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PART 1. INTRODUCTION This is the latest in the Ideas series, following Solarpunk and Transhumanism. It deals with the “Blob”, the concept of an administrative state, a bureaucracy refractory to democratic control by governments. Such states result in state inertia as policies are added slowly but rarely removed. The citations will be given in the comments section. PART 2. DOES IT EXIST? Let’s get one thing straight at the beginning. Of course the Blob exists. The idea of a bureaucratic…

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It is easy to take democracy for granted. In July, the UK had an election. People voted in a free and fair manner, the votes were counted within 12 hours, and the sitting prime minister gave up power and departed the next day. Many countries are not so lucky. According to Freedom House, over a quarter of the World’s countries are classified as “Not Free” while another sizeable chunk are only “Partly Free”. While even the most successful democratic leaders…

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Slight – very slight – movements to Harris at national level for everyone, but it’s still finely balanced. PEC has moved enough to make Harris a slight favourite. For the Senate, the Republicans are still favoured, although the Morning Consult poll (Sep 9-18) putting Allred ahead of Cruz by 1 moves TX into tied territory for both 538 and electoral-vote. RCP have yet to add that poll to their figures. James Doyle

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them; they will lay their hands on…

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This really couldn’t be tighter: the models seem to be converging on a very narrow win for Harris, with the only difference at the moment being ev-com having Harris winning North Carolina but losing Michigan, whereas the others have those two flipped. Even with that narrow EC advantage, most of the states, with most of the models, are in one camp or the other by small margins, often just a fraction of 1 per cent. It wouldn’t take much for…

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Not a lot of movement from last week, but what there is has generally been in Trump’s favour. The debate might move the needle a bit more noticeably, but in what direction. Changes from last week:All four national polling figures move slightly towards Trump: 1.0% for Nate Silver, 0.5% for 538, 0.4% for RCP, and 0.2% for Princeton’s meta-margin. In the Electoral College, 538 has Arizona moving from Harris to Trump, but still has Harris winning overall. RCP has Nevada…

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A piece earlier this week in The Hill by Merrill Matthews made for interesting reading. In a nutshell, Dems are polling really well in key swing states when it comes to the Senate races. And yet when it comes to Trump vs Harris it is basically neck and neck in these states. Here are the respective RCP averages: For Senate: Arizona – Gallego (Dem): +7.3 Nevada – Rosen (Dem): +10.7 Michigan – Slotkin (Dem): +4.8 Penn – Casey (Dem): +3.0…

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Welcome to the first in a strictly limited series. Every Monday [1] for the next 9 weeks, I’ll be doing a rundown of the forecasts from the main poll aggregators and analysts [2] for the 2024 US elections. Hopefully this will be useful as a baseline and a reference point for everyone. Of the forecasts included:a) electoral-vote.com and Real Clear Politics are basically poll averages; RCP is included because it’s well known and often quoted, although there are very well…

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