It’s polling day, as if you needed reminding. Which means the good news is that yet another vote is nearly over. You can almost smell the voter fatigue. It’s as if there is a perma-campaign always running in UK politics at the moment. It would be good after today to settle down to five proper years of Government without the threat of yet another vote lurking in the background.
So, it seems like an appropriate time to bring my own DGB poll to a close and to take a look at how you all voted. Not the most scientific poll to try to predict the national result, but it might give us an idea of who the industry thinks should be running the country.
The result
This was question posed and the resulting votes:
As you can see, these results reflect something very different to the other polls in the mainstream media. When I first launched the poll, the Tories had a clear lead, in the double-digits, which reflected closely to some of the other opinion polls just before today.
That lead was wiped away by later votes, for Labour. It may be fair to say that there is a split within our industry as to who we think should be in charge at Number 10.
Obviously this is not scientific, and does not represent any sort of national mood. But this may give us at least an indication as to what our industry thinks.
Please vote
I would in no way tell people how to vote, I don’t think that is right. In fact it irritates me greatly when other people tell me how I should be voting. That should be a decision left to each individual person. No one should be pressured into voting one way or another.
However, I do believe very strongly that everyone who can vote should vote. Our ancestors fought very hard to give everyone the chance to exercise their democratic right, and although I concede that it is also our right not to vote, I believe we have a strong moral duty to do so. Remember, there are many countries around the world in all sorts of hell, with people fighting and dying just for the chance to change the leadership in their country. We shouldn’t forget that perspective.
Also, I believe that if you don’t vote, you don’t get the chance to moan about the state of affairs in the UK after either. There are nearly 47 million people eligible to vote in the country at the moment. That’s a lot. You have a chance to have your say today. If you don’t be part of the system, be part of our democratic infrastructure, please don’t go on to social media to complain about this or that. You had your chance to change things. If you didn’t vote, tough s**t.
Speaking of social media. I have never seen an election campaign so poorly debated on Facebook. Twitter hasn’t appeared to be so bad, and I have seen even less election talk on Linkedin. But good Lord, Facebook has been appalling, by people voting for all sorts of parties. I have muted and blocked so many connections on there as my timeline has become crammed with political activism and dire comments threads. It appears we have forgotten how to have a civil debate between people of differing opinions, without it resorting to abusive comments, name calling and other child-like behaviour. I have stayed away from it today, and may well do for the next few days, as I suspect that those who support the losing party are likely to throw all toys and all dummies out of the pram and drag the quality of the conversation even lower through the mud.
So, if you haven’t already, please get out there and vote, they really do all make a difference!
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