David Cameron will breathe a sigh of relief after voters crush Liberal Democrat hopes of changing the voting system.
The defeat is a further blow for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems after the junior coalition partner was punished in local elections across England and in the Scottish and Welsh national elections.
The 'No' vote has now passed the 50 per cent mark needed to secure victory, with around 68 per cent of the those who turned out voting against the Alternative Vote and in favour of First Past the Post.
Over 11 million poeple voted 'No' while just over five million people voted 'Yes'.
The country was split into 444 voting areas but so far only a few have returned a 'Yes' vote including Islington, Camden and Lambeth in London and Glasgow Kelvin in Scotland.
Turnout was 43.1 per cent. The region with the highest turn out was Scotland with 50.7 per cent while London, where no other elections were taking place, had the lowest turnout of 35.4 per cent.
The question on the referendum ballot paper was: "At present, the UK uses the 'first past the post' system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the 'alternative vote' system be used instead."
Article Comments
You have one vote, you use that vote for the person or the party you want to win. You don't vote for a "what-if", oh! if my candidate doesn't win, I want this candidate too; The purpose of a vote is to use it once, not for a second, third and so on choice. You vote for who you want to win, not choose who comes second or third. Others who vote for the remaining candidates will do that!
So vote wisely and vote once, one time only....
Lincolnshire Les
6th May 2011 at 6:25 pm
Av treats voters as children. I KNOW who I am voting for when I go to the polling station I do not require alternatives. I am interested enough to know what parties stand for asking for a 'second best' vote is ludicrous.
B Wylie
6th May 2011 at 3:26 pm
The thing I find most shocking about the AV campaign is that David Cameron was prepared to claim that AV would end the principle of 1 person 1 vote. This is a simple mathematical untruth - which the YES campaign has failed to address.
Under AV, whilst e.g. my 2nd, or 3rd preference vote is being counted, your 1st preference vote is being counted for a SECOND, or THIRD time. In each round, each vote is counted once. The only exception to this is if you vote for an unpopular party such as the BNP, and fail to supply sufficient alternative choices, in which case your ballot paper is no longer used.
An equivalent way of counting this is to focus on the last, decisive, round only, where all voters have 1 vote. The Political Studies Association, uses this approach, saying in their AV briefing document, (see the exectutive summary):
AV would uphold the principle of one person, one vote. Every voter would still be treated equally; each vote would count only once in deciding who is elected in each constituency.
http://www.psa.ac.uk/PSAPubs/TheAlternativeVoteBriefingPaper.pdf
If you are still uncertain, you could confirm with the Electoral Commission, as I did earlier this week.
It appears that senior members of our goverment were either unwilling/unable to inform themselves on a crucial plank in their campaign, or were prepared to knowingly deceive the electorate.
Lesley Whitfield
6th May 2011 at 1:59 pm
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