We were out before 7am on polling day, putting one final leaflet out in my village. I’ve been at it for an hour, the fine drizzle is starting to get annoying, and then I cut a finger on someone’s gate. As I did my best not to bleed onto the leaflets, I did stop and ask – why do I keep doing this? On Thursday I stood as the Liberal Democrats candidate for the Central Buchan ward on Aberdeenshire council….
Another election, another failure for the Democratic party. Donald Trump is president elect and the whole world is crossing its fingers that we’re not heading for four years of turmoil and upheaval in the international order, particularly Ukraine. However, this is not the time to write about that, we don’t know enough yet about what Trump will do this time around to make an informed judgment, we can only hope that some of the rhetoric during and before the campaign…
So here we are, finally at election day. And as the comedian Emo Phillips said, ‘It’s hard to believe that this long, crazy election will finally be over in a few months.’ Because it’s that close. None of the models give either candidate much of a margin, from 538 having it 270-268 for Harris, to the 287-251 margins given by Nate Silver and RCP (note also that Nate’s Monte Carlo simulations disagree with his state y state model, giving Harris…
The House The US House of Representatives has 435 members. Each state is allocated 1 House member initially and then the remaining House members are allocated proportionally. The whole House is elected every 2 years. After every decennial census, the House undergoes a reapportionment process, where the allocation of seats for each state is adjusted in line with population changes. Each state (with more than one seat) then redraws the boundaries of its districts. This process is left up to…
Part I – The Senate The US Senate is the upper house of the United States Congress. Unlike the House of Representatives which is proportional by population, the Senate elects a flat 2 Senators per state (e.g. the most populous state California has 52 House members and 2 Senators, while the least populous Wyoming has 1 House member and 2 Senators) Control of the Senate is also important for the Supreme Court as it gets to sign off on appointments…
This has not been, for me, an enjoyable process: the polls and predictions have tilted more and more towards Trump with each week passing, and there is even more red on the charts this week. Apart from the Cook Political Report, who have not updated their Electoral College ratings for TWO MONTHS, everyone is predicting a Trump win, and the Senate leans very Republican too. It’s hard to see why. We’ve had numerous Trump events where he has looked –…
While the polls are still 50-50, there are signs the betting markets are moving towards Trump. I don’t have anything very useful to add to that, other than amazement that Harris is still in the game when consistently well over 60% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and under 30% think it’s on the right one. This is quite the testimony to Trump’s negatives, and Harris’ basic likeability, whatever you think of her other qualities as…
This is something that has been done many, many times before by lots of medical professionals, politicians, think tanks and other various people attached to the NHS in some way. We have had the insiders view, the outsiders view, the private healthcare view and on exceedingly rare occasions, patient views. How will this be any different? I guess it won’t, at least it won’t set out to be different for the sake of it. One of the first things I’d…