av voting system

[Jon MW]

... Not voting is a vote for no preference isn't it?

This.

There was a pollster from YouGov on Breakfast news a few weeks ago saying that the status quo is always favourite, using comparable referendums in other countries it seems there has to be either a radical difference or something very obviously wrong with the current system.

So a vote on full PR might have stood a chance by being different enough to motivate people to vote, but I think most people are more concerned with what the government does in the 5 years in between the elections rather than the elections themselves.

No it's not a vote for the no preference.  That's plainly false.

The question on the referendum asked if you'd like to change the FPTP system to AV.  If 100 people turned up and voted YES for the change, and no one else voted, would all the non-votes be counted as NO?

I don't fully understand your point.

Obviously a significant number of people might care one way or another but not vote because they couldn't be bothered.

But what has non-votes counting as NO got to do with it? We were suggesting non-votes are no preference

If you're not particularly bothered by what system gets used you can't vote for YES or for NO, so if you were consciously making a choice you'd vote for neither of them by not voting. Most of the people who aren't bothered about which system is used aren't going to make a conscious decision about it - they're just not going to bother. Either way the same result is that a large proportion of people don't vote because they have no preference/don't care

The people who don't normally vote in any elections obviously don't care what system gets used - so thinking about it, it's the difference between the turnout for the referendum and the normal election turnout which is the significant figure.

EDIT: just realised what you read - we weren't saying it was a vote for the 'no' preference, it was a vote for 'no preference'

[Bongo]

If 100 people turned up and voted YES for the change, and no one else voted, would all the non-votes be counted as NO?

Apparently so, as one article I read put it:

"...though outraged at MPs being elected by thirty per cent of the vote, the Yes camp was perfectly happy to see our entire electoral system reconstructed on the votes of three men and a dog."

[thetank]

Of course some no votes were simply anti LibDem but some yes votes would have been anti Tory. Such offsetting means the party political factors can't be blamed for the country rejecting a change to the voting system.

Especially with the size of the victory I think it's a nonsense to claim that another result would have been possible were it not for Clegg and tuition fees.