Excuse me, but would you mind voting for me?

It’s that time of the year when bloggers either ask for votes for the Total Politics poll or explain why they’re not taking part in it. I certainly agree it shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but as a rough idea of which political blogs a decent number of blog readers rate, it comes up with some interesting results and I almost always discover looking through the final scores at least one blog that I hadn’t previously read but becomes a must read for me.

Before we get to any final scores, we need the voting. So here is the explanation from Iain Dale:

It’s that time of year again, when Total Politics asks you to vote for your Top 10 favourite blogs. This is the fifth year of the poll. The votes will be compiled and included in the forthcoming book, the Total Politics Guide to Blogging 2010-11, which will be published in September. For the second year running, the poll is being promoted/sponsored by LabourList and Lib Dem Voice as well as this blog, and that of our publisher, Iain Dale.

The rules are simple.

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and ranks them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

Votes for both this blog and for Liberal Democrat Voice would be much appreciated.