Quote:
Originally Posted by richard1960
Indeed not that i agree on, but to not get one seat in parliament when there are apparently so many Eurosceptics in the uk is amazing.
Not that i am a big supporter of UKIP but if the uk electorate votes and continue to vote for the big three they will get more of the same,as senior politicians of all parties have a vested interest in a second career,on the gravy train.
It really is of no use people complaining of the EU budget and then voting for more of the same in my view.
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At a general election, people generally vote for a government, not single issues. There are exceptions to this of course - Martin Bell did well out of the 'sleaze' issue in 1997, but only with help from Labour and the Lib Dems who stood aside to allow him to scoop up all the anti-Hamilton votes in what would otherwise still have been a safe Tory seat. There have been one or two other recent examples.
Caroline Lucas has won the Greens a seat because Brighton has something of a unique demographic. If they were ever going to win a FPTP seat it would always have been somewhere like that, because it has what you need to win a vote under that system - sufficient concentration of support within one constituency to ensure you get more votes than the candidate who comes in second.
UKIP's Westminster election problem is twofold. They are perceived as a single issue party (which basically they are, no matter what they put in their manifesto). This does not commend them to what is a relatively sophisticated electorate. Second they have broad support, but nowhere do they have concentrated support. If they want a Westminster seat they would be best served in identifying the largest concentration of potential voters and then concentrating all their efforts on just a handful of likely targets.