Nicholas Tyrone: Our voting system for the European elections is undemocratic – and anti-Tory. It's time to change it.

Nick Tyrone has worked for the Electoral Reform Society for eighteen months, working across all political parties handling public affairs, parliamentary liaison and press for the ERS. Follow Nick on Twitter.

The LSE and the Electoral Reform Society have commissioned a YouGov poll on the next European elections, due to take place in 2014. At a sample size of 8000, it is one of the largest polls conducted on Europe in Britain this year.

What was discovered is that as things stand now, under the current closed list PR system used for European elections in the UK, Labour will win with 30 per cent of the vote, UKIP will come second with 25 per cent, the Conservatives will gain 23 per cent, the Greens 12, and the Liberal Democrats 10 (note the Liberal Democrats in fifth). What was discovered of note was that if you changed the voting system to open list, or indeed anything candidate based as a form of voting, UKIP went down six points and the Tories up five – meaning the Conservatives would then leapfrog UKIP into second, just barely behind Labour.

This builds on previous research into Eurosceptic voting patterns, particularly the relationship of this block of voters to UKIP and the Conservative party. It seems that a significant number of people are happy to vote for UKIP as an entity, but when it comes to voting for an individual lots of them would prefer to vote Conservative. The numbers on this are stark.

 

Nick Tyrone: After Eastleigh, do Tories regret opposing AV?

Nick has worked for the Electoral Reform Society for eighteen months, working across all political parties handling public affairs, parliamentary liaison and press for the ERS. Follow Nick on Twitter.

UKIP are not just taking votes off the Tories – there is a large former Labour contingent now voting for Nigel Farage’s party

Canvassing on the estates of Eastleigh, I was amazed to see so many UKIP posters in the windows. Surprised as well to hear on the doorstep so many people who were down as Labour leaning or said they had been solid Labour voters in the past who said they were voting UKIP in the by-election. One old guy told me he had voted Labour all his life but was going to vote UKIP now as he didn’t think that Labour “stands up for the working man anymore. They only care about people on welfare these days” (I should for clarity sake mention at this point that I was canvassing for the Lib Dems. You may enjoy the old guy’s quote regarding this: “You Liberals are scum. Nothing personal, mind you”).