Election Fever #7

With less than 10 hours before the polling booths open, the latest Guardian/ICM poll is showing the Conservatives ahead on 33% with 28% of voters intending to vote Labour and the same amount intending to vote Liberal Democrat. Of course, our skewed voting system means that the final make-up of parliament could look completely different - even with a smaller vote share, Labour could still end up with more seats than the Tories. All in all, it's too close to call.

I'm predicting one of two outcomes tomorrow:
1) A win for the Tories, although I don't expect it to be a landslide.
2) A result where no party wins outright, leading to an awkward coalition between the Tories/Lib Dems or Labour/Lib Dems.

I'm hoping against hope that I'm wrong. After all, there have been bigger electoral surprises in the past. In 1992, Labour were very confident that Neil Kinnock would be in Downing Street before Friday dinnertime. In the end, it turned out that the Tories efforts to paint them as the party of "tax and spend" had been more successful than anyone thought. Then again, there is the alternative theory: that people just didn't want a ginger Welshman as Prime Minister.

Politics, sadly, has become more personality-driven than policy-driven over the past quarter century. Many people blame this on Tony Blair, but whilst Pinning The Blame On Blair is one of my favourite past-times, it goes back way before that. The cult of personality started with Thatcher, who was herself influenced by politics in America. So now we have a society which is not asking itself "what will a Tory win mean for me?" but instead "I don't fancy that Gordon Brown." Which is, of course, ridiculous.

For someone who has studied politics, it's enormously frustrating. I've chosen to tactically vote Labour after many hours of consideration. Some people will turn up at the voting booths and plump for the Tories or the Lib Dems because they were impressed with what they saw of Cameronbot and Cleggbot during the TV debates. They will be completely unaware of the history of those parties, the philosophical reasoning behind their policies or the implications of their vote. But their vote carries just as much weight as mine. That's democracy for you.

It's a truism that politics often involves making difficult decisions, but come tomorrow the whole nation will be faced with a difficult choice. Politics in the 21st century is often about choosing the least of all evils. We can fool ourselves that this isn't the case, telling ourselves that Clegg is the British Obama or that any change right now would be a positive one. But what it ultimately comes down to is this: do we want the shitty government we already have? Or one which will make Gordon Brown look like Mother Theresa?