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    to understand it you have to understand the different categories of voters that exist. What their voting habits are like and that gives you a picture of the landscape.

    So you have those voters that just vote based on a party...most often it is against the other side of the two-horse race, the contrarian voters.

    Then you have active party voters. These people join the party and may be involved with campaigning to some degree and vote that way.

    Then you have the protest voters who just simply vote for parties that don't have a chance to spoil their ballot without spoiling it. The typical one being MRLP.

    Then you have the disengaged non-voters and protest non-voters...they have different reasons for the same outcome. They are registered to vote but never turn up the polling booths.

    The biggest group of voters is the fickle swinging voters. These people are caught up in the two-horse race game. They are not particularly politically engaged and will switch between parties every 8 odd years. They say boo to labour and go over and vote for the tories, then they say boo to tories I am voting Labour.

    The two places to gain power in a democracy is either to engage the non-voters, which is difficult enough, or try to control the swing voters to go for your side. Any other group is a waste of time because you are either preaching to your choir or talking to a brick wall.

    Farage's presence helps appeal to those two groups. It gets the disillusioned non-voters out to vote for right-wing parties meaning these votes are very easily converted over to the tories. The other thing is at certain times when the tory party isn't looking so hot they can avoid defecting swingers from crossing over to the labour party dramatically enough to overturn the political landscape at an election.

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