UK AV Referendum Poll

[Insula Dei]

I allow for the possibility of me being a cynical partisan hack, but I'd vote against AV for a number of reasons.

-If AV passes that possibly means that (meaningfull) Electoral Reform will be off the agenda for a generation.
-AV isn't really more 'proportional' than FPTP in my eyes and is likely to reward the party that has managed to least antagonize the other parties' supporters, and I'm not a great fan of Parties being rewarded for a lack of position-taking. (As for the 'not more proportional' part: I can't see the Greens get more than 1 seat even under AV)
-AV would either make the Liberals king-maker in every (relatively) close election for decades or cement the current Coalition as the LibDems and the Tories would have a lot of incentive to stick together, thus in my opinion also making AV failing desirable to the Tory right and the SDP-wing of the Liberals.
-Labour's chances of reclaiming government  in 2015 seem to be better under FPTP than under AV.
-Yeah, the Coalition (and Clegg) taking a hit this soon would be nice.

I'm ready to admit that those last two reasonings might come across as petty partisanship, but remember guys, politics is a means to a goal and as long as everything happens legally and in the spirit of democracy and responsability I don't see a problem in playing a bit of obstructionism on a government I'd vehemently oppose.

[Insula Dei]

Anything that has to do with party lists is bad.....FPTP, AV or STV are all acceptable to me.

Why is that? I quite like Party Lists in that they allow for less charismatic candidates with specific competences to get into parliamentt, without the party having to parachute them into a safe seat.

[Insula Dei]

Why doesn't the No to AV campaign focus on the fact that AV is, if anything, less proportional? (Seriously, how many nations are there with a Westminster parliament and more than 95ù of seats being held by the two major parties/coalitions?)

[Insula Dei]

Anyone checked out the Sky News AV calculator yet?

I must be doing something wrong, because on the not entirely unreasonable premisses that 2/3rds of Liberal Democrats would second preference the Conservatives and that about half of the conservative voters would return that favour; I get results like this:

LAB: 53% and 285 seats
CON: 31% and 307 seats
LD: 6% and 31 seats

I know that this isn't meant to predict a 2015 election, but just adjusting the 2010 numbers a bitshould result in reasonable results, no?

Then again, maybe this is what would happen, no way of knowing, really.

[Insula Dei]

@Antonio, I for one don't like FPTP, yet I have discovered that I like AV even less. It is (or has the potential to be) less proportional, even when people base their vote on parties . Under AV the BNP hypothetically could poll 25% nationwide, but still win only 1 or 2 seats, because they'd be poisonous in terms of preferences. I can see a similar situation with the Greens or some more likable party. Australia seems to be the best case study.

[Insula Dei]

But One Nation wasn't very relevant during a prolonged amount of time, no?