The voting ends on Super Thursday but the fun will last for days
TSE
The joys of first past the post
This forthcoming Wednesday marks the tenth anniversary of the AV referendum when the country decided giving Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats a kicking was more important than replacing an iniquitous voting system. It was beginning of trilogy of plebiscites that have fundamentally changed the United Kingdom. The Scots on Thursday may make it a tetralogy* and soon North Ireland may make it a pentalogy. In hindsight it may have been best if the Lib Dems had insisted on electoral…
Size does matter in Hartlepool
Ever since the Hartlepool by election has been called I’ve vacillated between a Tory gain and a easy Labour hold. If Richard Tice and the Brexit Party hadn’t stood in this seat in 2019 then this would have been a Tory gain at the 2019 general election so that is what I drove my belief that this should be a Tory gain at the by election particularly once it was confirmed Richard Tice wasn’t standing, however it isn’t December 2019…
American polls may now need to fundamentally change their poll weightings
Correlation does equal causation? I’m fascinated by this analysis, perhaps American pollsters should change their weightings and ditch weighting polls by age and educational attainment and use things like (poor) health condition and alcohol use. With the structure of the American health system poorer people cannot get the heath coverage and assistance they need perhaps this is why the GOP tried to gut and sabotage the Affordable Care Act? It was an attempt to beget more GOP voters. This is…
Some important breaking news for those betting on the Mayor of London
When I heard this news I stopped what I was doing and decided to take a moment to re-evaluate my entire Mayor of London betting position because of this momentous news. After period of reflection I’ve decided to keep on betting that Laurence Fox will not win the Mayor of London contest in a fortnight. This news may actually have some genuine long term implications, I wonder if this the beginning of Laurence Fox coming under aegis of Nigel Farage’s…
Some Welsh people and Scottish people walk into a polling station and
It isn’t looking so good for the Tories in Wales now with Labour increasing its lead from 2 to 11 in a month The Welsh are such teases as noted before that they look like voting to make the Tories first in Wales but never do and like Opinium earlier on this week the talk of Tories winning Wales in next month’s Senedd is far away as ever although as Roger Awan-Scully points out this is Labour’s worst ever result…
Johnny Mercer has given so much ammunition to critics of Boris Johnson
I suspect Johnny Mercer’s words will be used by Sir Keir Starmer and many other political opponents of the Tory Party, I suspect the quotes from Mercer may rival the out of context quote from Mrs Thatcher about there is no such thing as society which was used to batter a generation of Conservatives, as the Guardian write up says. Former veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer has launched an extraordinary attack on Boris Johnson’s government, describing it as a “cesspit” and…
A reminder that significant portions of Britons are so stupid they should be denied the vote and not allowed out of the house without adult supervision
I missed this poll when it was first published in late 2019 as it clashed with the general election but YouGov have republished this poll following the announcement of the reintroduction of wildcats into the English woodlands after a gap of 200 years. I have worries about the 25% of Brits who would like to see brown bears and 36% of Brits who would like to wolves in reintroduced in this country, are they so naive that they think this…