A piece earlier this week in The Hill by Merrill Matthews made for interesting reading. In a nutshell, Dems are polling really well in key swing states when it comes to the Senate races. And yet when it comes to Trump vs Harris it is basically neck and neck in these states.
Comments
I wonder whether turnout/likely voter weighting is behind this rather than split ticketing. Are people more likely to say they will vote for Presidents?
And the simpler explanation of Democrat Senate candidates being in a stronger position compared with the presidential is that Harris is less popular than others in her party or Trump is more popular than others in his.
Also, many Republican senate candidates (and gubernatorial candidates *looks at North Carolina*) are absolute fruit loops, worse even than Trump, so it's not surprising they're not popular.
There are a whole slew of indicators around enthusiasm, registration, ballot initiatives and most importantly actual recent election results that have tilted substantially more democratic than prior polls had suggested to indicate this will not be as close as the polls would have us believe.
If Harris doesn’t win PA by >3% I will be very surprised.
Morning all,
Fantastic choice of photo there @TSE !!!
As it happens, I'd be surprised if people arriving on small boats *do* disappear into the black economy in large numbers, because if you've got a black market job to go to you can probably arrive by a regular route anyway. But I'm not dogmatic on that point.
Presumably the way to vanish into the underground is to come in on (say) a tourist visa and just forget to leave. Any stats on that? Presumably not, though I'd be surprised if it were a less popular route than the dangerous, expensive, visible to authorities one.
Remember Roy Moore?
Kari Lake is proving to be an even bigger embarrassment in her race in Arizona, bigger than he attempt to be governor, only a moron would ever think she was impressive.
Pretty much all UK pollsters are trying to get it right, even when they don't succeed.
I get the vibe that quite a lot of US polling (and poll analysis) isn't like that, and mostly I can't face sorting wheat from dubious wheat-substitute.
The vast majority of undocumented people in the UK arrived through formal routes and were later made undocumented. […]
There is no definitive figure on the number of undocumented people in the UK. Recent estimates suggest it is between 800,000 and 1.2 million people, a larger proportion of the population than in comparable countries such as France, Spain, Switzerland and Portugal, where there are more routes to regularisation. The most significant region of origin for the UK’s undocumented population is Asia (52%) followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (20%), the Americas and non-EU Europe (16%) and the Middle East / North Africa (11%).
The UK’s undocumented communities are more settled than those in Europe, with over half having lived here for more than five years. Many came to the UK as children: just over a quarter of undocumented people (215,000) are children, half of whom were born in the UK. As a result, most undocumented people have family in the UK
“Estimates suggest a figure between 800,000 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants residing in the UK as of June 2023. A significant portion, 82%, initially entered the UK legally but overstayed their visas.”
US presidential polling is evidently not well correlated with the rest of political activity in the US. Turnout is unpredictable (it was unusually high last cycle); voter registration is subject to partisan manipulation; ; it's difficult for pollsters to reach representative selections if the electorate.
My gut agrees with you in thinking the polls might be underestimating Harris, but I don't place huge reliance on it.
“The most recent estimate suggests that around 618,000 people could have been living in the UK without permission in 2007. But because this was an estimate, the study thought that in reality it could be anywhere between 417,000 and 863,000 people. Of these around 442,000 (72%) were thought to live in London.”
...
arrive in the UK undetected, or where there have been reports of people making the crossing, but no actual encounters
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/5cede69b-a408-47eb-8933-31fb2813ab77"
Note it doesn't qualify this by excluding people who arrive in the UK undetected *and do not subsequently volunteer the information that they came over by small boat and can they please have asylum*, which suggests that this doesn't happen very often.
London
Presumably his career ended after that?
The phrase 'part and parcel' is often used to attack Sadiq Khan and his supposed complacency about terrorism and violence but the full quote, after an attack in New York in September 2016, is nothing like as damning as people on the Right believe (and yes, I've used it before).
Feels like one of those quotes, like 'there is no such thing as society' or 'the people in this country have had enough of experts' where the full context is very different to what people remember
https://x.com/edwest/status/1757042184623136934
The number of enforced returns was pretty flat from 2010 to 2015, but then declined very markedly through to 2019.
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
What Vance said:
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-georgia-shooting-7d7727a1aff8491f66914a4d8a14cd8c
How reasonable Vance sounds depends how reasonable you think opposing checking whether someone is a known 'psycho' with eg a criminal record before handing them a gun is.
The question in both cases is similar. Do you keep the charismatic bullshitter to sell the bullshit, or find a different product that doesn't need a charismatic bullshitter to sell it?
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-britain-eu-sign-agreement-ai-standards-ft-reports-2024-09-05/
EU lobbyists describe it as watered down, and have their own tougher AI regulation - which suggests this new Treaty is going to be good news for the US and UK. Another Brexit benefit.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-britain-eu-sign-agreement-ai-standards-ft-reports-2024-09-05/
Polling failures in the UK are, at least, well-regulated, good faith errors.
US pollsters seem much more opaque in their weightings and adjustments so hard to interpret. I think movements over time are more transparent assuming no change in methodology.
Let’s switch it up so you and @TSE and the other slow learners can see what I mean
“Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for racist murders of black children, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services.”
See?
If a right wing mayor said that you’d be screaming for her resignation within an hour. But because it was odious lefty gnome Khan, it’s all good
Though for regulation to be effective it has to be both well written and enforced.
So it was. She lost the Arizona governor fight by a whisker
I accept she’s somewhat messed up since. For a moment she looked like a credible VP pick (maybe she still does compared to Vance)
Part of her problem is - as I noted at the time - she a bit too old. She’s an attractive women but getting on in years. If she was 15 years younger she would be this firecracker beauty with a trumpite shtick and a ready wit. Now she looks like a slightly crazy granny, TBH
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/05/investing/opec-extend-oil-output-cuts/index.html
I think the election comes down to a big struggle over turnout. The ballot votes on abortion should help the Democrats, but may also help the Republicans with the evangelical vote, which some have suggested is a bit soft this time.
Given that we're not going to shoot them, what do we do with them then?
"The analyst Ryan Girdusky has spotted one of the problems. Voters over the age of 65 backed Trump in the last two elections, but polls are now indicating Harris is going to beat Trump decisively amongst that age group.
Rather than that being a genuine shift, Girdusky has identified that older white liberals are more likely to answer polls than older white or Hispanic conservatives"
If you think Trump is losing, you’re in for a nasty surprise
Polls pointing to a Kamala Harris victory appear to be skewed by including too many Democrat voters
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/06/if-you-think-trump-losing-in-for-nasty-surprise/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/05/pointless-51m-car-park-symbolises-oxfords-war-on-motorists/
They probably show that Harris is a mediocre to poor candidate and essentially continuity Biden without the senility, but enough people are so desperate to avoid four more years of Trump that she's in with a decent chance.
It gives one hope that the political situation in the US is not quite as bad as it appears, because Trump is old and getting older, and future Republican politicians might not be able to replicate his success.
I don't think Harris is such a pull in herself. Stop Trump is to a degree. Will it help if voters are strongly motivated to go out and vote for a Senate candidate that they like? Possibly, at the margins, but I still think contempt and fear of Trump are the biggest recruiting sergeants for Harris and down ticket races will have an extremely marginal effect, if any.
Interesting though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_energy_independence
But since the riots you have been regularly regurgitating far-right memes and falsehoods, particularly over the sentencing over some very nasty people. What Khan said is perfectly reasonable, and it is normal for people living in a city of 8 million to assist the police in keeping everyone safe. I would expect you to do the same, whether it's a drunk man getting into a car, a suspicious bag left on a train, or a friend with mental health issues making ugly threats about Muslims.
The alternative is a police state.
Trump's problem isn't political extremism but his criminality, self-obsession and age.
The US politics and media is considerably more divided now than it was then, the two sides are mostly talking straight past each other in increasingly hyperbolic language, and can agree on very little other than today being Friday.
What would you have preferred him to do, declare a war on terrorism, or a war on drugs, or a war on the sun rising?
Hunter Biden enters surprise guilty plea to avoid tax trial
US president’s son had planned to deny allegations related to time he was reportedly spending lavishly on drugs, sex workers and hotels
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/09/05/hunter-biden-to-plead-guilty-in-tax-evasion-case/
We could all spot that Trump had a fan base and the polling. It was her (and Rod Crosby) who didn't just see that fan base but enthusiastically joined it.
An iron rule of life is that most of what Leon says is false, usually because he just gets his 'information' from far-right twitter accounts.
The same minister still represents the Conservatives on the House of Lords and told the inquiry to hurry up its questions because he had important people to see.
And people on here will say Starmer has the worst government of their life times.
I’ve just been thinking about age and political careers (it’s not that sad, I’m stuck in Kotor traffic)
It’s a complex relationship. Sometimes age works, sometimes youth. Depends on the candidate and the electorate
Take Corbyn. No way would he have got as far as he did if he was younger (at the time). He’d have been seen as a dangerous if eccentric radical. But because he was older = magic grandpa
Equally an old JFK would not have worked either. Just a pervy old man
Why drag yourself back to Stockport or restrict yourself to martinis by the pool.
1. The roads
2. The roads
3. The drivers
4. The traffic
5. The roads
I wouldn't discount more of the second than the first.
If KH is doing better in the Senate races, why is she drifting on Betfair?
Objectively she looks a buy at the current price of 2.14, but I smell a rat.
Wadyatink?
"Just today we got some new registration numbers from Pennsylvania. Since Harris got into the race, there has been a 60% increase in new registrations (compared to 2020) for voters under 30, a 49% increase among women, a 110% increase among Black voters, and a stunning 262% increase among Black women. All in PA."
The electorate is changing and not to Trump's advantage.
And I know that the data we currently have shows every result from a Trump landslide to a Harris one depending on how you weigh it.
So not a clue but I'm keeping well out of this market for the moment...
Starmer's premiership, to the extent it ends up working, needs a bit of the "one last case to solve before the detective retires" weary experience.
Johnson was already beginning to sag when he entered Downing Street, unlike when he was in City Hall. It was the hair, and its gradual loss. Like Gyles Brandreth's jumpers, it was a great substitute for an act.
Of course we could go back and check, but you have blocked us all from seeing your previous posts. Why not open them up for us to view. You can see all of mine.
A friend's block was structurally deficient, as well as having the inflamable cladding. That is, it was designed with concrete pillars that were too small, and the quality of concrete actually used was too low.
Litteral rooms of paperwork on this and other buildings built by the contractors. Strangely, the actual concrete design and testing is not to be found.
This is not an isolated case - consider the reports of houses having to be demolished, immediately after being built.
The problem is that regulation has completely detached from the reality of building. So telephone directory reports are prepared and not read. While basic rules are broken on the sites.
The situation reminds me of 2008 - when every trader had to have given a photocopy of his/her passport to HR, and done dozens of click through, online tests to prove that they wouldn't say "yes' to "would you commit crime?". After all that, they carried on trading derivatives.....
1) Have the government looked into how this will affect SEND places and education?
2) Will the VAT apply to the children of military servicemen who send their kids to private school?
I don't know much about the former, but one of my friends went to boarding school because both of his parents served in the military. I'd expect the government to exempt, or repay, them.
262% is a big increase, but it's actually black women under 30, in one week in July in PA. So probably not that many in absolute numbers.
The political problem with the boats is that they're visible. (The real problem with the boats is that they're dangerous and funnel money to criminals. But if we really really cared about that, we'd process claims for UK asylum in Calais. Reality is that we care about other things more.)