It's a poll but not about voting intentions.

[Deleted]

YOUGOV (Just which politicians do voters recognise?)

It was interesting to see how voters did or did not recognise politicians.

How 20% of tory voters say they don't recognise George Osborne when shown a photo

How 1% of UKIP voters can't tell their Hilary Benns from their Sajid Javids

Just thought you may be interested, and as it doesn't fit under owt else thought I would start this thread.

[manchesterman]

Heard a voxpop on LBC this morning..only asked about 10 people on the streets "who is this" and a pic of Tim Farron was proferred.

Only 1 recognised him, and only 2 had even heard of the name!

[Deleted]

and here's another

YOUGOV (Just how interested are voters in politics?)

[hedgehog]

Sept 24, 2015 6:09:01 GMT justlooking said:

and here's another

YOUGOV (Just how interested are voters in politics?)

Green voters are much more likely to have a great deal of interest in politics, would it be unreasonable to assume from that, that Conservative, Labour and UKIP voters go like sheep into the poll booths, while Green voters study the policies first.

[john07]

Sept 24, 2015 17:33:34 GMT hedgehog said:

Sept 24, 2015 6:09:01 GMT justlooking said:

and here's another

YOUGOV (Just how interested are voters in politics?)

Green voters are much more likely to have a great deal of interest in politics, would it be unreasonable to assume from that, that Conservative, Labour and UKIP voters go like sheep into the poll booths, while Green voters study the policies first.

... and then go in singing 'Green policies good, other policies bad'.

I suspect that any thinking person who read the Green manifesto and believed the incoherent and uncosted stuff contained within would run a mile.

Knee jerk protest voting in the main that could as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems.

[greenchristian]

Sept 24, 2015 18:04:59 GMT john07 said:

Sept 24, 2015 17:33:34 GMT hedgehog said:

Green voters are much more likely to have a great deal of interest in politics, would it be unreasonable to assume from that, that Conservative, Labour and UKIP voters go like sheep into the poll booths, while Green voters study the policies first.

... and then go in singing 'Green policies good, other policies bad'.

I suspect that any thinking person who read the Green manifesto and believed the incoherent and uncosted stuff contained within would run a mile.

Knee jerk protest voting in the main that could as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems.

I can see how somebody who doesn't get Green philosophy could think our manifesto was incoherent, but given that we were the only party that actually included costings in our manifesto, I can't see how any thinking person who read it would think of it as uncosted.

[johnsmith]

Sept 24, 2015 18:04:59 GMT john07 said:

Sept 24, 2015 17:33:34 GMT hedgehog said:

Green voters are much more likely to have a great deal of interest in politics, would it be unreasonable to assume from that, that Conservative, Labour and UKIP voters go like sheep into the poll booths, while Green voters study the policies first.

... and then go in singing 'Green policies good, other policies bad'.

I suspect that any thinking person who read the Green manifesto and believed the incoherent and uncosted stuff contained within would run a mile.

Knee jerk protest voting in the main that could as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems.

I wouldn't be quite so dismissive of them as that. Since a high level of interest in politics would tend to be accompanied by a higher level of knowledge of politics, it seems that many Green voters are more politically knowledgeable than many Labour or Tory ones. 

Many are in fact likely to be thoughtful left wingers who believe in far less inequality, higher taxes on the wealthy, far more social housing, rent caps, and all that sort of thing. And there will be others for whom environmental concerns are a major issue. These latter are perhaps most thoughtful of all because they are generally thinking way beyond just the next five years and recognise the potentially devastating longer term consequences of out of control climate change.

Many of them will certainly have been intelligent enough to have recognised UKIP as mostly Tories in disguise, and left wing enough to regard the Lib Dems as traitors for propping up a Tory government. So their votes could not "as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems".

And they may well be thoughtful enough to have figured out that the more support the Greens get, the higher up the political agenda their concerns become, whilst being secure in the knowledge that the Greens will not be running the country, so they don't have to worry about how watertight their costings are. Though the Green party itself would of course deny your charge that they are uncosted. The most the Greens can realistically aspire to under FPTP is a handful of seats and some influence in a future hung parliament, in the meantime leeching enough support away from Labour and the Lib Dems to worry them into recognising the need to win some of them back by addressing their concerns.

Depending upon which constituency you lived in, voting Green might well have been a very sensible way of forcing forgotten concerns onto the agenda.

So they should in no way be dismissed as kneejerk protest voters, and certainly not unthinking ones. Many of them truly believe in something. More than a few of them are ex-Labour supporters. In fact, I know one Green party member who is seriously considering leaving the party now to throw his support behind Labour.

In many ways, the Greens share in Labour values, and could potentially be useful political allies to a genuinely leftish Labour party. In fact - though way too early to put this forward as a serious proposal - there is something to be said for considering an electoral pact with them.

If Labour were to come to an understanding whereby they would not stand against Caroline Lucas or the Green candidate in a couple of other seats too, urging their own supporters to vote Green here, in return for the Greens not challenging Labour in all other winnable seats and instead urging their own supporters to vote Labour, this could work very well for a leftish Labour party. Some serious Green policies on the agenda would be necessary too, of course. But the Labour left and the Greens do have much in common.

[carlton43]

Sept 24, 2015 20:06:12 GMT greenchristian said:

Sept 24, 2015 18:04:59 GMT john07 said:

... and then go in singing 'Green policies good, other policies bad'.

I suspect that any thinking person who read the Green manifesto and believed the incoherent and uncosted stuff contained within would run a mile.

Knee jerk protest voting in the main that could as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems.

I can see how somebody who doesn't get Green philosophy could think our manifesto was incoherent, but given that we were the only party that actually included costings in our manifesto, I can't see how any thinking person who read it would think of it as uncosted.

Costing on the sort of basis of 'all workings must be shown' and what one might find in the notes to the Balance Sheet in a failing dot.com or a ponzi scheme. Your 'costings' were complete and utter rubbish that not even your leader understood or could explain. Go on then, in three paragraphs, explain the Housing Policy with the costings in simple format including the borrowing, the interest, the rents and the amortisation. Make it possible to follow it fully.

[hedgehog]

Sept 24, 2015 22:03:19 GMT carlton43 said:

Sept 24, 2015 20:06:12 GMT greenchristian said:

I can see how somebody who doesn't get Green philosophy could think our manifesto was incoherent, but given that we were the only party that actually included costings in our manifesto, I can't see how any thinking person who read it would think of it as uncosted.

Costing on the sort of basis of 'all workings must be shown' and what one might find in the notes to the Balance Sheet in a failing dot.com or a ponzi scheme. Your 'costings' were complete and utter rubbish that not even your leader understood or could explain. Go on then, in three paragraphs, explain the Housing Policy with the costings in simple format including the borrowing, the interest, the rents and the amortisation. Make it possible to follow it fully.

I would like to see the governments housing policy explaned in the same way, because to me it defies any economic logic, sell off council homes, encourage buy to lets, force people to pay high rents they cannot afford and pay huge sums in housing benefit.

Claim to believe in a house owning democracy, but at the same time put home ownership out if the reach of many people.

I cant quote costings anymore than you can quote the real cost of the governments housing policy. But I can say that Green party housing policy aims to bring stability and sustainability to the housing market.

Using record low interest rates to invest massively in housing, using public owned land, an echo of Harold Macmillan a true Conservative. Bringing back into use empty homes, modernisation and energy efficiancy drive and ending subsidies to buy to let landlords.

The Conservative policy is short term, divide and rule and vastly expensive in that it will require the government to continue to pay vast sums in housing benefit to private landlords.

The Green vision has a legacy of hundreds of thousands of good homes in community ownership, assets for the community, over the long term saving money in straight forward housing costs, but also saving money by creating stable communities, joined up Green sustainable thinking.

[carlton43]

Sept 25, 2015 7:02:13 GMT hedgehog said:

Sept 24, 2015 22:03:19 GMT carlton43 said:

Costing on the sort of basis of 'all workings must be shown' and what one might find in the notes to the Balance Sheet in a failing dot.com or a ponzi scheme. Your 'costings' were complete and utter rubbish that not even your leader understood or could explain. Go on then, in three paragraphs, explain the Housing Policy with the costings in simple format including the borrowing, the interest, the rents and the amortisation. Make it possible to follow it fully.

I would like to see the governments housing policy explaned in the same way, because to me it defies any economic logic, sell off council homes, encourage buy to lets, force people to pay high rents they cannot afford and pay huge sums in housing benefit.

Claim to believe in a house owning democracy, but at the same time put home ownership out if the reach of many people.

I cant quote costings anymore than you can quote the real cost of the governments housing policy. But I can say that Green party housing policy aims to bring stability and sustainability to the housing market.

Using record low interest rates to invest massively in housing, using public owned land, an echo of Harold Macmillan a true Conservative. Bringing back into use empty homes, modernisation and energy efficiancy drive and ending subsidies to buy to let landlords.

The Conservative policy is short term, divide and rule and vastly expensive in that it will require the government to continue to pay vast sums in housing benefit to private landlords.

The Green vision has a legacy of hundreds of thousands of good homes in community ownership, assets for the community, over the long term saving money in straight forward housing costs, but also saving money by creating stable communities, joined up Green sustainable thinking.

Well!  As I suspected. It can't be done. I am no apologist for Conservative housing policy because frankly there isn't one and I am not in that party. I don't think Labour had a cohesive housing policy either and that must be the most damning recent period of their history. All that time and quite good economics and so few houses from the peoples' party! MacMillan was an excellent politician but I don't think he was a Conservative at all which may be why he was so successful for that time?

My answer is to make available a lot more land by purchasing it at a fixed price and allotting it to builders in parcels with the planning consents but retaining the ownership and thus keeping that heavy portion of the price out of the 'asking price'. The combination of a rapid rise in new completions and lower asking prices (controlled prices at point of sale) will tend to reduce the increase in general house prices and then to stabilize prices............But only if we keep it up, build much larger numbers of social housing units, stop selling social housing, and control immigration. 

[hedgehog]

Sept 25, 2015 8:59:58 GMT carlton43 said:

Sept 25, 2015 7:02:13 GMT hedgehog said:

I would like to see the governments housing policy explaned in the same way, because to me it defies any economic logic, sell off council homes, encourage buy to lets, force people to pay high rents they cannot afford and pay huge sums in housing benefit.

Claim to believe in a house owning democracy, but at the same time put home ownership out if the reach of many people.

I cant quote costings anymore than you can quote the real cost of the governments housing policy. But I can say that Green party housing policy aims to bring stability and sustainability to the housing market.

Using record low interest rates to invest massively in housing, using public owned land, an echo of Harold Macmillan a true Conservative. Bringing back into use empty homes, modernisation and energy efficiancy drive and ending subsidies to buy to let landlords.

The Conservative policy is short term, divide and rule and vastly expensive in that it will require the government to continue to pay vast sums in housing benefit to private landlords.

The Green vision has a legacy of hundreds of thousands of good homes in community ownership, assets for the community, over the long term saving money in straight forward housing costs, but also saving money by creating stable communities, joined up Green sustainable thinking.

Well!  As I suspected. It can't be done. I am no apologist for Conservative housing policy because frankly there isn't one and I am not in that party. I don't think Labour had a cohesive housing policy either and that must be the most damning recent period of their history. All that time and quite good economics and so few houses from the peoples' party! MacMillan was an excellent politician but I don't think he was a Conservative at all which may be why he was so successful for that time?

My answer is to make available a lot more land by purchasing it at a fixed price and allotting it to builders in parcels with the planning consents but retaining the ownership and thus keeping that heavy portion of the price out of the 'asking price'. The combination of a rapid rise in new completions and lower asking prices (controlled prices at point of sale) will tend to reduce the increase in general house prices and then to stabilize prices............But only if we keep it up, build much larger numbers of social housing units, stop selling social housing, and control immigration. 

There isnt that much difference between our approaches, subsidising housing developments, controlling prices, expanding the social housing market.

Quite frankly it doesnt matter who builds homes and if they are mostly for private sale or for social housing, the key aspect is what we both see, that supply and demand are out of kilter and that the cost of a home should reflect the economic cost to build that home, rather than the cost of speculation and a home should not be seen as an investment but a place to live and bring up a family.

The issue of immigration, I hope will ease when economic growth in the EU pushes ahead, making Britain less attractive, the economies of the Poland and the Baltic states are in a far better state than when they entered the EU, so we may will see numbers returning home in the near future.

There will always be economic factors influencing migration, the only way we will be able to change that, is to make it more attractive for migrants to stay at home, there are questions to be asked about the way Development Aid is used but if used in the right way it could help achieve this.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Or to summarise: people interested in an evolving and quite radical political ideology turn out to be interested in politics.

[hedgehog]

Sept 25, 2015 10:52:37 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Or to summarise: people interested in an evolving and quite radical political ideology turn out to be interested in politics.

Its just nice to see a poll that has the Greens on top and the Labour and Conservative parties at the bottom, might be awhile before we get another poll that looks like that.

[john07]

Sept 24, 2015 20:06:12 GMT greenchristian said:

Sept 24, 2015 18:04:59 GMT john07 said:

... and then go in singing 'Green policies good, other policies bad'.

I suspect that any thinking person who read the Green manifesto and believed the incoherent and uncosted stuff contained within would run a mile.

Knee jerk protest voting in the main that could as easily have gone to UKIP or the Lib Dems.

I can see how somebody who doesn't get Green philosophy could think our manifesto was incoherent, but given that we were the only party that actually included costings in our manifesto, I can't see how any thinking person who read it would think of it as uncosted.

I just have the impression that most who voted Green did not do so after scrutinising their manifesto in great detail. Most would have been voting on broad support for a green agenda with others being leftists in the 'none of the above' camp.

[Deleted]

bump

[gwynthegriff]

Sept 25, 2015 10:21:23 GMT hedgehog said:

There isnt that much difference between our approaches, subsidising housing developments, controlling prices, expanding the social housing market.

How do you subsidise housing development?
How do you fund it?
Which prices are you controlling?
How?
Why is "social housing" considered "a good thing"?

[Deleted]

I always like the more interesting poll.

Here is one not widely released from yougov, about peoples thoughts on alien life elsewhere. and you could if you were minded to look at the data tables to etrapolate the voters thoughts.

so of course I did

link to voting v Extra Terrestials

Al Murrays persona seemed to like this one.

Personally I was more surprised by this. I thought women would be more rational. unless it is womens complete distrust of a male dominated government.

[Deleted]

link to YOUGOV (Voting intentions Vs British Military Coup)

I found this stat interesting.

Labour voters more likely to support a military coup if Corbyn became PM compared to Boris.

[The Bishop]

Don't a similar number of Tory voters "support" a coup against Boris?

[Deleted]

Oct 18, 2015 10:02:11 GMT The Bishop said:

Don't a similar number of Tory voters "support" a coup against Boris?

You are correct 5% of Conservatives would be quite happy to back a coup if Boris became PM.

I think the reasoning for pointing this one out is that it is supporters of their own team so to speak. I would have thought Labour voters would have been much more "Up the Revolution!" If Boris became PM not their own leader. That is why I pointed this one out.