Nick Robinson has been been touring "marginal seats". There is no mathematical formula for identifying such seats. The media, especially the BBC, decide which seats shall or shall not be taken seriously, just as they decide which parties and candidates shall or shall not be taken seriously, entirely arbitrarily.
Anyway, Robinson has been accompanied by a ballot box in which he has been asking people to place ballot papers indicating ... well, what do you think? How they intend to vote? Hardly. What do you think this is, 1992? No, the only question these days, even in "marginal seats", is whether or not anyone will vote at all.
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Tell me about it. Try getting the media to notice any area, party or candidate except the ones they have already decided are important. Aren't there supposed to be rules about balance? Don't they have to give every candidate equal coverage?
ReplyDeleteI have long since come to the conclusion that rules on balance are an urban myth, and that no such rules exist. Look at by-elections. They pick the winner and then report that as fact until their prophecy has fulfilled itself. They no longer even give us the full list of the candidates about whom we are not allowed to know.
ReplyDeleteMarginal seats are pretty straightforward to identify: they're the ones with majorities which look likely to be overturned if current opinion polling is accurate. Of course, some of them may not fall, and some seats with much bigger majorities may fall - because the polls are wrong, or because of factors in the local campaign, or both.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the BBC does have some influence in deciding which seats count as "marginals" for the purposes of media coverage does not mean that the whole concept is fictional. The major parties, who campaign in ways designed to use their resources most effectively, will be focusing on the seats they think they are most likely to lose/win. They won't tell you which seats these are, and they may not be the same seats the BBC visits (although there's probably some overlap), but they direct their campaign resources to the places they think they're most needed - i.e. to the "marginals" - on the basis of much better evidence than the BBC has.
Liar.
ReplyDeleteProbably a Beeb employee.
ReplyDeleteOr a party apparatchik, a monkey rather than an organ-grinder.
ReplyDeleteI see that this piece of sub-human scum Ineref, definitely a cocaine addict and probably a paedo, cannot answer the question about balance or the lack of it.
ReplyDeleteIt would have to see the problem. But it is the problem.
ReplyDeleteLying? Hardly - just pointing out that it's not that hard for the BBC, or anyone else, to spot a marginal.
ReplyDelete(Clue: if the polls are correct that the Tories have roughly a 5-10% lead, then any Labour seat with a majority under about 10,000 is a marginal. If the polls are wrong, then obviously that's wrong too.)
Weird that you seem to see this as some sort of conspiracy. I honestly don't know why you think that.
You can hear him weeping that anyone has dared react to his bad sixth form drivel with anything other than knicker-wetting praise.
ReplyDeleteWhy, which seats do you think the main parties/media should be focusing on?
ReplyDeleteAll of them.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating.
There probably isn't a seat in the country that wouldn't have the potential to change hands each time due to some local circumstance or other, or if a different party were prepared to put up a strong enough candidate, or whatever.
But the interchangeable parties and their interchangeable media courtiers make sure that no one is allowed to know anything that might make this a reality, run teenage duds for practice in seats such as this one (the most prominent Tory in these parts cannot name his party's candidate here, even though she was selected months ago; the one last time didn't even bother to get himself a local address for the duration), and so on.
The BBC decides which seats matter just as it decides which partie matter and which candidates matter (not least in Leadership Elections, with all that then follows from the dictated outcome). Everyone else can go to hell. And no, this is not an inevitable consequence of First Past The Post. Not at all.
Anonymous 19:48, if you can hear him weeping then you should cut out his eyes.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC rigged the Tory leadership election, literally rigged it. And the Labour deputy leadership election.
The media conspire with the parties to ensure that 80% of seats get no coverage and no choice of candidates beyond an insult to the voters.
If current opinion polling is accurate? You don't get opinion polls, do you? The point of them is to tell people who to vote for and what to think by making them feel like freaks if they don't agree with the pre-ordained line.
ReplyDeleteIt is all done by phone now so they know who they are talking to. The reporting is dishonest, with "minor" party and actively won't vote replies calculated out to give the headline figure.
They won't report you, David. They are legally supposed to but they won't. You know that already. They can't cope with the idea that a seat like yours has a non-Labour candidate who isn't a Tory tweenie or an ageing Liberal/Independent councillor doing it because politics is his hobby.
In a non "marginal" seat of their choosing there can be only one serious candidate or else they would have to report everywhere and their party mates would have to find serious candidates for everywhere. They are too lazy to report everywhere and their party mates know that they have nothing like enough people of the right calibre to field one everywhere.
Tragically that is true, Fereni. No party contains 650 people capable of being an MP.
ReplyDeleteLook at the dross that they are putting up for their own safe seats as much as each other's this year, Euan Blair's ex-girlfriend, James Purnell's ex-boyfriend, George Osborne's current boyfriend, some woman who has slept with every male Tory MP including the gay ones. None of them have any other qualification and none of them are remotely local to their seats.
That is why we need to replace these showers with new parties. Plus if all MPs had to be local or near enough, such as living in the constituency or one next door for at least 10 years before the election, it would encourage people of quality from all shades of opinion to come forward in every area.
Spot on, Jack. That way, everyone would get to choose from a range of credible candidates. Not like now.
ReplyDeleteIn the course of each Parliament, each party should submit to a binding ballot of the whole constituency electorate its shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and should submit to a binding ballot of the whole national electorate its shortlist of two for Leader.
ReplyDeleteThey should also submit to such a national ballot the 10 policies proposed by the most of each party’s branches, with each voter entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the subsequent General Election manifesto.
Furthermore, we need a ballot line system, such that voters would be able to indicate that they were voting for a given candidate specifically as endorsed by a smaller party or other campaigning organisation, with the number of votes by ballot line recorded and published separately.
And we need to require all political funding to be by resolution of membership organisations, as well as parliamentarians’ staff to be appointed from lists maintained by such organisations in return for payment of at least half of those staff’s salaries, thereby requiring politicians and parliamentarians to have links to wider civil society.
Why do we need these things?
ReplyDeleteWhat, elections?
ReplyDeleteWe have found our champion, the standard bearer for everyone who lives in a constituency that two out of three parties are too idle to fight and the media are too idle to cover. For everyone who has been held back by the party machines that keep talent out of Parliament, and off councils etc. David Lindsay is our man.
ReplyDeleteWell, do please get in touch, because we have work to do - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteThis is no time for a novice.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean David Lindsay.
I was going to say that you should have applied to Cameron's A list. But you would never have got onto it because you are no longer a Labour member and you are hold conservative views on morality, social policy and national sovereignty. People from many political backgrounds would love you to be elected. What sort of Parliament does not have someone like you in it?
ReplyDeleteDavid Lindsay has strong support on all sides at Westminster.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely hope not.
ReplyDelete