-wide election. I'd still put it 50/50. It's going to be close (we've got a consistent narrow lead in the polls on it, although the trend is for Ukip to outperform prior polls on the day by a few points so I reckon it'll be virtually tied), but I've got a lot of gloating to do in the comments on Telegraph blogs if we pip them out. I reckon we'll definitely get more seats though.
April 23, 201412 yr Author We'll definitely get one seat and we're aiming to get it to two down in the SE, so if anything it's one of the more vital votes as I imagine we're going to be tussling hard with UKIP and the Greens (if they're still competitive after the hash they've made of Brighton council) to take the Lib Dems' two seats. What did they do?
April 23, 201412 yr Voting SNP although I can't select that option ya Racists. (They are leading the Euro Polls on our side of the wall)
April 23, 201412 yr If it helps at all, the Tories have 4 seats in the SW, the Lib Dems have 2 and Labour have 1. At a guess, UKIP are almost certainly going to end up with at least two in the SW, but they'll be mainly nabbing those off the Tories I imagine. Between those 3 seats Labour and the Lib Dems have, your vote will probably go towards deciding which of Labour or the Lib Dems get a second seat. Thanks, I always like to know these little nuances of where the vote goes. Probably makes it harder to choose though.
April 23, 201412 yr I can vote in East Midlands, West Midlands and Scotland. Mess. Scotland look to be losing their Lib Dem and maybe the Conservative MEP, but whether these two go to the SNP, Greens or UKIP remains to be seen. But it's SO good to not have a 2/3/4-party system. So much choice!
April 23, 201412 yr What did they do? The Green council group's basically gone into civil war. The amount of times a faction within the Greens has tried to declare no confidence in the council leader so far is quite remarkable - even to the extent Caroline Lucas has kind of disowned the council. There've been a few laughable cases as well, such as the Greens deciding to cut down a tree to build a new cycle path, only to have a few Green councillors then immediately start a protest to protect the tree. And then there's the whole rubbish collection strike as well. There's loads about it online, but the group in Brighton don't really seem temperamentally suited to actually having to make decisions.
April 23, 201412 yr I can vote in East Midlands, West Midlands and Scotland. Mess. Scotland look to be losing their Lib Dem and maybe the Conservative MEP, but whether these two go to the SNP, Greens or UKIP remains to be seen. But it's SO good to not have a 2/3/4-party system. So much choice! East Midlands please babes *.*
April 23, 201412 yr Iirc, these elections in 2009 is the only election to date where I've not voted Labour. I may make it a second this time.
April 23, 201412 yr Green? I think it was Lib Dem in 2009, but I definitely WON'T be doing that again! If not Labour then it probably will be Green, but I don't like them all that much either -- I don't care overly about the environment/climate change. But sadly, as things stand, outside of Scotland there isn't a single party which is both left-wing and not focussed on Guardianista middle-class concerns like the environment or "civil liberties".
April 23, 201412 yr Since when was the environment a middle-class concern?! (I mean yeah obviously in terms of groups focusing on it, but in practice the effects are probably going to hit working class people the hardest.)
April 23, 201412 yr Love that you put civil liberties in quotation marks though, we'll make a Blairite of you yet *.*
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