Our ‘Britain’s Best MP’ competition has come to a close with Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich, a clear winner. The final results are:
Douglas Carswell 47%
Gisela Stuart 16%
Tom Harris 12%
Lynne Featherstone 9%
Bob Russell 6%
Jo Swinson 6%
David Howarth 2%
Chris Mullin 2%
I appreciate that the results do not make happy reading for visitors to this site and the results of online polls cannot be taken too seriously, but please don’t dismiss this competition just yet.
Whilst acknowledging that our hope of getting people to listen to the MPs answers and then vote for their ‘best MP’ based on what they heard probably was not realised (David Howarth and Chris Mullin gave very good answers yet polled only 2% each), we take several positives from this:
This is our take on it, and naturally we would like to focus on the positives. We would also like to hear your views though and would welcome any feedback.
Finally, Many Thanks to Lib Dem Voice for giving us a ‘voice’ and to anyone who took the time to read what I’ve been saying here or to visit our website.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Liberal Democrats takes the lead in Southern England
My five favourite espionage novels
West End weekly ward surgery tonight #dundeewestend
Pensioner tax bombshell
Tristan Ward
Mike Peters
Gareth Epps
David Raw
John Bicknell
10 Comments
Tories – 47%, Labour – 30%, Lib Dem – 23%
Looks like you might have got a surprisingly representative – and utterly partisan – sample, then. Pity you didn’t think to split the Tory vote too!
Oh, and I just googled Bob Russell, ’cause I’d never heard of him, and the first story is “”. I know I’m not the most liberal Liberal in the Liberalish world myself, but seriously – this guy’s one of ours?
Here’s a suggestion: next time, why not split the partisan Tory vote the same way you split the other partisan votes?
Public nomination is well and good, but surely it was clear from the time that the final nominees were chosen that the sole Conservative on the list was going to win. Even by the most generous theory of individuals’ participation in the Yoosk project, anything an MP can say about political issues will only make a marginal difference to participants’ opinions about the MP compared to partisan identification.
I dunno, crazy idea, blue sky thinking – but maybe… some sort of vote where the votes transfer from one candidate to another, if people have second and third preferences? I don’t know if anything like that exists?
I think holding multiple rounds might be the best option.
Alternative Vote (maybe even condorcet) would be preferablebut but Yoosk might not be able to do that with their existing software and would need to find the nessary software fairly cheaply. I could be comletely wrong of course as this is’nt somthing that I would know much about but I’d have thougt that some of this sites polls could be done by AV if it were easy enough.
The problem with simply spliting the vote for each party would be that the numbers of canidates would ned to be reflective of each partys support which could’nt cater for indepentants and particularly small parties if presant. Also could a Yoosk panel competantly put together a list of candidates? Would they necesseraly know if an MP was good at serving their constituents for example?
Even allowing for the fact that there was only one Tory versus three Labour and four LibDems, I smell astroturf. Carswell is Daniel Hannan’s Mini-Me in Westminster and much loved by the ConHome/pseudolibertarian axis of blogdom.
Well the people of Harwich thought they were electing a Tory Friends of the Earth member when they voted for Douglas Carswell, and now he is a climate change denier.
If that isn’t a strong enough incentive for Harwich Lib Dems to get organised to seek to defeat him, I do not know what is.
“and the results of online polls cannot be taken too seriously…”
Lol this is as blinkered and as one-eyed a statement I have read recently. If a Dim had won, there would have been no such utterance. Hollow, hollow, hollow.
Well these comments really do show how pathetic and narrow minded the majority of the typical Liberal Democrat thought processes are.
It seems to me that any party contemplating giving the impression that it will be shoring up a discredited Labour Party under the charismatic appealing and centralising Mr Brown in the event of a hung parliament will probably receive the judgment from the British public that it richly deserves.
Again saying that probably puts me closer to Clegg and realpolitik than the traditional Lib Dem activist.
Oh and in case anyone was wondering I did vote for Guy Herbert in your poll just to show that Conservative voters are aware of the real issues threatening the ordinary elector in the future as a result of New Labour Fascism.
Many Thanks for the feedback. Yes, on reflection, it probably would have been fairer if we’d had the same number of nominees from each party – but assuming that all the Carswell voters would have voted Tory, the outcome would still have been a Tory winner.
In my opinion, the most influential factor in deciding the winner was the ability to reach, and motivate to vote, a large number of people.