feh! New Label in for another term. Ho Hum.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ubertuber
This is really basic, but I'm trying... So, do people in the UK typically vote for people or for parties?
Actually, let me ask a two part question.
1) When you go vote, are you voting for a person or a party (I mean physically, not how do you decide)?
2) If you vote for a person, but not directly for the prime minister, do people typically vote for the local person based on his or her track record, or based on their party as a way of commenting on the prime minister?
By the way, happy election day to you guys!
|
1) In my case, I decide by the party, because I find it enough of a headache to educate myself on the parties, let alone the individual candidates. I think this is the most common tactic, but there was, for example, an independent in my area yesterday who would've been depending on people voting for candidates, so there must be some out there who do it.
2) Again, typically I think people vote for a candidate as a comment on that party's leader. Or at least if you asked anyone how they thought other people voted that's the answer you'd get... But it does get more complicated than that. A colleague of mine voted for the Tory candidate yesterday, even though he doesn't want Michael Howard in power. He refused to vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate because of his previous track record in local government. I, on the other hand, voted for the Greens and I still don't even know who their leader is. The reason was that I wanted to register a protest vote against the main parties, but I didn't want to vote for UKIP or an independent I knew nothing about. Also I live in a hippie-ish town, so the Greens actually stood a fairly good chance.