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Originally Posted by Graham
<snip>More to the point, had the UK European Election results mirrored the UK Local Election results, I think it would have been meaningless because people would have just been blindly voting for a party.
However the fact that there were *substantial* differences suggests that many of those who voted were actually doing so on the basis of issues and principles, rather than simple "party alliegence".
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Agreed - and for me, this is one of the most heartening things about last week's election results. The clear difference between the local elections, the Euro-election and, in London, the mayoral/assembly election demonstrates that we have become a mature, intelligent democracy that is (generally) capable of voting based on relevant issues and not blind loyalty.
I saw the first signs of this a few years back when, despite Labour's renaissance at Westminster, Liverpool's voters ditched Labour and gave the city council to the Lib Dems. Prior to that, even the blue half of the city would have voted for a monkey providing it was wearing a red rosette. </obscure footballing metaphor>