UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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I think what has been enlightening about this election is seeing how many 'own goals' the Reform party are scoring now that they've been given enough rope to hang themselves with. It reminds me of when they let Nick Griffon on Question Time back in 2009/10 and he absolutely withered under scrutiny.
Yes, there will be a hardcore of people who are going to vote for Reform - maybe even because of gaffes like this. However this is repellent to the wider electorate. Imagine if they were semi-competent and just ran as populist Tories without letting the mask slip immediately. Personally, I'd be much more concerned.
The Reform Party is doing better than Tories atm. If we had a PR or other similar voting system, The Reform Party would get a lot of seats and would consume Tories. The wider electorate wants this.
Eh, they are predicted get even fewer votes than the conservatives are. The conservatives are due to get a pathetic number of votes for a mainline party, and reform are getting even fewer votes.
In no universe are they doing better than the conservatives.
New day, new poll https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-poll-lead-tories-farage-putin-b2568005.html
You should differentiate between votes and seats, because FPTP. Some predictions say that RP can get more votes than LD, but even in the best case scenario with as many votes as possible they can only secure 4-5 seats tops. Tories on the other hand should have enough votes for second place, but in reality they have a very high chance of getting less seats than LD. There's a potential that duopoly will shift to Labour + LD. But RP might become number 3 even with just 4 seats as they're likely to consume Tories politically over the next few years.
I am differentiating between votes and seats.
They are getting fewer votes than the conservatives this will obviously lead to fewer seats and then the conservatives but even under proportional representation it would also lead to fewer seats because they are getting fewer votes.
What you're talking about is the situation where they have very little support in any one constituency but wide-ranging support generally. That would indeed result in them getting a large number of votes but very few seats. But that isn't what is happening here, they have a smattering of support in most constituencies and a lot of support in some constituencies. They will probably therefore win one or two seats.
Under proportional representation they would get more seats but they would not get more seats than the conservatives. So by no metric that you choose to use are they "doing better than the conservatives". In terms of the number of seats they are going to get they are tying with the SNP.
Ironic that the party that's being going on about proportional representation for 40 years or more is playing the FPTP game so well.