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When assumptions go wrong – politicalbetting.com
When assumptions go wrong – politicalbetting.com
Around 15% of voters say they are still undecided. Which way are they leaning, asks @TomHCalver ? pic.twitter.com/Onyt3QB6KH
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OT I think! (and first?)
You'll be pleased to know that the Olympic torch has just been delivered from Athens to Villefranche harbour in a fairly spectacular display and then to the Citadel and then onto Paris. This place hasn't had crowds like this since Michael Caine nearly drowned Steve Martin.........
And yes I know we have some examples of swing back occurring but there are always a tiny number of exceptions, which may be more vocal
Interesting that the lead in the MiC. Surv and YG MRPs is smaller than their regular polling with a higher Tory share
Then the idiot article by Michael Deacon ridiculing it. (Does anyone under 80 well into their second childhood still read the Telegraph?)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/18/tony-blair-trans-rights-madness/
Boris did not run against Corbyn's Labour. No, Boris ran against David Cameron and Theresa May. Get Brexit done. An end to austerity. Invest in infrastructure. Level up the north. 20,000 more coppers and 40 new hospitals.
Rishi should have been the anti-Boris. No more parties. No more bumbling. A serious man for serious times. Instead Rishi accepted the faux Boris act foisted on him by those fuckwits at CCHQ and, whisper it, what Nigel Lawson called teenage scribblers brought into Number 10. It is the same mistake Gordon Brown made after Blair, and the same fate awaits.
But not that many of those seats feature on the Independent's tactical voting map, which is here. "Analysis by the Independent uses YouGov's MRP projections to find which projected Tory seats have the smallest margins between the second party. Constituencies with a <10% margin are identified as top seats where tactical voting could be used."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-the-top-seats-for-tactical-voting-on-july-4th-b2558136.html
It’s not untestable, is it? It literally happened. It’s still happening right now. In 2016 Farage wanted a thing and got it. He gave us Brexit. Remember Brexit? I’m sure it used to be important. “Mr Brexit!” says Donald Trump when he sees him, and it can’t only be because he struggles to remember his name.
So what I’m wondering is, why does nobody ask him about it? Why don’t they say, “Is this what you wanted, and if not, then why isn’t that your fault?” Because they don’t.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/brexits-failed-right-so-why-is-nigel-farage-off-the-hook-7qfnkc659
A beautiful morning, one of the first cloudless, beautiful mornings in months, and someone who was alive an hour ago is now in a million pieces all over the railway line at Leagrave, having apparently chosen this course of action.
Puts it all in Context I guess, but a bit shocked. I will never forget the noise.
If you made it without Clarence, you're in trouble.
Are the telly listings for July 4 out yet?
Ed Davey would say that, wouldn't he.
I worked in a rail depot for a few years. It is not nice and happens more often than people think.
https://x.com/TomChivers/status/1802750989226631476
In other words regions where there wasn’t such a defined Lord-serf stratification of society.
Similar to the old Angevin regions of France that alternate between Macron and LR and haven’t got so much into Melenchon or Le Pen.
No chance. Alicia Kearns will be one of the few blue survivors, though LDs could get a respectable second place.
Taking the step to vote Labour or Lib Dem for a habitual Tory voter is a big step. If a voter cannot take that step in an opinion poll, then doing so in the polling booth is unlikely.
Most voters are going to be angry about the actions of the party leadership, at Sunak and Truss. But when they vote it's the reassuring presence of their local Tory on the ballot paper. It's much easier to vote for the blameless local Tory than to support the party leadership. This is especially the case when the election outcome appears to be a forgone conclusion. Sunak won't be PM after the election anyway.
Under FPTP most political campaigning becomes negative. Only a vote for y can stop x. At the end of the day if you're a core Tory voter, someone who makes up the 20-30% of their support total, who else are you going to vote for who will stop Labour from winning your seat? If your Tory vote was never a positive vote for the Tories, but a negative vote against Labour, then you're trapped into making that vote regardless of how poor the Tories are. And, anyway, this time the Tories are bound to lose, so your Tory vote won't prolong the disaster of the incumbent government, but will act to restrain the worst excesses of the inevitable Labour government.
I think this is all enough to see the Tories back up to 29%. Their worst vote share ever, so not exactly a good result, but better than suggested by the opinion polls.
But the real answer is that having someone who mirrors their prejudices, who hasn't been found out by being in government, allows the delusional cohort of the boomer generation to maintain for a while longer their fantasy of returning to an idealised version of the 1950s.
You remember... What became of him?
From what I have seen reported the recovery from the 2015 Mugging will be smaller than might be expected.
Presumably this means for the moment an end to the rapprochement between Israel and the civilised(sic) states of the Middle East?
https://x.com/swilkinsonbc/status/1802962262077874353?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Yet I fear it is usually squandered, or wasted on trivialities.
Still, as boulay says, perhaps he would have been better off campaigning against himself.
Snakeoil salesman basically.
Maybe they ride the red wave and get a breakthrough, but maybe they lose out because of the same as Labour surge to second in loads of rural southern seats.
The Tories certainly are praying for the latter.
Whether or not it would have helped is difficult to say but he certainly wouldn't be floundering where he is and it would have burst Farage's bubble at embryo stage.
But now is patently *not* the right time. Public services are down the shitter and this affects most people a zillion times more than 2% on NI, or IHT ffs!
As my self-employed plumber brother said... I'd rather have the potholes fixed and be able to get a GP's appointment when I need one than NI reduced.
I'm starting to detect anecdotal evidence of this.
Kit Malthouse is perceived as lazy and taking the constituency for granted locally, in strong contrast to Sir George Young, and Ranil J is no James Arbuthnot either - and slightly odd.
"The UK’s main stock market retook its crown as Europe’s most valuable for the first time in nearly two years, data shows."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqee1vpe3deo
But truth is he did not have that wing on boars from the start and they were never tempted to come back, and centrists were dropping away after 12 years and incompetence pushed them away harder.
Farage and Starmer then exploited that to the max.
And thus did the Conservative Party die; at a mere 190 years old.
Whereas a lot of typically Tory voters do seem okay with the idea of "a bit of time in opposition" or even straight up abandoning the party. If you're a Cameroon then there is nothing to dislike about Starmer except his general authoritarian attitude to party management that may speak to what kind of government he'd run. If you're a Johnsonite Tory then Farage gives you what you want, and you don't care about the Tory Party surviving.
I also don't think many people think fondly of their local Tory MP. I think that is mostly wishful thinking. An MP is a vote for the party whip - and when the Tory government has been such a failure any MP who followed the whip has questions to answer.
Brexit bonus, eh?
Modelling the transmission mitigation impact of testing for infectious diseases
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk5108
We have had several such incidents on our North Wales rail line but also a terrible recent incident where a middle aged woman slashed her wrists on a promenade bench before staggering into the sea and eventually her body was recovered by the RNLI
In fact none of the parties would change much but the Conservatives might rise by a percentage point.
That'll do it, that'll open the voting floodgates.
I reckon we are a week from him saying 'fuck the courts' and piling a load of immigrants on a plane on Live TV
Scottish former Labour MPs could tell us
Then I couldn't bring myself to vote for them in 2017 and Did Not Vote.
Then I voted for my local Labour candidate in 2019 *despite* Corbyn (I didn't believe Corbyn could win and wanted to support any Labour MPs that were not foursquare behind him so that wing wouldn't take over the Labour Party)
Now I'm voting Labour again because I've had a decent dialogue with my local MP since then, and he's the best not-the-Tories game in town.
I imagine this to be the story for a lot of people who will become DNVs this time.
The Starmer point is just whataboutery, since Labour weren't in government, and there's no legacy to defend.
Sir George Young was all over the place meeting residents and constituents regularly, and attended all the local events.
Kit can't be arsed.
Yougov found just 4% think Brexit is the cause of immigration
It was me / I did.
That's pretty well what everyone says, isn't it ?
Grammar is, outside of the French academy or computer programming, largely descriptive, rather than prescriptive, I think ?
NEW
Analysis of the seats the Tories could keep at the election suggests the party will be evenly split between rightward-leaning and moderate MPs, setting up the mother of all leadership contests
https://x.com/estwebber/status/1802968305134698510
'Between you and I' is found frequently - and regarded as correct SFAICS by most. 'Between you, I, and the gatepost' (I think) isn't so regarded. It's hard going to formulate the rule.
I sometimes wonder how less literate ancient Greeks got on having to handle their irregular verbs, the infinity of endings, optative pluperfect middles and all that.
Not literally just metaphorically as I could do difficult/unpleasant things work related that others struggled to do.
2) anger
3) bargaining
4) depression
5) acceptance
I expect Reform and the Conservatives to wrestle in the mud all the way to polling day, whilst SKS laughs, followed by Labour winning a stonking majority.
The risk is they then hugely overplay their hand.
Paul Whitehouse (as a grumpy old man): "Washing your smalls."
Harry Enfield (as another grumpy old man, hands in the sink): "Nope. Drowning the kittens."