A quick point, if I may: You know how Jeremy Corbyn is now 20 points ahead of his rivals, and some people are urging the lesser candidates to consolidate behind a single Anyone-But-Jeremy candidate?
That’s stupid and wrong.
Its stupid because the election is being conducted on an Alternative Vote system. The electors rank the candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their votes are divided up amongst the remaining candidates. That process is repeated until one candidate has a majoirty.
Mathematically, that is exactly the same as if the lesser candidates had pulled out… but with one important exception: its more democratic.
The ‘drop out’ suggestion is also morally wrong. With the AV system, each elector gets to express a preference for who drops out and in what order. That’s far better approach than a candidate being peer-pressured or media-pressured into dropping out mid-campaign, which is anti-democratic and makes the entire contest a hostage to bad opinion polling.
The fact that people are calling for the poorly polling candidates shows that they are stuck in a First Past The Post mentality, even though the election is being run with more sophisticated and fairer rules.
