A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
It's fascinating how this Farage /actor story is leading the news. It obvious that the man was not employed as an actor but was an activist for the Party. The only extraordinary thing is Farage's ineptitude which has kept the story bubbling for three days.
It could be that he knows his voters and believes all publicity is good publicity but I doubt it.
The thing about Reform voters is that they won't see themselves as nasty racists and won't like themselves to be painted that way. This I would guess will lose him votes. Maybe bigtime.
Why is it obvious that he is an activist for the party?
Supporters of Reform on here. Assuming you want your “party” to control the executive and legislature does not the simple statement in the below link worry you about the democratic credentials of your man?
If a man controls a “party” (in this case a limited company of said man who owns 8 out of its 13 shares) which has a majority in the Commons I would imagine that the principle of pleasing the leader is becomes the imperative.
Would a limited company be allowed to act as a 'party' in the Commons? If they win seats might it be the case that they are forced to change their party structure?
All of the parties are companies aren’t they? That’s the basic structure required in the U.K. to have a natural person (Directors) and do stuff? Even charities have to be companies as well.
The only way Government dodges that requirement is that the “Secretary of State” can be a natural person. Otherwise you end up doing a lot as an individual.
It's fascinating how this Farage /actor story is leading the news. It obvious that the man was not employed as an actor but was an activist for the Party. The only extraordinary thing is Farage's ineptitude which has kept the story bubbling for three days.
It could be that he knows his voters and believes all publicity is good publicity but I doubt it.
The thing about Reform voters is that they won't see themselves as nasty racists and won't like themselves to be painted that way. This I would guess will lose him votes. Maybe bigtime.
Why is it obvious that he is an activist for the party?
The actor has supposedly been seen at multiple Reform events over the past year.
On topic, I've had more Reform ads on Facebook than from the Conservatives.
And they don't come for free.
Are they targeted at people like you? I've not seen any.
I've only been getting Green and Labour ones on FB.
I have been getting Reform ones while shopping for some new binoculars* online and keeping up with football gossip in the Leicester Mercury. It's about the only political advertising that I have seen.
*I am toying with some image stabilised ones for birdwatching, the Canon 12x36 is perhaps, or something similar. Anyone on PB with any thoughts?
Binocular owners and buyers are a key demographic for Reform, obviously. Only with binoculars can you fully enjoy standing on the cliffs of Dover watching those small boats in the distance.
Are the Tories still pleased that Cameron saw off Nick Clegg's AV voting proposals?
LOL.
they also saw off Clegg in 2015 which meant that the referendum manifesto commitment that was design edas a sacrificial item when collation 2 was created had to be held.
Equally given how university finances are blowing up there I suspect a lot of things that Cameron / Osbourne implemented in 2010-15 are now blowing up in the Government's face.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
This is why the Tories are where they are. The worst thing they can suggest Labour will do, is what they themselves have already done!
If the Tories are going to go in this direction SKS will get a decade.
It is not too late to go back to the centre but the Tories will have to accept things that Labour are going to do, e.g. spending more and not privatising things. We've had enough of that.
They have spent more, and they have nationalised things. The tories need to tack neither right nor left. They needto be centre right, but more competently. It's worth revisiting TimS's brilliant analogy of (I think) Thursday morning, about 8.30, when we pretty much nailed where the Tories have gone wrong and what they need to do as a result. The analogy was this: imagine if Labour had been in power for the last term - and had been constantly banging on about identity politics and the need to squeeze the rich, while at the same time lowering taxes , lowering spending and restricting immigration from the third world. It would have alienated its existing supporters and driven away potential supporters.
Are the Tories still pleased that Cameron saw off Nick Clegg's AV voting proposals?
LOL.
they also saw off Clegg in 2015 which meant that the referendum manifesto commitment that was design edas a sacrificial item when collation 2 was created had to be held.
Equally given how university finances are blowing up there I suspect a lot of things that Cameron / Osbourne implemented in 2010-15 are now blowing up in the Government's face.
I do hold the 2010-2015 Government and particularly Osborne responsible for much of what's gone wrong.
This is why the Tories are where they are. The worst thing they can suggest Labour will do, is what they themselves have already done!
The Tory publicity campaign has obviously been done in-house and it's not only abysmal it's counterproductive as this example shows. It reminds me of Red Adair's classic line '
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. ... "
This is why the Tories are where they are. The worst thing they can suggest Labour will do, is what they themselves have already done!
If the Tories are going to go in this direction SKS will get a decade.
It is not too late to go back to the centre but the Tories will have to accept things that Labour are going to do, e.g. spending more and not privatising things. We've had enough of that.
They have spent more, and they have nationalised things. The tories need to tack neither right nor left. They needto be centre right, but more competently. It's worth revisiting TimS's brilliant analogy of (I think) Thursday morning, about 8.30, when we pretty much nailed where the Tories have gone wrong and what they need to do as a result. The analogy was this: imagine if Labour had been in power for the last term - and had been constantly banging on about identity politics and the need to squeeze the rich, while at the same time lowering taxes , lowering spending and restricting immigration from the third world. It would have alienated its existing supporters and driven away potential supporters.
The Tories have alienated young people by saying we're all left wing snowflakes.
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
Yes, the bradykinesis, mumbling, shuffling gait and expressionless face all fits quite well. Quite possible to have both of course.
Anyone know what polls we can expect this weekend?
Usually it's a quiet time for them but I imagine the papers will want a last shot at it.
Opinium and Savanta tonight at least, probably some others. MRP wise, Focaldata and YouGov update Monday, Survation Tuesday but I guess the others will also at some point before Tues/Weds so perhaps this weekend? YouGov will have run a normal Times poll that wasn't reported yesterday so that will emerge at some point, likely today given Mondays MRP update
The Mail’s editorial comment is saying what many of us thought it would. Don’t allow a “Starmageddon”, seriously don't vote reform, the Tories have actually done well under the circumstances. Labour will win but vote Tory to ensure a proper opposition to stop the worst of Starmer is a summary.
The Sun will likely say exactly the same and I’m guessing the Times, Telegraph and Express too. “Its lost but you need to still vote Tory to rein in Labour”.
Interesting that those Tory Papers so openly admit their current irrelevance. Be interesting to see which of them are no longer around in their current form when the next election happens
I was in London at the beginning of the week and was surprised how much puff stuff for Sunak there was in the Standard. Based on a sample of one day's issue.
Isn't it still owned by the Tories Russian friends?
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Just typical NIMBY scum. Recognising the need for housing in the abstract is not YIMBY.
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The Dems went mad over that and accused him of fraud, now we see he was simply telling the truth
So. The legitimate question is asked. Does the POTUS have dementia? Biden only has two options. 1. Get openly tested by neutral doctors who can say, no, he’s fine. 2. Admit that he can’t do this - because the diagnosis is probably Yes - and step aside
I suppose there is a third option. Persist in his candidacy - implying that yes he really has got dementia - and go down to a terrible defeat because Americans simply won’t vote for this. And who can blame them. = Trump wins, with all that entails
The Dems have boxed themselves in. They have no good choices
It's fascinating how this Farage /actor story is leading the news. It obvious that the man was not employed as an actor but was an activist for the Party. The only extraordinary thing is Farage's ineptitude which has kept the story bubbling for three days.
It could be that he knows his voters and believes all publicity is good publicity but I doubt it.
The thing about Reform voters is that they won't see themselves as nasty racists and won't like themselves to be painted that way. This I would guess will lose him votes. Maybe bigtime.
Why is it obvious that he is an activist for the party?
The actor has supposedly been seen at multiple Reform events over the past year.
Interesting watching Fiona Bruce with Farage and the leader of the Greens last night....... An excellent audience. As good as I've seen. Extremely well informed and articulate It was quite life affirming to see how much they loathed farage and how little they tolerated his confected bullshit
Though the audience will have been selected to represent different views I doubt they tried to balance their ages so Farages older cohort in all likelihood wouldn't have been able to make it. Not a single clap for him in half an hour
BBC always have hand picked audiences they are government sockpuppets
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Just typical NIMBY scum.
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
Yeah I see it whenever I post about infrastructure.
“I want masts but not to cover rural areas”, why? Why are rural people excluded from better coverage?
Frankly I’d make planning a tickbox exercise. It’s frankly nuts that MNOs cannot build where they want. Fine, hide the masts but people reject them because they’re things in the ground, have they seen the pylons? What about the telegraph poles?
When will we know who the Sun and Times are endorsing?
The Sunday Times will have to decide this afternoon. I don't think they want to back Labour (it's more Murdoch populist than the weekday version), but they will look pretty silly endorsing the Conservatives.
Maybe a somewhat humbuggy essay on the importance of checks and balances?
Any info about how Galloways lot are faring in the 150 or so seats they are standing in?
This is the great mystery. A 1% others vote share could, at the extreme, mean 40% in 20 constituencies. Some MRPs pick up some share for "Others" in places, but I'm not convinced they're fully across it.
Not seen a Muslim VI or a constituency VI with an Independent other than a couple of Corbyn ones.
My hunch is still that Labour lose a handful of seats to their left - not sure if Rochdale will be one of of them tbh - because I don't see how the pattern of the locals dissipates entirely given that pattern wasn't about a local issue. Of the 5 seats covering Kirklees, Dewsbury & Batley, which EC would have as the safest Labour seat, is the one I am least sure of a Labour victory in.
What I would say about WPGB, is they have selected seats by candidate volunteering, and as a result I don't think they have put up candidates in their strongest range of seats.
The polling yesterday on how different ethnic minorities are planning to vote seems to tell a story.
The various "left wing" parties that Galloway has started over the years have never done particularly well apart from the odd high profile seat. This time round I think they were hoping that Gaza would be a way in to a strong base of Muslim voters, but it doesn't look like it's worked.
YouGov instead found a huge spike in support for the Green party amongst people from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The vote for 'others' is a little higher, but it was:
Labour 44 Green 29
And everyone else 10 or below.
The main reason people gave to the switch to Green, was Gaza. So Galloway was right, that Gaza could be a difference maker, but it's not looking like he's the one to benefit.
Wonder if this affects the Green vote significantly in any constituencies?
(p.s. Slight warning. There was polling in February of Muslim voters, which won't be a perfect match, but will be similar. That showed a much smaller switch to other parties and hardly any switch to Green. https://swingometer.substack.com/p/labour-and-muslim-voters)
Maybe they're misunderstanding the sense of "Green". Or maybe the rest of us are.
I think it's simply the fact that the Green party have been strongest in support of Palestine.
Considering they're home to much of the 'student left' (of all ages), that's probably not a surprise.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Interesting watching Fiona Bruce with Farage and the leader of the Greens last night....... An excellent audience. As good as I've seen. Extremely well informed and articulate It was quite life affirming to see how much they loathed farage and how little they tolerated his confected bullshit
Though the audience will have been selected to represent different views I doubt they tried to balance their ages so Farages older cohort in all likelihood wouldn't have been able to make it. Not a single clap for him in half an hour
BBC always have hand picked audiences they are government sockpuppets
Handpicked. That would not surprise me. Impartial my arse.
A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
Yes, the bradykinesis, mumbling, shuffling gait and expressionless face all fits quite well. Quite possible to have both of course.
She also points out that pretty much everyone over 70 has some form of vascular change (I'm just the messenger @PB oldies). With highly intelligent people this can be compensated for, but Biden's baseline is much more obvious given decades of TV etc etc. If you watch a video of Biden from 5 years ago he's nowhere near as sharp as he was 20 years ago, for example.
(Also reckons that if it is Parkinson's, his medical team didn't quite get the timing correct for the debate)
Anyone know what polls we can expect this weekend?
Usually it's a quiet time for them but I imagine the papers will want a last shot at it.
Opinium and Savanta tonight at least, probably some others. MRP wise, Focaldata and YouGov update Monday, Survation Tuesday but I guess the others will also at some point before Tues/Weds so perhaps this weekend? YouGov will have run a normal Times poll that wasn't reported yesterday so that will emerge at some point, likely today given Mondays MRP update
Noted with thanks, Woolie.
Also see my earlier post - Survation have said they’re doing a ‘Final Call’ on Wednesday which likely includes manual adjustments in places where the MRP is giving an obviously incorrect projection.
Gonna stick my neck out and say one of the big pollsters is going to predict an absolutely cataclysmic final result for the Tories on Tuesday/Wednesday - 40 seats or something.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
I thought it was offload all our corporations to the US and China?
This is why the Tories are where they are. The worst thing they can suggest Labour will do, is what they themselves have already done!
If the Tories are going to go in this direction SKS will get a decade.
It is not too late to go back to the centre but the Tories will have to accept things that Labour are going to do, e.g. spending more and not privatising things. We've had enough of that.
They have spent more, and they have nationalised things. The tories need to tack neither right nor left. They needto be centre right, but more competently. It's worth revisiting TimS's brilliant analogy of (I think) Thursday morning, about 8.30, when we pretty much nailed where the Tories have gone wrong and what they need to do as a result. The analogy was this: imagine if Labour had been in power for the last term - and had been constantly banging on about identity politics and the need to squeeze the rich, while at the same time lowering taxes , lowering spending and restricting immigration from the third world. It would have alienated its existing supporters and driven away potential supporters.
The Tories have alienated young people by saying we're all left wing snowflakes.
Today's young people are a bunch of whining spoilt brats, god help the next generation. Get the adults back in charge.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
Socially liberal meaning what exactly? Pro-Europe - Cameron was clear from the off he didn't much like the EU at all Sound money - ignoring the overwhelming economic evidence since the great depression didn't seem very sound
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Just typical NIMBY scum. Recognising the need for housing in the abstract is not YIMBY.
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
just like the environment nutters , who fly all over the world and run gas guzzlers, whilst pretending they care and terrorising people.
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Just typical NIMBY scum.
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
Yeah I see it whenever I post about infrastructure.
“I want masts but not to cover rural areas”, why? Why are rural people excluded from better coverage?
Frankly I’d make planning a tickbox exercise. It’s frankly nuts that MNOs cannot build where they want. Fine, hide the masts but people reject them because they’re things in the ground, have they seen the pylons? What about the telegraph poles?
Any info about how Galloways lot are faring in the 150 or so seats they are standing in?
This is the great mystery. A 1% others vote share could, at the extreme, mean 40% in 20 constituencies. Some MRPs pick up some share for "Others" in places, but I'm not convinced they're fully across it.
Not seen a Muslim VI or a constituency VI with an Independent other than a couple of Corbyn ones.
My hunch is still that Labour lose a handful of seats to their left - not sure if Rochdale will be one of of them tbh - because I don't see how the pattern of the locals dissipates entirely given that pattern wasn't about a local issue. Of the 5 seats covering Kirklees, Dewsbury & Batley, which EC would have as the safest Labour seat, is the one I am least sure of a Labour victory in.
What I would say about WPGB, is they have selected seats by candidate volunteering, and as a result I don't think they have put up candidates in their strongest range of seats.
The polling yesterday on how different ethnic minorities are planning to vote seems to tell a story.
The various "left wing" parties that Galloway has started over the years have never done particularly well apart from the odd high profile seat. This time round I think they were hoping that Gaza would be a way in to a strong base of Muslim voters, but it doesn't look like it's worked.
YouGov instead found a huge spike in support for the Green party amongst people from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The vote for 'others' is a little higher, but it was:
Labour 44 Green 29
And everyone else 10 or below.
The main reason people gave to the switch to Green, was Gaza. So Galloway was right, that Gaza could be a difference maker, but it's not looking like he's the one to benefit.
Wonder if this affects the Green vote significantly in any constituencies?
(p.s. Slight warning. There was polling in February of Muslim voters, which won't be a perfect match, but will be similar. That showed a much smaller switch to other parties and hardly any switch to Green. https://swingometer.substack.com/p/labour-and-muslim-voters)
Maybe they're misunderstanding the sense of "Green". Or maybe the rest of us are.
I think it's simply the fact that the Green party have been strongest in support of Palestine.
Considering they're home to much of the 'student left' (of all ages), that's probably not a surprise.
They've also been changed as the main repository of the Corbynista dregs who have either been excluded for sharing antisemitic views, usually relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict and the antisemitic conspiracism it inspires in some, or have sympathies with those who hold those views and left.
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The Dems went mad over that and accused him of fraud, now we see he was simply telling the truth
So. The legitimate question is asked. Does the POTUS have dementia? Biden only has two options. 1. Get openly tested by neutral doctors who can say, no, he’s fine. 2. Admit that he can’t do this - because the diagnosis is probably Yes - and step aside
I suppose there is a third option. Persist in his candidacy - implying that yes he really has got dementia - and go down to a terrible defeat because Americans simply won’t vote for this. And who can blame them. = Trump wins, with all that entails
The Dems have boxed themselves in. They have no good choices
I wonder if the plan all along was to stick with Biden for fear of something worse (AOC? Harris?). If they time it just right - i.e. now - there is the potential to stitch it up to keep out anyone they didn't want. Seems unlikely that we are here due to cunning rather cock-up, but maybe...? [Yes, I know, hopecasting...]
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Just typical NIMBY scum.
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
Yeah I see it whenever I post about infrastructure.
“I want masts but not to cover rural areas”, why? Why are rural people excluded from better coverage?
Frankly I’d make planning a tickbox exercise. It’s frankly nuts that MNOs cannot build where they want. Fine, hide the masts but people reject them because they’re things in the ground, have they seen the pylons? What about the telegraph poles?
But this is never made a condition of planning instead they are rejected for “doesn’t fit in the landscape” which is meaningless.
O2 tried to patch a coverage hole near Tooting Common, they would have placed the mast in a railway yard which is already there and they’d have disguised the mast. Rejected because it “is visible”. It’s not made of anti-matter now is it? MNOs should make an effort but they should not be able to reject them unless it’s for a safety issue. Railways have special rights, I would extend them to other infrastructure.
A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
Yes, the bradykinesis, mumbling, shuffling gait and expressionless face all fits quite well. Quite possible to have both of course.
She also points out that pretty much everyone over 70 has some form of vascular change (I'm just the messenger @PB oldies). With highly intelligent people this can be compensated for, but Biden's baseline is much more obvious given decades of TV etc etc. If you watch a video of Biden from 5 years ago he's nowhere near as sharp as he was 20 years ago, for example.
(Also reckons that if it is Parkinson's, his medical team didn't quite get the timing correct for the debate)
Doesn't matter what exactly he has.
He called and pushed for an early debate to show America that he was fit and able and up for the fight and a long campaign.
He failed his own test and that's an end to it imho.
Dems sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'just a cold' and 'we all have bad days' is just like putting out a welcoming mat for Trump 2.0 at the white house door.
A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
Yes, the bradykinesis, mumbling, shuffling gait and expressionless face all fits quite well. Quite possible to have both of course.
She also points out that pretty much everyone over 70 has some form of vascular change (I'm just the messenger @PB oldies). With highly intelligent people this can be compensated for, but Biden's baseline is much more obvious given decades of TV etc etc. If you watch a video of Biden from 5 years ago he's nowhere near as sharp as he was 20 years ago, for example.
(Also reckons that if it is Parkinson's, his medical team didn't quite get the timing correct for the debate)
If not for Trump, I’d be trying to march up to the moral high ground and saying his diagnosis is none of our business, but Americans can take a view on his performance in the ballot box.
However Trump is there.
God I’d be angry if I was American. If you’re a decent person there is no choice - you must vote for Biden even if you hate every policy of his and like most of Trump’s.
On topic, I've had more Reform ads on Facebook than from the Conservatives.
And they don't come for free.
Are they targeted at people like you? I've not seen any.
I've only been getting Green and Labour ones on FB.
I have been getting Reform ones while shopping for some new binoculars* online and keeping up with football gossip in the Leicester Mercury. It's about the only political advertising that I have seen.
*I am toying with some image stabilised ones for birdwatching, the Canon 12x36 is perhaps, or something similar. Anyone on PB with any thoughts?
My personal hunch is that the Greens might get one of the IoW seats, with perhaps East being more likely.
They certainly won't get anywhere near in the West.
In the East it hangs on anti-Tory islanders following the primary campaign recommendation rather than the MRPs.
Saying Biden has Parkinson’s not dementia doesn’t really help. Nearly everyone with Parkinson’s gets dementia - plus they have other issues. John Hopkins uni website:
“Parkinson disease causes physical symptoms at first. Problems with cognitive function, including forgetfulness and trouble with concentration, may start later. As the disease gets worse over time, about 4 in 5 people develop dementia. This can cause profound memory loss and make it hard to maintain relationships.”
I keep changing my mind, maybe I have mental issues. Last night I was sure the dems would try and tough it out - get Biden to the election. This morning I don’t see how they can. Either Biden proves he’s mentally fit or he has to go. The alternative is absolutely guaranteed defeat. To Donald Trump
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The "he's got a cold" lie was particularly egregious and ludicrous. It's like the last days of Chernenko when they were doing his signature with a coal fired mechanical pantagraph.
I was surprised at DJT's restraint in the Debby Ates when it was obvious that JRB was away with the mixer. He could have finished JRB off completely with some withering mockery.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
I will be in that demographic. Right now though the Tories hate me.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
Socially liberal meaning what exactly? Pro-Europe - Cameron was clear from the off he didn't much like the EU at all Sound money - ignoring the overwhelming economic evidence since the great depression didn't seem very sound
Socially liberal in the sense of not suppressing freedom of speech or protest, and not imposing rules on individuals on how to live their lives.
Pro EU, bit not uncritical, as the Conservative policy for the half century to 2016.
Sound money in the sense of not running a permanent deficit to fund consumer imports.
That sort of thing.
I don't know what the Tories stand for now apart from individual greed.
When will we know who the Sun and Times are endorsing?
Judging by their broader content to date, the Times is nailed on Tory in spades and the Sun is not going to endorse Labour.
The Daily Mail and General Trust is meanwhile using the i to try and encourage disaffection on the left (i.e. subtly encouraging a fragmentation of the Labour vote in the direction of smaller parties, while professing neutrality) while the Daily Mail is trying to rally the troops behind Sunak.
Are the Tories still pleased that Cameron saw off Nick Clegg's AV voting proposals?
Come off it, Mr RottenBorough. AV was all that Cameron's Conservatives would allow the Lib Dems to have. It was not the LD voting system of choice. That was STV.
AV was described by Nick Clegg at the time as "a miserable little voting system" and the Lib Dems did not go into that referendum with any degreeof enthusiasm. To my mind, and in retrospect, that would have been the moment to pull the plug the whole coalition.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I could vote Tory again too if they decide to appeal to younger voters.
So that would mean giving up their silly pro-NIMBY approach to house building, accepting railways being publicly owned, supporting actual planning reform and not thinking that every young voter is a thick leftie snowflake.
But based on the comments here that party seems dead. And the people left don't seem to want to come back to me. This is why I am more confident the Tories be be out for a decade.
Yes, this is such a massive factor. Previous generations of Tory voters, young to middle aged, were created by things like Right to Buy - you could rely on property ownership to help bolster your vote.
However, recent successive Tory governments have sold young people down the river to the point where they literally have no incentive to vote Tory now.
- Labour is attractive enough to centre ground young voters, many of whom have only known Tory governments now. - The Lib Dems could enjoy a surge in Youth support when they potentially become more Pro-EU over the next parliament. - The Greens can win over some of the more lefty young vote, as can independents like Corbyn, or the pro-Gaza independents for a chunk of them. - For the remaining centre right or right wing young vote - Reform actually look increasingly attractive, mirroring some of the rise of right wing populist parties in Europe.
And the above doesn’t just apply to ‘18-24’ but people well into their 30s, a lot of whom are still living with parents because of the cost of housing etc etc.
This will be the massive, massive battle for the Tories for years to come.
If they want to win again then IMO they need to pick between the Cameron style Government, or throwing their lot in with Farage. Because I have no idea how a rump Tory party can really do much, when the demographics continue to become less favourable for them.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
And after 5-10 years of Labour, many of us will be voting Tory. Perhaps even most of us. The wheel always turns and the opposition always adapts and wins in the end.
And quite frankly appearing to be quite green isn’t hard for conservatives if someone else has had to make all the hard decisions around petrol cars and gas boilers for them.
I’m happy that Biden should stand down. But then so should Trump for the same reason. Yet our most prolific posters on this actually have or do support Trump even now.
I want to cut the grass but it's too wet obviously so checked the weather forecast. Rain and highs of 16 consistently for the next seven days.
Joy.
It’s lovely down here
Bit muggy but lovely in the East Mids.
Bart, you're not making the cardinal error of using the BBC forecast are you? The BBC weather forecast always forecasts rain and gloom. It's as if it wants you to be miserable. The Met Office forecast for Manchester - and I know you are not far away - is, well, average for the time of year. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcw2hzs1u#?date=2024-07-04 Bit of rain but mainly dry. Warmish without being too spectacular. You'd be disappointed if you had a test match ticket for today, but over 7 days no worse than average.
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The "he's got a cold" lie was particularly egregious and ludicrous. It's like the last days of Chernenko when they were doing his signature with a coal fired mechanical pantagraph.
I was surprised at DJT's restraint in the Debby Ates when it was obvious that JRB was away with the mixer. He could have finished JRB off completely with some withering mockery.
Actually I think Trump got the tactics right. He did have some zinger lines, but if he had gone full on assault on Biden you are in danger of the sympathy vote / also plays into Trump is evil narrative. See how Brown got a bump when the Sun ran the piece about him disrespecting the mother of a killed solider, he was already unpopular, his reaction was poor (typical getting into an argument about not being wrong), but the Sun went OTT.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
And after 5-10 years of Labour, many of us will be voting Tory. Perhaps even most of us. The wheel always turns and the opposition always adapts and wins in the end.
Can you explain with the current mood music, why? The Tories are not making any sounds that they want to ever win my vote.
Forcing Biden onto the ballot against Trump would also do profound damage to the Democrats overall. They would be the party that lied about a President for years and tried to gaslight America, and then tried to lie AGAIN and gaslight them AGAIN in the face of stark evidence that everyone can see
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
I will be in that demographic. Right now though the Tories hate me.
That's it. It's not just that their policies don't quite fit for our generation, it's the open loathing that they have for us.
It's fascinating how this Farage /actor story is leading the news. It obvious that the man was not employed as an actor but was an activist for the Party. The only extraordinary thing is Farage's ineptitude which has kept the story bubbling for three days.
It could be that he knows his voters and believes all publicity is good publicity but I doubt it.
The thing about Reform voters is that they won't see themselves as nasty racists and won't like themselves to be painted that way. This I would guess will lose him votes. Maybe bigtime.
But does the conspiracy not give them a way out?
His grift has always been pretending to be an outsider, attacked by the establishment. This is the fourth, or fifth conspiracy of the election, and it seems to feed very neatly into his narrative.
Pride is going to be epic today. Blue skies and 23°c sunshine. Party time in town!
I can finally wish it well these days. I used to end up working in London on this Saturday and mostly associated it with rammed transport and not be able to get across the road to Tesco…
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
Socially liberal meaning what exactly? Pro-Europe - Cameron was clear from the off he didn't much like the EU at all Sound money - ignoring the overwhelming economic evidence since the great depression didn't seem very sound
I can get on board with all those concepts personally. But I don't think Foxy means what I mean.
I am very pro-Europe. It would be foolish to wish the Continent ill - they are a key market and people that we share a great deal in common with in terms of cultural hinterland and shared history. I don't believe in picking silly fights with other European nations or the EU to grandstand in The Sun. I think we should have a positive relationship with Europe, but I don't see how we need to join a political organisation that is moving toward statehood, to be 'pro-European'.
I am also socially liberal. The state should stay largely out of the bedroom please. But I don't see the liberality of allowing male rapists into womens' prisons or male perverts into womens' gaols. That isn't liberalism; it strikes me as oppression.
More than anything I believe in sound money, but does Foxy actually want 'sound money'? I've never heard him arguing for any limits on Government spending, just object to tax cuts. That's the opposite of sound money in my opinion.
Supporters of Reform on here. Assuming you want your “party” to control the executive and legislature does not the simple statement in the below link worry you about the democratic credentials of your man?
If a man controls a “party” (in this case a limited company of said man who owns 8 out of its 13 shares) which has a majority in the Commons I would imagine that the principle of pleasing the leader is becomes the imperative.
Would a limited company be allowed to act as a 'party' in the Commons? If they win seats might it be the case that they are forced to change their party structure?
They are registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission, as they all must
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The "he's got a cold" lie was particularly egregious and ludicrous. It's like the last days of Chernenko when they were doing his signature with a coal fired mechanical pantagraph.
I was surprised at DJT's restraint in the Debby Ates when it was obvious that JRB was away with the mixer. He could have finished JRB off completely with some withering mockery.
Actually I think Trump got the tactics right. He did have some zinger lines, but if he had gone full on assault on Biden you are in danger of the sympathy vote / also plays into Trump is evil. See how Brown got a bump when the Sun ran the piece about him disrespecting the mother of a killed solider, he was already unpopular, his reaction was poor (typical getting into an argument about not being wrong), but the Sun went OTT.
I agree that Trump played it perfectly. He realised Biden was digging his own grave and just sat back and watched. He did do that one zinger “I’ve no idea what Biden just said, and I don’t think he knows either”
That’s a line that will resonate down the ages as a truly brutal debate blow. Like “I knew President John Kennedy”. Also evidence that Trump still has mojo
Anyone know what polls we can expect this weekend?
Usually it's a quiet time for them but I imagine the papers will want a last shot at it.
I feel sure we'll a large scale poll from YouGov either this evening or tomorrow. Although they clearly have far more muscle and financial resources than most of their competitors, their most recent survey undertaken on 24-25 June appeared to be something of an outlier with support for Labour shown as being only 36% ... that must be around 5% lower than the Red Team's average level of support over the past couple of weeks. From their own point of view, I imagine they would like to undertake a further poll asap to support their earlier findings or to belatedly align themselves more closely with other pollsters.
I’m happy that Biden should stand down. But then so should Trump for the same reason. Yet our most prolific posters on this actually have or do support Trump even now.
I am no fan of Trump, but I am not sure I form why Trump should stand down? He won the primary and there is no sign he is mentally impaired. He was very sharp during the debate, with some adlibbed zinger lines. He looked a generation younger than Biden.
The fact he lies and lies and rambles and lies, that isn't mental incapacity, that is he is a liar and narcissist.
If the Dems get a half decent candidate they should wipe the floor with him. And that is democracy.
Anyone know what polls we can expect this weekend?
Usually it's a quiet time for them but I imagine the papers will want a last shot at it.
I feel sure we'll a large scale poll from YouGov either this evening or tomorrow. Although they clearly have far more muscle and financial resources than most of their competitors, their most recent survey undertaken on 24-25 June appeared to be something of an outlier with support for Labour shown as being only 36% ... that must be around 5% lower than the Red Team's average level of support over the past couple of weeks. From their own point of view, I imagine they would like to undertake a further poll asap to support their earlier findings or to belatedly align themselves more closely with other pollsters.
Well didn’t YouGov have Labour on 38 also fairly recently, which was notable for also being lower than most other pollsters?
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
I will be in that demographic. Right now though the Tories hate me.
That's it. It's not just that their policies don't quite fit for our generation, it's the open loathing that they have for us.
Don't be melodramatic. The Tories don't loathe or hate the young, just as they don't loathe or hate rocks. The young (by which I mean anyone under about 55) are just irrelevant to them.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
And after 5-10 years of Labour, many of us will be voting Tory. Perhaps even most of us. The wheel always turns and the opposition always adapts and wins in the end.
And quite frankly appearing to be quite green isn’t hard for conservatives if someone else has had to make all the hard decisions around petrol cars and gas boilers for them.
I would normally agree - certainly the case in Scotland with Yes/No voters.
But the evidence so far is that Millennials remain stubbornly left wing. If we do swing to the right, it will be a rather sudden change compared with prior generations.
I'm really struggling to accept that some of the latest Survation MRP seat projections are even remotely plausible.
For example, Shropshire North. A seat currently held by LD MP Helen Morgan, with minor boundary changes only, after the 2021 by election with result LD 47, Con 32, Lab 10, Green 5, Reform 4. In those circumstances, even I have to admit that it's absolutely nailed on that the anti-Tory tactical vote will stay with the LDs. Yet Survation have the Conservatives regaining the seat with the LDs going from 1st to 4th place: Con 36, Lab 30, Reform 15, LD 10.
That's utter nonsense. Reality is reflected in the fact that you can't get better odds than 4/9 on for the LDs to win the seat.
It could be that MRP is good when voting blocs are essentially demographically binary, and based around Leave/Remain as they were in GE2017 and GE2019, but otherwise somewhat limited and unable to deal with a complex election like this.
This time, I'm taking them with a pinch of salt.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs in two separate ways.
Let's recap why MRPs previously did well - they picked up the change in support that had the Tories ahead of Labour in social class C2DE, and projected that onto relevant seats, so that we could see Sedgefield going Tory, and Canterbury going Labour.
So they work well when, say, a sandal-wearing university academic is reliably going to vote Lib Dem, a young mother in her 30s will reliably vote Labour, and a pensioner who owns their home outright will reliably vote Tory, whichever constituency they are in. See how many of each demographic are in each seat and - bingo! - you get an accurate prediction of seats won.
But, when the sandal-wearing academics are prepared to vote Labour in some seats, and Lib Dem in others, as an anti-Tory tactical vote, and the young mothers likewise, then that messes up the base data. It looks like the Lib Dems have lost support among sandal-wearers, and increased support among mothers, and so the MRP will apply those changes even to seats where the Lib Dems aren't the tactical vote option.
Now, you might try to decompose your base data on the basis of whether the seat is a Labour or Lib Dem target, but then you're assuming the voters have perfect knowledge of what the optimal tactical vote option is, and they don't.
Tactical voting breaks MRPs.
And the people doing them know this, of course, and they have various ways of trying to 'fix' it.
Yougov relies on its panel being so big, and its having so much background data on them, that it factors in the responses from the panellists who actually live in the seat. But even with a giant national panel, they will only have about a hundred people in each seat, giving an MOE of about +/- 10%. Better than nothing, and having people's past voting behaviour helps since a change of vote is an actual swing, rather than just a sampling error, but it's susceptible to both random and systemic error - one example was YouGov suggesting the East Devon Indy was running the Tories close last time.
All of them, I think, factor in actual past election results, which in a sense is 'cheating' by creating a circularity that risks normalcy bias. But clearly it helps with things like sorting Labour from LibDem targets based on campaigning history and local factors, which any demographic model would struggle with. But again there are risks - the North Shropshire issue discussed early this morning probably arises because that MRP has used the last GE results as its 'crib' and ignored the subsequent by-election.
The key is to remember that we're looking (mostly) at a national model, not a seat-by-seat poll - the trouble is that the way the data is presented, with maps and such enticing seat-by-seat data, makes it look like the latter. It would be more honest, if less fun, for them just to present the predicted national seat totals and leave out all the local data behind it. Most of us are clued up on these issues, but I know from comments about my seat in the media and social media that most ordinary folk think these predictions are some sort of local poll.
IoW East is looking to be one of the most interesting seats. It looks a 3 way between Lab, Con and Reform to me. Any thoughts?
Or four-way with the Greens, who are recommended as the tactical choice by the local primary campaign. They're working hard to give traction to their relatively late recommendation, but will probably struggle to reach many armchair voters given the focus on street stalls and the like. That said, the Greens are winning the poster war, such as it is. There's also a drive on social media for "red west, green east" with vote swapping and the like.
There's not much hard evidence of Reform gaining traction, but there's a lot of activity on social media and given the demographics and a candidate whose not a total nutjob, they will probably pull in a decent vote. But there's no ground campaign and I don't think they can win unless there's a further big move to Reform.
All the polls and models point to a Labour win, but I'd still be surprised, particularly given such a poor candidate choice, and therefore the money probably sits on a Tory hold, with a Labour gain in the west if they maintain their poll lead.
Thanks, Mrs Foxy's relatives are all in the East, in Lake, Bembridge, St Helens and Wootton Bridge, so I have an interest there, particularly as Mrs Foxy wants to move there when she can finally prise me out of Leicester.
Just be careful where you buy your house, though your local contac ts will help. One hopes it is less of a concern than Ventnor/Sandown. The climatic changes are going to mean more landslipping in areas where ground waters lubricate the slip planes of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments. West Dorset too.
Climate btw being one of the (many) things barely discussed in the UK election. Unless the EW candidates are all demanding public money for restitution works and doing a Cnut?
Mrs Foxy loves Bembridge, and I like it too. Lovely harbour for my dayboat would swing it for me.
A shame its very Tory
Foxy is someone who secretly desperately to be a Tory.
I could vote Tory again if it reverted to being socially liberal, pro-europe and keen on sound money, as it was in 2010, the only time I have voted Tory in a GE.
I reckon that is a never again.
I suspect it is 2040. The above but the centre piece will be conserving the environment.
Again like 2010.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
Someone needs to explain to Tories that they key swing voter in 10 years time is a millenial. We will be between 38 and 53.
And after 5-10 years of Labour, many of us will be voting Tory. Perhaps even most of us. The wheel always turns and the opposition always adapts and wins in the end.
Can you explain with the current mood music, why? The Tories are not making any sounds that they want to ever win my vote.
They may never win your vote, but they will eventually win the majority. Track what 1997’s 25 year olds did in 2010.
Why do they get into such a wankfest over this every year?
The average viewer of a 24 hour news channel couldn't give a feck about a bunch of twats living in squalor for a week, and listening to bands they have never heard of.
A big debate on Twitter - often amongst Democrats - about Biden’s alleged dementia. As they are discussing it - and using the D word - surely we can
Lots of them are desperate for him to step aside. One argument they are making is that dementia is not just about mumbling and slowing, which can indeed be handled by good advisors taking over most tasks. Some dementias turn you paranoid, angry, aggressive - they can make you hallucinate
Someone in that state simply cannot be POTUS. Not anywhere near it. Logically, Biden either has to prove he’s not got dementia or he has to go. If he doesn’t do either of these he is absolutely going to lose as Americans absorb this logic
But Biden has not shown any of those symptoms.
Trump however...
(No doubt something is wrong with Biden but there are plenty of other options. My partner reckons she knows what it is, and she works in old age psych)
So what is it?
Parkinson's (but with no tremor), but they aren't giving him the full whack of medication because the side effects would be too obvious. Would explain the on/off days.
Yes, the bradykinesis, mumbling, shuffling gait and expressionless face all fits quite well. Quite possible to have both of course.
She also points out that pretty much everyone over 70 has some form of vascular change (I'm just the messenger @PB oldies). With highly intelligent people this can be compensated for, but Biden's baseline is much more obvious given decades of TV etc etc. If you watch a video of Biden from 5 years ago he's nowhere near as sharp as he was 20 years ago, for example.
(Also reckons that if it is Parkinson's, his medical team didn't quite get the timing correct for the debate)
Doesn't matter what exactly he has.
He called and pushed for an early debate to show America that he was fit and able and up for the fight and a long campaign.
He failed his own test and that's an end to it imho.
Dems sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'just a cold' and 'we all have bad days' is just like putting out a welcoming mat for Trump 2.0 at the white house door.
They need to get a bloody grip and do the deed.
Yes it was said that Biden wanted the early debate, precisely so he could shut down internal party mutterings about his age and cognitive abilities, after the whitewash of a primary season with no competition allowed.
Instead, he had a very bad day and the calls to replace him are now louder than ever, including senior elected people in the party and The NY Times editorial.
Received a leaflet from the Greens. It features 2 "stories". One is about the need for more affordable housing. The other is about their opposition to a new development on a council estate. NIMBY next to YIMBY.
Sums up the Greens (and libdems) nicely
Our local Lib Dems began a campaign to save some of our local green spaces being used for housing.
Overwhelming response was from people who couldn't afford a house, or who had kids that were priced out.
Why do they get into such a wankfest over this every year?
The average viewer of a 24 hour news channel couldn't give a feck about a bunch of twats living in squalor for a week, and listening to bands they have never heard of.
BBC spend a lot of money on it. And half of them are there on the freebies.
The thing I found most interesting is apparently, they pay absolute buttons to the talent to play Glastonbury, 10% of the going rate. Great business model if you can make it work.
The Mail’s editorial comment is saying what many of us thought it would. Don’t allow a “Starmageddon”, seriously don't vote reform, the Tories have actually done well under the circumstances. Labour will win but vote Tory to ensure a proper opposition to stop the worst of Starmer is a summary.
The Sun will likely say exactly the same and I’m guessing the Times, Telegraph and Express too. “Its lost but you need to still vote Tory to rein in Labour”.
Interesting that those Tory Papers so openly admit their current irrelevance. Be interesting to see which of them are no longer around in their current form when the next election happens
Telegraph and Mail are profitable for starters, successfully moving to subscription model. Times is profitable as well.
I would say the biggest liability is Reach group i.e. Mirror. Mirror is irrelevant, and they bought all those regional newspapers that are failing.
The raverage age of the readership of the Telegraph must be close to 100. Its rumoured Sheikh Mansour wants to turn it into a City fanzine
I thought it was stuffed and has definitely gone downhill, but when we have discussed this previously have on here, have been reliably informed their move to paywall has gone surprisingly well and making money. 100 year olds don't generally know how to use ipads, so i think they have attracted those over who a tad younger than than that are capable of ipad usage.
In all seriousness It had quite a good film critic which worked for me and those who subscribed found something they wanted. The subscription was also cheap and easy to cancel and was sent online so the mechanics plus the price worked. Oddly enough I find the Guardian the most irritating. I just send an arbitrary amount of money at different times as requested but it still manages to behave like a market trader and do a big selling job before I can read anything
The argument is not that Biden HAS dementia - it is that this is a question now, legitimately, being asked. Even by senior Democrats. Does he have dementia? As many on here point out - we cannot be sure. Biden’s case is not helped by all the lies his aides have told - eg trying to smear the special counsel who interviewed Biden and honestly said “he’s a very old man with memory issues, no jury would convict”
The "he's got a cold" lie was particularly egregious and ludicrous. It's like the last days of Chernenko when they were doing his signature with a coal fired mechanical pantagraph.
I was surprised at DJT's restraint in the Debby Ates when it was obvious that JRB was away with the mixer. He could have finished JRB off completely with some withering mockery.
Actually I think Trump got the tactics right. He did have some zinger lines, but if he had gone full on assault on Biden you are in danger of the sympathy vote / also plays into Trump is evil narrative. See how Brown got a bump when the Sun ran the piece about him disrespecting the mother of a killed solider, he was already unpopular, his reaction was poor (typical getting into an argument about not being wrong), but the Sun went OTT.
Looking at it from the Trump Camp's point of view, they definitely want Biden to remain the candidate for the next couple of months. If the Dem's change their candidate then it will be much better for the new candidate if they have a 4 month campaign rather than a 2 month campaign.
Comments
Joy.
The only way Government dodges that requirement is that the “Secretary of State” can be a natural person. Otherwise you end up doing a lot as an individual.
Equally given how university finances are blowing up there I suspect a lot of things that Cameron / Osbourne implemented in 2010-15 are now blowing up in the Government's face.
The tories need to tack neither right nor left. They needto be centre right, but more competently.
It's worth revisiting TimS's brilliant analogy of (I think) Thursday morning, about 8.30, when we pretty much nailed where the Tories have gone wrong and what they need to do as a result. The analogy was this: imagine if Labour had been in power for the last term - and had been constantly banging on about identity politics and the need to squeeze the rich, while at the same time lowering taxes , lowering spending and restricting immigration from the third world. It would have alienated its existing supporters and driven away potential supporters.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. ... "
We need more affordable housing, just not near me. Someone else can take it.
That's pretty much the definition of NIMBY and is sadly too common. Even here.
The Dems went mad over that and accused him of fraud, now we see he was simply telling the truth
So. The legitimate question is asked. Does the POTUS have dementia? Biden only has two options. 1. Get openly tested by neutral doctors who can say, no, he’s fine. 2. Admit that he can’t do this - because the diagnosis is probably Yes - and step aside
I suppose there is a third option. Persist in his candidacy - implying that yes he really has got dementia - and go down to a terrible defeat because Americans simply won’t vote for this. And who can blame them. = Trump wins, with all that entails
The Dems have boxed themselves in. They have no good choices
I want to cut the grass but it's too wet obviously so checked the weather forecast. Rain and highs of 16 consistently for the next seven days.
Joy.
It'll get warmer quickly with a Labour government.
And people say nowt will change.
As soon as a party is led by someone with big tits.
“I want masts but not to cover rural areas”, why? Why are rural people excluded from better coverage?
Frankly I’d make planning a tickbox exercise. It’s frankly nuts that MNOs cannot build where they want. Fine, hide the masts but people reject them because they’re things in the ground, have they seen the pylons? What about the telegraph poles?
The public are idiots on this issue.
Maybe a somewhat humbuggy essay on the importance of checks and balances?
Considering they're home to much of the 'student left' (of all ages), that's probably not a surprise.
Species diversity, sustainable energy, protecting our rivers and seas should all be cornerstone policies for a party that wants to conserve the best of Britain.
Instead it is all "allow the corporations to rape the land until it is barren" in the name of short term growth.
(Also reckons that if it is Parkinson's, his medical team didn't quite get the timing correct for the debate)
Gonna stick my neck out and say one of the big pollsters is going to predict an absolutely cataclysmic final result for the Tories on Tuesday/Wednesday - 40 seats or something.
Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
·
7h
Tom Daschle, who served in the Senate with Joe Biden for 18 years, not exactly rallying to his defense.
https://x.com/BillKristol
Pro-Europe - Cameron was clear from the off he didn't much like the EU at all
Sound money - ignoring the overwhelming economic evidence since the great depression didn't seem very sound
Seems unlikely that we are here due to cunning rather cock-up, but maybe...?
[Yes, I know, hopecasting...]
"Something for the weekend sir?"
"Yes please - a Labour government!"
But this is never made a condition of planning instead they are rejected for “doesn’t fit in the landscape” which is meaningless.
O2 tried to patch a coverage hole near Tooting Common, they would have placed the mast in a railway yard which is already there and they’d have disguised the mast. Rejected because it “is visible”. It’s not made of anti-matter now is it? MNOs should make an effort but they should not be able to reject them unless it’s for a safety issue. Railways have special rights, I would extend them to other infrastructure.
He called and pushed for an early debate to show America that he was fit and able and up for the fight and a long campaign.
He failed his own test and that's an end to it imho.
Dems sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'just a cold' and 'we all have bad days' is just like putting out a welcoming mat for Trump 2.0 at the white house door.
They need to get a bloody grip and do the deed.
However Trump is there.
God I’d be angry if I was American. If you’re a decent person there is no choice - you must vote for Biden even if you hate every policy of his and like most of Trump’s.
In the East it hangs on anti-Tory islanders following the primary campaign recommendation rather than the MRPs.
“Parkinson disease causes physical symptoms at first. Problems with cognitive function, including forgetfulness and trouble with concentration, may start later. As the disease gets worse over time, about 4 in 5 people develop dementia. This can cause profound memory loss and make it hard to maintain relationships.”
I keep changing my mind, maybe I have mental issues. Last night I was sure the dems would try and tough it out - get Biden to the election. This morning I don’t see how they can. Either Biden proves he’s mentally fit or he has to go. The alternative is absolutely guaranteed defeat. To Donald Trump
I was surprised at DJT's restraint in the Debby Ates when it was obvious that JRB was away with the mixer. He could have finished JRB off completely with some withering mockery.
Pro EU, bit not uncritical, as the Conservative policy for the half century to 2016.
Sound money in the sense of not running a permanent deficit to fund consumer imports.
That sort of thing.
I don't know what the Tories stand for now apart from individual greed.
The Daily Mail and General Trust is meanwhile using the i to try and encourage disaffection on the left (i.e. subtly encouraging a fragmentation of the Labour vote in the direction of smaller parties, while professing neutrality) while the Daily Mail is trying to rally the troops behind Sunak.
AV was described by Nick Clegg at the time as "a miserable little voting system" and the Lib Dems did not go into that referendum with any degreeof enthusiasm. To my mind, and in retrospect, that would have been the moment to pull the plug the whole coalition.
However, recent successive Tory governments have sold young people down the river to the point where they literally have no incentive to vote Tory now.
- Labour is attractive enough to centre ground young voters, many of whom have only known Tory governments now.
- The Lib Dems could enjoy a surge in Youth support when they potentially become more Pro-EU over the next parliament.
- The Greens can win over some of the more lefty young vote, as can independents like Corbyn, or the pro-Gaza independents for a chunk of them.
- For the remaining centre right or right wing young vote - Reform actually look increasingly attractive, mirroring some of the rise of right wing populist parties in Europe.
And the above doesn’t just apply to ‘18-24’ but people well into their 30s, a lot of whom are still living with parents because of the cost of housing etc etc.
This will be the massive, massive battle for the Tories for years to come.
If they want to win again then IMO they need to pick between the Cameron style Government, or throwing their lot in with Farage. Because I have no idea how a rump Tory party can really do much, when the demographics continue to become less favourable for them.
And quite frankly appearing to be quite green isn’t hard for conservatives if someone else has had to make all the hard decisions around petrol cars and gas boilers for them.
Lab 436
Con 90
LD 68
SNP 23
Ref 7
Grn 4
PC 3
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2024/05/britainpredicts
The Met Office forecast for Manchester - and I know you are not far away - is, well, average for the time of year.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcw2hzs1u#?date=2024-07-04
Bit of rain but mainly dry. Warmish without being too spectacular. You'd be disappointed if you had a test match ticket for today, but over 7 days no worse than average.
How to turn the nation Republican
Biden has to go…… doesn’t he?
His grift has always been pretending to be an outsider, attacked by the establishment. This is the fourth, or fifth conspiracy of the election, and it seems to feed very neatly into his narrative.
I am very pro-Europe. It would be foolish to wish the Continent ill - they are a key market and people that we share a great deal in common with in terms of cultural hinterland and shared history. I don't believe in picking silly fights with other European nations or the EU to grandstand in The Sun. I think we should have a positive relationship with Europe, but I don't see how we need to join a political organisation that is moving toward statehood, to be 'pro-European'.
I am also socially liberal. The state should stay largely out of the bedroom please. But I don't see the liberality of allowing male rapists into womens' prisons or male perverts into womens' gaols. That isn't liberalism; it strikes me as oppression.
More than anything I believe in sound money, but does Foxy actually want 'sound money'? I've never heard him arguing for any limits on Government spending, just object to tax cuts. That's the opposite of sound money in my opinion.
That’s a line that will resonate down the ages as a truly brutal debate blow. Like “I knew President John Kennedy”. Also evidence that Trump still has mojo
From their own point of view, I imagine they would like to undertake a further poll asap to support their earlier findings or to belatedly align themselves more closely with other pollsters.
The fact he lies and lies and rambles and lies, that isn't mental incapacity, that is he is a liar and narcissist.
If the Dems get a half decent candidate they should wipe the floor with him. And that is democracy.
But the evidence so far is that Millennials remain stubbornly left wing. If we do swing to the right, it will be a rather sudden change compared with prior generations.
BBC, Glastonbury.
Sky, Glastonbury.
Why do they get into such a wankfest over this every year?
The average viewer of a 24 hour news channel couldn't give a feck about a bunch of twats living in squalor for a week, and listening to bands they have never heard of.
Instead, he had a very bad day and the calls to replace him are now louder than ever, including senior elected people in the party and The NY Times editorial.
Overwhelming response was from people who couldn't afford a house, or who had kids that were priced out.
Contrarians must get contrarian weather.
The thing I found most interesting is apparently, they pay absolute buttons to the talent to play Glastonbury, 10% of the going rate. Great business model if you can make it work.
🔷SF 23% (-1 from 2 weeks ago)
🔷DUP 21% (unchanged)
🔷Alliance 18% (+1)
🔷SDLP 14% (+1)
🔷UUP 13% (+1)
🔷TUV 4% (-1)
PBP, Aontu and Green all 1%
Lucid Talk
https://x.com/SuzyJourno/status/1806788403138003169?s=19