UK General Election

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What kind of voting turnout do you typically have in the UK?

The current figure according to Radio 4 this morning was about 65%. If thats true that will be the highest turnout for quite awhile election wise.

Which doesn't take into account the huge number of people who tried to vote and were stopped. This figure now seems to include great rafts of people who are abroad, including the serving military..so it does rather look like it numbers in the thousands, and in such a close election (just for a change) every vote DOES count.

They should let EVERYONE have a chance to vote. I think they should learn from this and allow a couple of days to vote next time... sigh 4 years with Tories (potentially)... My polling station was empty! Just me and a couple of old people sitting at the desk! I really don't want the tories to rule, they suck ass...

Citizens of the UK... prepare to surrender your benefits...

Well the polling booths were open at 7am which is when I went down. Going last minute in the evening when by law they have to stop at 10pm is kinda asking for trouble really

and a couple of 100 out of 61,000,000 isn't exactly going to stop there being a hung parliment. It's nice of the BBC, Sky and co to make news out of a minor issue but i think i'll sit out of this moral panic and await the next general election in a years time that will come from the inevitably incompatbile coalition government were about to get.

The only reason we have been ruled for four years by Conservatives in Canada in a minority parliament is because the Liberals have been unable to get themselves a good leader. If Labour fails to get themselves a good leader the same thing may play out there, though it's more dangerous because in Canada a quarter of the country has the majority of its seats going to a regional party which is not the case in Britain. That means that if Cameron gets a lead in the polls he may be inclined to pull the plug and call an election. However, as Cameron is probably going to gleefully do things that will make him unpopular, he will probably not get into this situation as long as Labour gets themselves a good leader. Cameron will be constrained in what he could do anyway if in fact he does end up taking over, that is not assured as it's possible that most of the other parties will get together to bring about a new government.

I don't like the creeping presidentialism I see. This idea that people vote for the prime minister. Back in the old days the parliament could choose Churchill for instance who never ran to be prime minister and no one complained. They spent the last few years complaining about Brown supposedly not being elected. If parliament comes up with someone completely different it's their right and people should accept it. Otherwise it's as if they're presidential candidates.

And that's why it's considered a parliamentary system, right?

Although each individual district is still winner-take-all, which is why the Liberal Democrats have so few representatives?

Well, the voting system works. I voted for no one, and no one got in.

I went to my polling station at about ten AM and there was only one other person voting. I didn't have to queue or anything.

It seems crazy that the next prime minister could well be someone who never even appeared in the TV prime ministerial debates

Britain for the first time had a prime minister who appeared at the debates several weeks ago when Gordon Brown did so. When he leaves, normality will be restored.

People do not vote for the prime minister, they vote for parliament, or more precisely, for their member of parliament. Tony Blair was elected to parliament, so was Gordon Brown. Brown was as elected as Blair was. So, people didn't like Brown as prime minister which is a reason why Labour's result wasn't so good. So, make sure the next Labour leader and the next prime minister, should this Lib-Lab deal happen, is someone people would like as prime minister. This should not be too difficult to figure out. People didn't complain about Winston Churchill when parliament voted for him to be prime minister in 1940 and people today aren't saying what a dictator he was, forced on Britain.

Most people are of the opinion that Brown's leadership was a liability in terms of Labour's share of the vote that was about as bad as possible. Almost any other Labour leader would lead to better results for the party and in electing MPs...

In my opinion Labours manifesto was unpopular due to the 1p increase in national insurance contributions....any tax increase is a vote loser but Gordon Brown said it like it is, our national deficit needs reducing and we cant do it by making tax cuts, hence his unpopularity with the electorate. Twitsy (Clegg) and tw*tsy (Cameron) are now in power on the promise that they would not bring in any increase in what they termed as a 'jobs tax'. After only 1 day in power it is to be the case that employers will not have to pay the 1p increase but employees will......and so it begins.

Dave and Nick do look kind of lovely together though

Leaders should avoid emphasising the deficit as much as possible as a country like the UK cannot go bankrupt whilst deficit reduction reduces the economy in the private sector, particularly if the cuts are badly-targeted. That said there is a cost to letting it grow too high, which is why some sensibly-targeted measures should help make it easier to control without forgetting that most deficit reduction happens when the economy improves and tax revenue increases and expenditures on the safety net diminish. The problem is that talking about the deficit causes a false crisis, though I can understand that it would be difficult to cut anything or increase taxes without a "good reason"... and that means talking about this deficit.

They look like two married gays.