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Originally Posted by Chris T
It's a classic poll pattern. A lot of people think the Lib Dems talk a lot of sense, but as polling say draws closer, they start to consider how their vote might actually be put to best use. The Lib Dems stand no chance of winning in my constituency, so I switched my vote from them to Tory. They used to hold this seat and were in second place in 2001.
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It is sad but under the current FPTP system the LibDems will only do well in certain constituencies and only then as a protest vote against the ruling party.
Smaller paries such as UKIP stand no chance of getting any MPs and I do wonder why they bother putting up candidates rather than trying to steer the vote towards their best interests - all they really end up doing is splitting the Conservative vote and increasing the chance of Labour winning, which is ironinc as they share much more common ground with the Conservatives than Labour!
Under a PR system like the European elections (although even that is not perfect*) UKIP and the LibDems get a far larger number of MEPs elected.
* The system is still bad as you can only vote for a party and not individual candidates. I much prefer the student union RON system where only one person gets elected if they have a majority vote. Here you vote for your first, second, etc. choices. The candidate with the least votes is eliminated and all the people who voted for them have their second choices added to the total. This continues until one candidate has a majority vote.