We did a mock election at sixth form last week:

 

Labour - 60.8%

Conservative - 16.9%

UKIP - 12.2%

Lib Dems - 7.4%

Green - 2.7%

 

Come through the youngsters that couldn't vote in the last election!!

I was 15 for the 2010 election and Nick Clegg's Lib Dems polled way higher than that for our mock election. That party really are one huge disappointment*, aren't they?

 

They had quite a large segment of mostly young, centrist Remain voters to capture and they've utterly failed to do so. I said after the 2015 election that we needed a populist left party akin to Spain's Podemos and I guess we got that with Corbyn's Labour. Now it's high time we had a proper centrist party in the same vein as France's En Marche ! which could appeal to segments of Labour, Lib Dems and Conservative voters at the same time. The kind of party who could challenge the more cosmopolitan parts of the Tories' southeastern heartlands.

 

*I am not basing this verdict off a sixth form mock election but it does reinforce everything I already believe.

Edited June 8, 20178 yr by Harve

I'd love there to be a great centrist party that does that. Unfortunately, one thinks that any centrist party that comes along will be the exact opposite kind of centrist party to the centrist party I would want. Plus, there's the issue of FPTP, which would stop that train before it even leaves the station.

ISTM you're trying to make a purely academic point?

 

I've looked it up, and 1951 was the last time a party won a majority without the highest share of the popular vote.

Labour's share of the vote in that election is the largest achieved by any party since WWII. Yet, thanks to FPTP, they lost. In February 1974 the Tories won the most votes but Labour won more seats although they fell short of a majority.