Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Smell some nasty geopolitics here: India and South Africa snub the Commonwealth for the BRICS summit, which feels unprecedented, whilst the Commonwealth itself focuses on a reparations hustle. Feels like we're losing a game we only half-realise is already being played.
Are we sure we're funding the Foreign Office enough? And are we self-confident enough?
The Empire was a 19th century construct and the Commonwealth from the 20th. Wouldn't it be fantastic if there was some pan-European socio- economic, trade and defence alliance we could hitch our wagons to?
Look at the territory that once "belonged" to England/Britain/UK over the centuries! Even if we're being "ultra-woke" and only including European land, just for a bit of fun!
Iceland - British occupied 1940-1945 Faeroes - British occupied 1940-1945 Norway - personal union 1028-1035 (King Canute) Denmark - personal union 1018-1035 (King Canute) Southern tip of Sweden - personal union (as part of Denmark) 1018-1035 Hano island - Swedish island with a British base 1810-1812 Ireland - part of the UK until 1922 France - historic actual and dynastic claims until as late as 1801 Belgium - part of France pre-1801 Luxembourg - part of France pre-1801 Geneva - part of France pre-1801 Andorra - personal union with France from before 1801 Spain - personal union 1556-1558: Queen Mary I and King Phillip II; Menorca was British (sometimes!) 1713-1802 Netherlands - part of Spain 1556-1558, personal union 1688-1702 (William III and Mary II), also southern bits part of France pre-1801 Sardinia - part of Spain 1556-1558 Sicily - part of Spain 1556-1558 Southern mainland Italy (Kingdom of Naples) - part of Spain 1556-1558 Milan duchy (Lombardy-ish) - part of Spain 1556-1558 Trieste - British occupied 1947-1954, along with a tiny sliver of modern Slovenia Lissa (Vis) - Croatian island with British base 1809-1814 (approx. dates) Ionian islands - seven Greek islands British 1815-1864 Cyprus - British until 1960 (though bases are still British), de jure includes Turkish occupied north Crete - British occupation 1898-1908 (approx.) Malta - British until 1964 Istanbul - European part occupied 1918-1923 Schleswig-Holstein - British occupied 1945-1949; Heligoland was British 1807-1890, 1945-1952 Lower Saxony - personal union 1714-1837 (Hanoverians), including Bremen 1715-1720; also British 1945-1949 Hamburg - British 1945-1949 North Rhine-Westphalia - British 1945-1949, western bits French pre-1801 Rhineland-Palatinate - western parts French pre-1801 Saarland - part of France pre-1801 West Berlin (part) - British occupied 1945-1990 East Tyrol (Lienz district) - British occupied 1945-1955 Carinthia - British 1945-1955 Styria - British 1945-1955 Vienna (part) - British occupied 1945-1955
Total area 2.2 million sq. km; modern population c.300 million.
Smell some nasty geopolitics here: India and South Africa snub the Commonwealth for the BRICS summit, which feels unprecedented, whilst the Commonwealth itself focuses on a reparations hustle. Feels like we're losing a game we only half-realise is already being played.
Are we sure we're funding the Foreign Office enough? And are we self-confident enough?
The Empire was a 19th century construct and the Commonwealth from the 20th. Wouldn't it be fantastic if there was some pan-European socio- economic, trade and defence alliance we could hitch our wagons to?
Look at the territory that once "belonged" to England/Britain/UK over the centuries! Even if we're being "ultra-woke" and only including European land, just for a bit of fun!
Iceland - British occupied 1940-1945 Faeroes - British occupied 1940-1945 Norway - personal union 1028-1035 (King Canute) Denmark - personal union 1018-1035 (King Canute) Southern tip of Sweden - personal union (as part of Denmark) 1018-1035 Hano island - Swedish island with a British base 1810-1812 Ireland - part of the UK until 1922 France - historic actual and dynastic claims until as late as 1801 Belgium - part of France pre-1801 Luxembourg - part of France pre-1801 Geneva - part of France pre-1801 Andorra - personal union with France from before 1801 Spain - personal union 1556-1558: Queen Mary I and King Phillip II; Menorca was British (sometimes!) 1713-1802 Netherlands - part of Spain 1556-1558, personal union 1688-1702 (William III and Mary II), also southern bits part of France pre-1801 Sardinia - part of Spain 1556-1558 Sicily - part of Spain 1556-1558 Southern mainland Italy (Kingdom of Naples) - part of Spain 1556-1558 Milan duchy (Lombardy-ish) - part of Spain 1556-1558 Trieste - British occupied 1947-1954, along with a tiny sliver of modern Slovenia Lissa (Vis) - Croatian island with British base 1809-1814 (approx. dates) Ionian islands - seven Greek islands British 1815-1864 Cyprus - British until 1960 (though bases are still British), de jure includes Turkish occupied north Crete - British occupation 1898-1908 (approx.) Malta - British until 1964 Istanbul - European part occupied 1918-1923 Schleswig-Holstein - British occupied 1945-1949; Heligoland was British 1807-1890, 1945-1952 Lower Saxony - personal union 1714-1837 (Hanoverians), including Bremen 1715-1720; also British 1945-1949 Hamburg - British 1945-1949 North Rhine-Westphalia - British 1945-1949, western bits French pre-1801 Rhineland-Palatinate - western parts French pre-1801 Saarland - part of France pre-1801 West Berlin (part) - British occupied 1945-1990 East Tyrol (Lienz district) - British occupied 1945-1955 Carinthia - British 1945-1955 Styria - British 1945-1955 Vienna (part) - British occupied 1945-1955
Total area 2.2 million sq. km; modern population c.300 million.
A sign of our remarkable success.
We are being a bit generous in the assumption that Norway, Sweden and Denmark were part of us, instead of the reality of us being part of them.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
Yeah. We don't know. However, after a lot of flailing, Trump has finally found an effective attack-line on Harris and she's failed to articulate an effective critique, set of solutions and answer to why she should be the one to carry them out. By contrast, Trump has. That they're built on a pack of lies isn't the point; the point is whether enough people in the right places believe them. Plus, he'll cheat wherever possible.
If the odds are 60-40 for Trump, I'd make him the marginal value.
The obvious disadvantage of Harris as a candidate is that once the novelty wears off then everyone will remember that she is part of the Biden administration. The race has settled back into the groove it would have had with Biden as the candidate minus the 'too old' dynamic. There isn't much that Harris can do about this as to deny everything the Biden administration has done would make her look ridiculous.
The Biden administration has huge achievements she should be shouting about. It's got some failures too but the American economy is going well, despite her / his inheritance from Trump. But she's made nothing of either those successes or Trump's previous failures (which in no small part led to the inflation Trump is now pinning on her).
I was trying to work out whether Harris was unique in being an acting VP running to succeed an incumbent one term president. I think she perhaps is. (Hard to phrase the right search)
If so then she is facing some unique challenges, and I wonder to what degree that might handicap her campaign. Also if so then perhaps we'll see the constraints disregarded a little in the upcoming few days.
I'm obviously just an observer in this, but bloody hell America don't vote for the bloated orange snake-oil salesman! (I'm amazed anyone could vote for him)
She is unique in that respect but then there've been very few one-term presidents who've stood down out of choice. I'm not sure the difference between a single-termer and a two-termer is all that significant here though.
Technically, Jefferson was the incumbent VP in 1801 running to succeed an incumbent one-termer but the circumstances are so different there we can only really start post-12th Amendment.
Breckinridge 1860.
I'm assuming we're discounting Humphrey in 1968?
Not that either is a happy precedent for Harris...
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Gutter journalism. “ were referred by politicians from the Conservative party or their offices.” Anyone with a semblance of knowledge about what happened at the time will know why this is an utter perversion of the truth.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Oh give over. Not only have various people had their collars felt, the Public Accounts Committee found nearly 200 dodgy deals. Its one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely eviscerated at the election.
“Everyone knows” if everyone knows, please do tell me which conservative mps awarded which contracts to which people.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Gutter journalism. “ were referred by politicians from the Conservative party or their offices.” Anyone with a semblance of knowledge about what happened at the time will know why this is an utter perversion of the truth.
From your semblance of knowledge why is this an utter perversion of the truth?
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Yes:
All three are excellent analysts. And all are saying essentially the same thing: Trump is the definite favorite, but only a narrow one (say 55% chance), and an average sized polling error could easily hand it to Harris.
On the Tende piece, the only place where I'd disagree with him is that he's seeing Trump campaigning in Coachella as a sign of strength. Campaigns are as often wrong as everyone else. If anything, I think it could be a sign that his campaign is simply assuming polls are wrong in the same direction (and to the same magnitude) as 2020.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
Smell some nasty geopolitics here: India and South Africa snub the Commonwealth for the BRICS summit, which feels unprecedented, whilst the Commonwealth itself focuses on a reparations hustle. Feels like we're losing a game we only half-realise is already being played.
Are we sure we're funding the Foreign Office enough? And are we self-confident enough?
The Empire was a 19th century construct and the Commonwealth from the 20th. Wouldn't it be fantastic if there was some pan-European socio- economic, trade and defence alliance we could hitch our wagons to?
Like Austro-Hungary?
I had the Franco-German common market, or whatever it's called in mind. The thing that General DeGaul keeps tying to blackball our attempts to join.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Oh give over. Not only have various people had their collars felt, the Public Accounts Committee found nearly 200 dodgy deals. Its one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely eviscerated at the election.
“Everyone knows” if everyone knows, please do tell me which conservative mps awarded which contracts to which people.
ooh get her!
Nothing to see here. Move along. Definitely no institutional corruption, no police investigations, no action being taken by the CPS, and the Tories won a majority of 704.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
Tangential to Rwanda I’m expecting a bumper haul of small boat arrivals this coming weekend. There were zero last Friday to Sunday and that’s presumably because of the stormy weather. This weekend promises to be bright, calm and dry. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a 1,000+ day as the traffickers clear the backlog.
The season seems to run to November so there are a few weeks left.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
Sir Beer Korma ! The "gotchs", including like that from Boris Johnson at PMQ"s, that never was.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
You keep saying the site is full of wishcasting when aside from maybe 1 or 2 posters who occasionally publish something positive about the Harris campaign, everyone else seems resigned to a Trump victory.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Trump has the balls to have put solutions on the line.
So, he says: tariffs on everything imported into the US*, and quadruple on stuff from China.
It's an attempt to solve the problem of not enough stuff made in the US. It might - however - have horrendous consequences for the world and for the US economy...
I think that's way too generous an interpretation. His 'theory' of tariffs is that like under McKinley (whom he regularly cites) they will fund the federal government, in place of income tax.
Which is obvious nonsense, but attractive to billionaires, as any such attempt would massively shift the burden of taxation from the very wealthy onto the middle class.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
Evan Davis was very animated at teatime on Radio 4. He clearly thinks there is mileage in it, although Buckland wasn't playing ball.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Has it? Most PBers think it’s on a knife edge or see a Trump win despite hating such an outcome. Who are the ‘wishcasters’ of whom you speak?
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Trump has the balls to have put solutions on the line.
So, he says: tariffs on everything imported into the US*, and quadruple on stuff from China.
It's an attempt to solve the problem of not enough stuff made in the US. It might - however - have horrendous consequences for the world and for the US economy...
I think that's way too generous an interpretation. His 'theory' of tariffs is that like under McKinley (whom he regularly cites) they will fund the federal government, in place of income tax.
Which is obvious nonsense, but attractive to billionaires, as any such attempt would massively shift the burden of taxation from the very wealthy onto the middle class.
The problem with saying you will fund things from tariffs - as Joseph Chamberlain found out the hard way from 1903-1906 - is that it's a logical contradiction. If the tariffs work by keeping out the goods they're designed to block, they raise no money. If they don't keep the aforesaid goods out, they're a failure anyway.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
You keep saying the site is full of wishcasting when aside from maybe 1 or 2 posters who occasionally publish something positive about the Harris campaign, everyone else seems resigned to a Trump victory.
I was accused of being a Trump supporter only yesterday.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
I think it is becoming increasingly likely that Labour aren’t going to do anything much to fix the country or economy, just cater to their special interests and fiddle while Rome burns. I hope I’m wrong.
I have a real feeling of Buyers remorse. I expected a government in waiting that was going to hit the ground running. What we have is a govt of mediocre middle managers with moderate policies aimed at their own special interest groups.
It really is continuity Sunak with a man who has even less charisma now running the nation.
The refreshing thing about Starmer is he's more or less the first prime minister since Cameron who hasn't been afraid to make decisions. The one exception was Liz Truss but she had other issues. I think his decisions are mostly defensible albeit you can always take a contrary view. And by the way Cameron made some massive mistakes.
In some other respects Starmer is quite like Sunak. Neither man is good at retail politics; both are/were highly unpopular; neither is nearly as bad as popular opinion of them and both are massively better than either of Sunak's predecessors.
I've just had a horrible vision of Starmer in charge during covid. Fun police doesn't even begin to cover it.
I guess Covid wasn't meant to be fun.
First lockdown was one of the best times of my life, at home, lovely back garden, new puppies, chilling out in the lovely spring sun, step son repatriated from abroad with loads of cooking ideas.
Some people didn't have gardens.
I hated lockdown and hope it never happens again.
Still worse was how it changed people's behaviour (neighbours) into something like how it would have been if we'd been occupied.
I've just heard that a village show near me won't be taking place next year for the first time in about 100 years. The reason? Not enough volunteers. Too busy watching box-sets at home, I guess.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
... has it? I don't get that impression at all.
I think you have mistaken people wanting Harris to win with people thinking she will win.
I'm very grateful to the more knowledgeable posters on here who have been drip-feeding info into the threads. My instinct was that Walz's introduction was peak Harris, and from then on it was all about whether Trump could catch up and overtake her.
I watched the McDonald's skit with a tightening knot in my stomach. That was Trump at his very best and will be the iconic image from this election if he wins - even the assassination attempt has nearly faded from memory.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
You keep saying the site is full of wishcasting when aside from maybe 1 or 2 posters who occasionally publish something positive about the Harris campaign, everyone else seems resigned to a Trump victory.
I'm listening to a lot of news podcasts. The consensus is that the polls are wrong - but they don't know if they're wrong because they're not picking up shy Trumpers, or because they have overcorrected for shy Trumpers.
I'm on record saying Harris and it won't be close. And that remains the "overcorrected for Trump" scenario. We will know in a few weeks - either there is a winner or we descend into civil unrest at best and civil the other thing at worst.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
Evan Davis was very animated at teatime on Radio 4. He clearly thinks there is mileage in it, although Buckland wasn't playing ball.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
You keep saying the site is full of wishcasting when aside from maybe 1 or 2 posters who occasionally publish something positive about the Harris campaign, everyone else seems resigned to a Trump victory.
Casino just likes to say stuff like that. It's an argument best not entered into.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
With the important difference that although he found it convenient to pretend otherwise, George W. Bush is in fact an extremely clever man.
RIP, still holds the British shot put record set in 1980.
I think his grandson(s?) are also mean shotputters. Geoff Capes could also do the 100m in some improbably quick time. Not world record quick, but faster than most humans. He was an all-round athlete who just happened to be very large and very strong.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
... has it? I don't get that impression at all.
I think you have mistaken people wanting Harris to win with people thinking she will win.
I'm very grateful to the more knowledgeable posters on here who have been drip-feeding info into the threads. My instinct was that Walz's introduction was peak Harris, and from then on it was all about whether Trump could catch up and overtake her.
I watched the McDonald's skit with a tightening knot in my stomach. That was Trump at his very best and will be the iconic image from this election if he wins - even the assassination attempt has nearly faded from memory.
I’m very concerned about a Trump win - but I can’t see any reason for the polling to turn against him in the next fortnight.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Oh give over. Not only have various people had their collars felt, the Public Accounts Committee found nearly 200 dodgy deals. Its one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely eviscerated at the election.
“Everyone knows” if everyone knows, please do tell me which conservative mps awarded which contracts to which people.
ooh get her!
Nothing to see here. Move along. Definitely no institutional corruption, no police investigations, no action being taken by the CPS, and the Tories won a majority of 704.
*any* MPs shown to have given contracts in a corrupt way will end up in jail, and will fully deserve to do so. Clue though, they won’t, because they haven’t and cannot do so. Politicians do not give out contracts under our system of government. Covid contract were let in an emergency situation without the normal procurement or protections. £20 to your favorite charity that no conservative member of the last *government* will be charged of any offense related to the letting of covid contracts.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
I don't really care about Goodwin - I hope he joins Reform as an MP. As others have noted, he can't be both a polemicist and a respected pollster - though to be fair to him I think he's now chosen what he wants to be. However, he isn't the only one expressing this opinion of Kemi.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Being at the very opening of a Parliament does make a big difference, though.
Realistically, speaking, polls are not going to a be big factor again for a couple of years.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
In different ways Carter, Reagan, Clinton (WJ), Dubya, Obama and Biden all possess folksiness. It feels almost essential in US politics in a way that isn't quite true elsewhere. Some strange Forrest Gimp fixation.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Has it? Most PBers think it’s on a knife edge or see a Trump win despite hating such an outcome. Who are the ‘wishcasters’ of whom you speak?
Don't forget this poster considers PB to be a pit of raging lefties.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
It’s not over, but it’s nearly over. The Trump campaign has the mo and Trump see a to be on good form, enjoying himself. Harris looks flat footed and monotonous. Maybe she has THE message and just has to stick to it. Time will tell.
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
In different ways Carter, Reagan, Clinton (WJ), Dubya, Obama and Biden all possess folksiness. It feels almost essential in US politics in a way that isn't quite true elsewhere. Some strange Forrest Gimp fixation.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
I think most people on here make Trump the narrow favorite.
And I'd go a little further, because everyone is convinced - to use @Jonathan's words - that Trump has the Mo, they are tending to share datapoints that are consistent with that (like Nevada early voting), while passing over ones which are more ambiguous or contradict it (Georgia early voting).
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
In different ways Carter, Reagan, Clinton (WJ), Dubya, Obama and Biden all possess folksiness. It feels almost essential in US politics in a way that isn't quite true elsewhere. Some strange Forrest Gimp fixation.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
He's lost all his academic credibility down the rabbit hole of prejudice.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Oh give over. Not only have various people had their collars felt, the Public Accounts Committee found nearly 200 dodgy deals. Its one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely eviscerated at the election.
“Everyone knows” if everyone knows, please do tell me which conservative mps awarded which contracts to which people.
ooh get her!
Nothing to see here. Move along. Definitely no institutional corruption, no police investigations, no action being taken by the CPS, and the Tories won a majority of 704.
*any* MPs shown to have given contracts in a corrupt way will end up in jail, and will fully deserve to do so. Clue though, they won’t, because they haven’t and cannot do so. Politicians do not give out contracts under our system of government. Covid contract were let in an emergency situation without the normal procurement or protections. £20 to your favorite charity that no conservative member of the last *government* will be charged of any offense related to the letting of covid contracts.
You don't get it. The party is *institutionally* corrupt. It isn't about individual MPs (not Lords...?)
They got absolutely demolished mate. Well, I say they. You got absolutely demolished.
Don't try the holier than thou act, that's reserved for HYUFD.
EDIT - you said "emergency situation". That happens in business all the time. Business critical drop everything and get it done now situations. There are basics. Boiler plate contracts. No,. we wont pay the £120m if you don't deliver any PPE we can use. No, we won't pay you to store unusable PPE. No, you have to pay us back if your Temu PPE is useless and not to spec.
Basics. These things could have been included. And should have been included. That your lot are so openly corrupt as not to ask their mates such basics like sign here is why you got demolished.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
I’ve asked you before several times, and you have never once given me an answer. What do you see in him? I’m genuinely interested.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
It’s not over, but it’s nearly over. The Trump campaign has the mo and Trump see a to be on good form, enjoying himself. Harris looks flat footed and monotonous. Maybe she has THE message and just has to stick to it. Time will tell.
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
The election was in July. Labour won all the 2024 votes it needed. They are currently focussed on winning votes in 2029.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
Yeah. We don't know. However, after a lot of flailing, Trump has finally found an effective attack-line on Harris and she's failed to articulate an effective critique, set of solutions and answer to why she should be the one to carry them out. By contrast, Trump has. That they're built on a pack of lies isn't the point; the point is whether enough people in the right places believe them. Plus, he'll cheat wherever possible.
If the odds are 60-40 for Trump, I'd make him the marginal value.
The obvious disadvantage of Harris as a candidate is that once the novelty wears off then everyone will remember that she is part of the Biden administration. The race has settled back into the groove it would have had with Biden as the candidate minus the 'too old' dynamic. There isn't much that Harris can do about this as to deny everything the Biden administration has done would make her look ridiculous.
The Biden administration has huge achievements she should be shouting about. It's got some failures too but the American economy is going well, despite her / his inheritance from Trump. But she's made nothing of either those successes or Trump's previous failures (which in no small part led to the inflation Trump is now pinning on her).
I was trying to work out whether Harris was unique in being an acting VP running to succeed an incumbent one term president. I think she perhaps is. (Hard to phrase the right search)
If so then she is facing some unique challenges, and I wonder to what degree that might handicap her campaign. Also if so then perhaps we'll see the constraints disregarded a little in the upcoming few days.
I'm obviously just an observer in this, but bloody hell America don't vote for the bloated orange snake-oil salesman! (I'm amazed anyone could vote for him)
She is unique in that respect but then there've been very few one-term presidents who've stood down out of choice. I'm not sure the difference between a single-termer and a two-termer is all that significant here though.
Technically, Jefferson was the incumbent VP in 1801 running to succeed an incumbent one-termer but the circumstances are so different there we can only really start post-12th Amendment.
Breckinridge 1860.
I'm assuming we're discounting Humphrey in 1968?
Not that either is a happy precedent for Harris...
Well, there’s 1800, but that was under a slightly different situation (The VP at the time was the runner up of the previous election, so it was actually a rematch of 1796)
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
In different ways Carter, Reagan, Clinton (WJ), Dubya, Obama and Biden all possess folksiness. It feels almost essential in US politics in a way that isn't quite true elsewhere. Some strange Forrest Gimp fixation.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
The election was in July. Labour won all the 2024 votes it needed. They are currently focussed on winning votes in 2029.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
It’s not over, but it’s nearly over. The Trump campaign has the mo and Trump see a to be on good form, enjoying himself. Harris looks flat footed and monotonous. Maybe she has THE message and just has to stick to it. Time will tell.
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
I may be deluded but I only get thoroughly depressed on here. Rick Wilson, Jesse Dollemore and a whole bunch of others seem far more positive. I think they'd all agree it is tight, particularly in the swing states but I think your positivity around the performance of that mad f****er Trump is misplaced from the postings of PB fanbois.
I too have that sinking feeling, although I don't believe Harris is the dud Trumpers on here make her out to be.
I follow a lot of YouTube channels, mainly anti- Trump Republicans. They seem to think it is tight and could flip either way, and the polling seems to be nip and tuck both at state level and nationallyI have the greatest foreboding when on this site. I genuinely wonder whether we are more Trump favourable here because any Trump positive poll is posted and positive Harris polls posted randomly.
FWIW I suspect Trump shades the states, but how many?And Harris wins the popular vote but by less that the margin between Hillary and Trump.
That's what I thought - are you implying her imminent resignation @viewcode?
No. The referendum was on the Thursday. A few days before, Cameron gave an impromptu speech in Downing Street that contained nothing new. It was a signifier that he knew the campaign was in trouble. I assume the same motivator induced Kamala to speak.
A reminder that campaigns know shit, and betting and financial markets know shit too.
Remember Farage conceding?
I do indeed, but that leaves us back where we started. If the polls are bad, and the bets are bad, and the campaigns are bad...where does that leave us? I've got £2K to bet and I don't want to walk away, but day-um I am buggered if I'm going to resort to guessing: what do you think I am, an economist?
Maths and stats isn't my strong point, but when betting the issues are odds and probabilities. If you can discern no truth from the polls and there is no realistic data on which to make a decision as to who is ahead in a two horse race, then there are two sane options only: You don't engage, or you back the candidate who is longest odds, if necessary continuing to do so with both horses as the odds change.
If (and only if) the POTUS election is literals a coin toss then Harris is value. Today.
Having said that, I don't believe the premise. Trump will win.
You may well be right but with such certainty please show your workings.
On the first argument about backing the longest odds, I think that's clear and have nothing to add.
On the second, that Trump will win, two or three things tip the balance: Harris is a second/third rate candidate, boring and uncharismatic; Trump's base will turn out; undecideds will on balance go for Trump as the candidate more likely to further their personal interests. If it is close, the SC is likely to be biased in favour of Trump.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
I sell auto insurance in Arizona (and soon to be Nevada).
Right now, Google and YouTube and Facebook, etc., are impossibly expensive channels for us. The campaigns are prepared to pay extraordinary sums to show their slogans.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
It’s not over, but it’s nearly over. The Trump campaign has the mo and Trump see a to be on good form, enjoying himself. Harris looks flat footed and monotonous. Maybe she has THE message and just has to stick to it. Time will tell.
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
Indeed, there's a small negative correlation between one week's poll movements and the next.
It’s a complex system. Perception matters.
I’m worried about the scenario where Trump is popularly acclaimed as winning the campaign, but Harris’ message discipline works quietly under the radar.
Like U.K. 1992, but with conspiracy nuts, outrage and guns.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
In different ways Carter, Reagan, Clinton (WJ), Dubya, Obama and Biden all possess folksiness. It feels almost essential in US politics in a way that isn't quite true elsewhere. Some strange Forrest Gimp fixation.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
I sell auto insurance in Arizona (and soon to be Nevada).
Right now, Google and YouTube and Facebook, etc., are impossibly expensive channels for us. The campaigns are prepared to pay extraordinary sums to show their slogans.
Probably just as well. All of your potential customers will have switched off to all advertising for the time being. If only in self defence.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
It’s not over, but it’s nearly over. The Trump campaign has the mo and Trump see a to be on good form, enjoying himself. Harris looks flat footed and monotonous. Maybe she has THE message and just has to stick to it. Time will tell.
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
Indeed, there's a small negative correlation between one week's poll movements and the next.
It’s a complex system. Perception matters.
I’m worried about the scenario where Trump is popularly acclaimed as winning the campaign, but Harris’ message discipline works quietly under the radar.
Like U.K. 1992, but with conspiracy nuts, outrage and guns.
Everyone is worried about a contested election, and the possibility of violence.
And I have no doubt that - should he lose - Trump will cry foul. But he does not have the same levers he did before. He's not the incumbent President.
The risk - really - is that the new Republican Senate tries to hold up confirmation, in which case civil war really is possible.
But it's a small risk right now. Let's hope it stays that way.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
"What to know about E. coli and the McDonald's outbreak"
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Trumps had the mo for about three weeks. Harris campaign ran out of steam because she failed to resolve the change / continuity contradiction and looked shifty/empty. Meanwhile Trump doubled down on folksy crazy, which has a weird kind of authenticity.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
There was some good analysis the other day from, I forget whom, who explained how some of Trump's folksy stuff can even be quite endearing, like the McDonald's stuff.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
With the important difference that although he found it convenient to pretend otherwise, George W. Bush is in fact an extremely clever man.
Trump is definitely not.
I heard very little of this argument at the time from Liberals though.
iirc Trump had really poor favourability ratings through most his presidency.
Now they want him back?
He still has bad ratings now. But inflation has meant the vast majority of governments across the democratic world have been kicked out. That it is close is a reflection that Trump is rubbish and unpopular.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
I can see the argument, but I don't find it at all convincing - you could say the same of Jenrick in terms of not getting things done and being a bit of a no mark in government. He was hardly a star. And unlike Badenoch he held briefs where these things were the job - and it wasn't like his boss was unsympathetic to hardline policies.
You can make an argument that pretty much any politician is 'fake' and of all the ones I'd have said it least of, and I am not a fan at all, I'd say Badenoch was up there. If you're faking being that abrasive it's a good act.
With the ECHR it depends what one is talking about. Even with the current high levels of arrivals those arriving here undocumented is a fraction of overall immigration - that it often serves as a proxy for in debate. I get that it has an outsized negative impact, but there are ways of dealing with that while remaining in the ECHR. Meanwhile there are liable to be international agreements that aim to deal with it, as it's pretty much in every European country's interests to slow migration flows.
It's fine to argue we should leave as we'd be better off (though as with Brexit advocates rarely mention negatives and complications) - if that's what one thinks - but it's the making it your centrepiece or dealbreaker that I find vaguely absurd.
If much lower net migration is your goal - which is generally what those who are animated about the issue mean unless are the limited number on the frontline - then you need to get to grips with how you are changing our economic and social model so that we rely on it less. Otherwise, oh, you might deport some people who might have stuck around before, but the same complaints will be there. Farage will jump on to the next problem and 'neat trick' to solve it and we'll do it all again, ad infinitum.
Not my circus, not my monkeys. But just if I were a Tory I'd be much more suspicious of the one telling me things I wanted to hear as a miracle cure given past experience.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone jump the shark quite so badly as @SouthamObserver did on Musk on the last thread.
I mean, wow.
Musk is a clear and present danger. Sell the Tesla buy a Taycan.
The bullying of @SouthamObserver on the last thread was disgraceful.
Interesting that Putin clearly rates Musk very highly from that Carlson interview, unlike Trump who he clearly despises.
Indeed, Southam's central point, as we discussed, was actually correct.
On Putin, I'm not entirely sure thar he despises Trump, even through a hidden lack of respecf for a client. The man has certainly been very useful for him.
Looking at the big picture, there's a stark difference in the polling for this election compared with 2020.
There is no doubt that Trump is polling stronger than last time.
And there is no doubt that polls systematically understated Trump's vote last time.
The question is have pollsters corrected for what led to the undercount last time?
If no, then it will be an obvious massive Trump win.
But if they have corrected, and there is no systematic polling error, then Trump should be slight favourite.
On the other hand, if the changes they implemented - particularly past vote weighting - result in an overcorrection, then it's entirely possible that Harris is the one being undercounted this time.
It could also be Trump is a lot more popular nationally now in places it won’t impact the college. He could be a lot more popular in New York, and California, but not nearly enough to carry the state.
It would make the popular vote very tight, as HY says maybe even a Trump win, yet still deal Trump hefty college defeat as the battleground States narrowly go to Kam one by one.
If I’m right in “more salutes where you don’t really need them” theory, it makes the popular vote polls this time round very misleading to picking the winner based on PV history.
I think Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina is where it’s at. One candidate could win all four - all be it after days of counting - and be comfortable in the college, in spite of the popular vote.
I think it is near certain that Trump's vote efficiency will be worse that last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York. It's why I've been banging on about betting on Trump PV, Harris EV: not because it's the most likely outcome, but because I think it is significantly more likely than the odds suggest.
(I would also point out that I repeatedly tipped Harris at long odds.)
Yes. A switcheroo on the PV v EC historical trend, is worth punting on, if the odds are tasty.
But the question is, if Trump's vote efficiency will be worse than last time, simply because of how much better he's doing in California and New York, then what is happening? What is up? Is it men? Young men? Non whites? Dog Ladies? And why? Male Chauvinism? Feminism backlash? Certain section of society fared far far worse in pocket and other things under Biden and Harris, and Democrats have overlooked this?
Even though 2022 was unexpectedly good year for Democrats, it masked inklings of their Latino problem - not just Cubans in Florida, but Dems lost Latino’s everywhere. Maybe that will be even worse this time, costing them Nevada and Arizona.
We are overlooking the obvious: Kamala is an incumbent in an election season where incumbents get punished on post-Covid inflation. It might be as simple as that.
That goes without saying, and - indeed - I wrote a header on that.
That this election is even close is a consequence of the Republicans picking a candidate who is poison to 45% of the electorate.
Candidates aside, I've seen little in the way of political inspiration on either side for some years. Trump talks a good game, but the slightest examination reveals it as nonsense. The Dems are less grandiose, but also there's not much on offer.
In the UK we see exactly the same thing. Labour hooting and hollering and going off like the very dampest of squibs, and the Tories not really even bothering to do much more than say 'we'll be ok, really'.
Did we reach the political endgame, where there's nothing to fix? Each to their own, but my view is not.
Both Tories and Labour see their job as enriching their core voters, at the expense of the rest. Not dissimilar to 1964-79, although the nature of each party’s core vote has changed since then.
I expect that the local elections of 2025-27 will be as bad as 1967-69 for Labour.
The problem with the Tories is you run out of other people's money enriching their core voters.
And not just core voters. See also dodgy PPE deals
If you have evidence of conservative MPs awarding dodgy PPE deals you really should contact the Met police.
Oh give over. Not only have various people had their collars felt, the Public Accounts Committee found nearly 200 dodgy deals. Its one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely eviscerated at the election.
“Everyone knows” if everyone knows, please do tell me which conservative mps awarded which contracts to which people.
ooh get her!
Nothing to see here. Move along. Definitely no institutional corruption, no police investigations, no action being taken by the CPS, and the Tories won a majority of 704.
*any* MPs shown to have given contracts in a corrupt way will end up in jail, and will fully deserve to do so. Clue though, they won’t, because they haven’t and cannot do so. Politicians do not give out contracts under our system of government. Covid contract were let in an emergency situation without the normal procurement or protections. £20 to your favorite charity that no conservative member of the last *government* will be charged of any offense related to the letting of covid contracts.
You don't get it. The party is *institutionally* corrupt. It isn't about individual MPs (not Lords...?)
They got absolutely demolished mate. Well, I say they. You got absolutely demolished.
Don't try the holier than thou act, that's reserved for HYUFD.
EDIT - you said "emergency situation". That happens in business all the time. Business critical drop everything and get it done now situations. There are basics. Boiler plate contracts. No,. we wont pay the £120m if you don't deliver any PPE we can use. No, we won't pay you to store unusable PPE. No, you have to pay us back if your Temu PPE is useless and not to spec.
Basics. These things could have been included. And should have been included. That your lot are so openly corrupt as not to ask their mates such basics like sign here is why you got demolished.
And lords who were government ministers also. Just because the opposition successfully gave the impression of corruption does not mean it was corruption.
If there is corruption the police will find it. They banged up a minister for lying about a speeding ticket. The reality is, all your shouting of corruption is little more than that. Lots of winks and implications but not actual evidence. But, ad I said, if you do have the all important ‘evidence’ you really should present it to the police. It is your duty.
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Has it? Most PBers think it’s on a knife edge or see a Trump win despite hating such an outcome. Who are the ‘wishcasters’ of whom you speak?
Don't forget this poster considers PB to be a pit of raging lefties.
Without any irony you've literally just posted this: "You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar."
What this board has objected to is the posting of any Trump positive polls or Trump positive arguments and, when they are, has reacted by attacking the poster.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone jump the shark quite so badly as @SouthamObserver did on Musk on the last thread.
I mean, wow.
Musk is a clear and present danger. Sell the Tesla buy a Taycan.
The bullying of @SouthamObserver on the last thread was disgraceful.
Interesting that Putin clearly rates Musk very highly from that Carlson interview, unlike Trump who he clearly despises.
You must work for the civil service with your definition of bullying. SO made some frankly ridiculous claims about Musk being more dangerous than China and those claims were robustly countered. SO is a big boy and long time poster, I doubt he is bothered by the responses.
You can think that Musk has been a dick on twitter, but he isn't that big of an outlier in this election supporting Trump e.g Bill Ackman is another incredibly wealthy man doing so. And that doesn't make them Putinists.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
I’ve asked you before several times, and you have never once given me an answer. What do you see in him? I’m genuinely interested.
Isn't the point about Goodwin that he is trying to communicate in paragraphs and sustained reasoning points of view that are commonly expressed in much less reasoned ways. And also saying that there is substance behind the populist movements which need to be taken seriously because they have lacked the political attention they need.
SFAICS he is broadly a supporter of Reform, and I am not. But I don't think anything is gained by dismissing him in ad hominem ways.
Where he is less impressive is in his Daily Mail like attacks based on the worst and most criminal examples of particular groups.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
He is putting forward arguments that they'd rather not engage with because it might raise too many difficult questions for them.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone jump the shark quite so badly as @SouthamObserver did on Musk on the last thread.
I mean, wow.
Musk is a clear and present danger. Sell the Tesla buy a Taycan.
The bullying of @SouthamObserver on the last thread was disgraceful.
Interesting that Putin clearly rates Musk very highly from that Carlson interview, unlike Trump who he clearly despises.
Indeed, Southam's central point, as we discussed, was actually correct.
On Putin, I'm not entirely sure thar he despises Trump, even through a hidden lack of respecf for a client. The man has certainly been very useful for him.
Um, no. It wasn't correct.
Saying Musk is more dangerous than China is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
What is telegraphs is that we're far more comfortable attacking people who sound and look like us from within our own culture than those outside and, in fact, we will do more of it the worse things get outside because it's a form of comfort blanket.
I’m sure that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are good people with a few good ideas, though I have reservations about both. Badenoch, like the Tory elite class, I suspect, is much more comfortable with mass immigration than she lets on, refuses to unequivocally commit to leaving the ECHR, and has not only supported aspects of the woke regime but has shown herself more than willing to indulge it.
I don't think Kemi is woke. I think she's fairly middle of the road on the woke/antiwoke spectrum.
Goodwin doesn't say that Kemi is woke in this piece. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fail in basic reading comprehension here. His critique is not that she is signed up to woke, but that she is prepared to be supine in the face of the spread of woke, apart from picking the odd media battle. Given that that has been the position of all Tory leaders (though Truss we didn't see enough of to gauge) from Cameron on, it's an important argument to weigh up.
It's a fairly silly argument though given their respective politics. Whatever one thinks of her, Badenoch's entire theory of politics is based around being 'antiwoke' - or rather that British politics is failing the public because its institutions have a sclerotic liberal-left bias of which 'wokeness' is one manifestation. It's not one I happen to agree with, but some thought has gone into it. Whereas Jenrick's 'here's one neat trick' approach is similar to the Tories' past failures. It was Brexit. Then Rwanda. Now it's the ECHR. Then when that doesn't work because things aren't that simple it'll be something else.
I am not endorsing Goodwin's argument about Kemi, but I'm not particularly convinced against it either. It may be 'Badenoch's entire theory of politics' to be antiwoke, and she speaks quite convincingly on the subject, but has she used her ministerial career to roll it back, or (as Goodwin implies) picked a few public spats and done precious little else? I don't know, it's a genuine question. If it's the latter, it is simply continuity Cameron, picking a few pantomime fights (replace Dr Who with Jean Claude Juncker) whilst doing nothing at all to advance the conservative cause.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
Goodwin is best ignored. He is a garden-variety bell-end who gains airtime for reasons that many brighter than me are unable to fathom.
Ignoring Goodwin is the worst possible thing to do if you want this country to end up in the same mess that the United States is in.
He is putting forward arguments that they'd rather not engage with because it might raise too many difficult questions for them.
Even more enlightened Conservatives on here believe he has lost the plot.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
The election was in July. Labour won all the 2024 votes it needed. They are currently focussed on winning votes in 2029.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not for almost five years. Then they can panic.
Not how it works.
There are a large number of Labour MPs who are not in exactly safe seats.
If Labour heads below 30% and looks like staying there, then there’ll be trouble ‘at mill.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
Except, it's not irrelevant, is it?
You can't just do whatever the fuck you like to whomever you like in the months after a general election and just assume a good number of those same people will return to your colours 4 years later.
They might, if you explain why it was necessary, deliver on your manifesto, achieve good results, and you still look like the better alternative come the next election, but there's no law that says that must happen. You must work for it. Hard.
The more likely default is you just piss off groups of your voting coalition for good.
Did some 75 year old editor at the BBC discover video games for the first time. Who could possibly have known that some games are relaxing/fun and so good for mental health?
According to mental health charity Mind Cymru, external, cosy gaming can provide a coping mechanism for people dealing with mental health issues, and is also a good way of practising mindfulness.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
Except, it's not irrelevant, is it?
You can't just do whatever the fuck you like to whomever you like in the months after a general election and just assume a good number of those same people will return to your colours 4 years later.
They might, if you explain why it was necessary, deliver on your manifesto, achieve good results, and you still look like the better alternative come the next election, but there's no law that says that must happen. You must work for it. Hard.
The more likely default is you just piss off groups of your voting coalition for good.
Labour will be judged on whether it sorts out housing, health and infrastructure. Not the latest Gate being promoted by a bored and hypocritical media.
Not an idiot, can be charming. Tends to be vain and narcissistic.
Which I realize probably aligns with what many of us already think.
He certainly wasn't an idiot when he was younger. Dishonest, corrupt, manipulative, certainly but not stupid. Now, I am not so sure. He is not ageing well.
This activity has been going on since at least 1992. The Conservative Party got into a tiny bit of hot water with Clinton. This furore has been engineered by the Telegraph. Robert Buckland has been campaigning for Harris and said it was something of nothing. Farage on the other hand is outraged as he flew out of Heathrow to offer his shoulder for Trump to cry on*
* My editorial licence .
Indeed. Trumpgate is arguably an even weaker Gate than CURRYGATE or - the classic of the genre - Donkeygate.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
The trend is your friend. Labour is heading towards Sunak levels of polling over the coming months.
Who cares?
Labour MPs?
Not really. There’s no election for nearly five years. The polling now when Labour are trying to sort out the country is completely irrelevant.
Except, it's not irrelevant, is it?
You can't just do whatever the fuck you like to whomever you like in the months after a general election and just assume a good number of those same people will return to your colours 4 years later.
They might, if you explain why it was necessary, deliver on your manifesto, achieve good results, and you still look like the better alternative come the next election, but there's no law that says that must happen. You must work for it. Hard.
The more likely default is you just piss off groups of your voting coalition for good.
Labour will be judged on whether it sorts out housing, health and infrastructure. Not the latest Gate being promoted by a bored and hypocritical media.
Do you think the last Conservative administration was judged by Partygate?
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
Thanks.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
Has it? Most PBers think it’s on a knife edge or see a Trump win despite hating such an outcome. Who are the ‘wishcasters’ of whom you speak?
Don't forget this poster considers PB to be a pit of raging lefties.
Without any irony you've literally just posted this: "You may well be right, but you may also be reading too many of William Glenn's Trump positive polls.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar."
What this board has objected to is the posting of any Trump positive polls or Trump positive arguments and, when they are, has reacted by attacking the poster.
As you just did.
I didn't attack you. Do you disagree that you believe there to be too many ner-well-to-do woke lefties on here? You've been beating up on Southam this evening, hanging onto Leon's coat tails.
I do get frustrated when William posts exclusively Trump favourable polls whilst others post the whole picture. For a betting site don't we need the full picture?
One thing that has got relatively attention here is the defection of Tulsi Gabbard to the Republicans, which I find rather interesting.
Hilary Clinton's dismissal of her as a Russian asset is rather unconvincing, in this respect, and there's some interesting signs here and there of Trumo picking up a few anti-war votes that would have been Democrat.two decades ago. I've also several Trunmpists using formulations about the IraqmWar that.actually originate on the U.K left.
Comments
* My editorial licence .
Sean Trende is excellent as always. He, Nate Silver, Mr. Ralston, and Anne Selzer are the four go-to pundits in the US.
They tell it as it is, not as they would like it to be.
I'm assuming we're discounting Humphrey in 1968?
Not that either is a happy precedent for Harris...
“ were referred by politicians from the Conservative party or their offices.”
Anyone with a semblance of knowledge about what happened at the time will know why this is an utter perversion of the truth.
All three are excellent analysts. And all are saying essentially the same thing: Trump is the definite favorite, but only a narrow one (say 55% chance), and an average sized polling error could easily hand it to Harris.
On the Tende piece, the only place where I'd disagree with him is that he's seeing Trump campaigning in Coachella as a sign of strength. Campaigns are as often wrong as everyone else. If anything, I think it could be a sign that his campaign is simply assuming polls are wrong in the same direction (and to the same magnitude) as 2020.
This has been almost totally missed on here, and the site has been filled with wishcasting and playing the man, not the ball, when anyone dare say anything different about Trump.
But one senses that the PB Tories need a new Gate every day, simply to keep them smiling.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Definitely no institutional corruption, no police investigations, no action being taken by the CPS, and the Tories won a majority of 704.
The season seems to run to November so there are a few weeks left.
The "gotchs", including like that from Boris Johnson at PMQ"s, that never was.
Not good news for anyone who likes the post war settlement, nato and all that. Harris has two weeks left.
His 'theory' of tariffs is that like under McKinley (whom he regularly cites) they will fund the federal government, in place of income tax.
Which is obvious nonsense, but attractive to billionaires, as any such attempt would massively shift the burden of taxation from the very wealthy onto the middle class.
That she is fake, and a Goveite creature is a big pillar of the argument against Kemi, and it is damaging her - all the more combined with her failure to suggest a single policy.
As for Jenrick, his argument is simple and proven cause and effect. If we want to deport the people that we need to deport, we must leave the European Court. That doesn't mean if we leave the European Court, we *will* deport them, it's just a necessary precursor.
It's rife.
I think you have mistaken people wanting Harris to win with people thinking she will win.
I'm very grateful to the more knowledgeable posters on here who have been drip-feeding info into the threads. My instinct was that Walz's introduction was peak Harris, and from then on it was all about whether Trump could catch up and overtake her.
I watched the McDonald's skit with a tightening knot in my stomach. That was Trump at his very best and will be the iconic image from this election if he wins - even the assassination attempt has nearly faded from memory.
I'm on record saying Harris and it won't be close. And that remains the "overcorrected for Trump" scenario. We will know in a few weeks - either there is a winner or we descend into civil unrest at best and civil the other thing at worst.
I hadn't thought of it like that but I can see it now. And I'm old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of being stupid and dumb too, and then won for similar reasons.
It's an argument best not entered into.
Trump is definitely not.
Geoff Capes could also do the 100m in some improbably quick time. Not world record quick, but faster than most humans. He was an all-round athlete who just happened to be very large and very strong.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar.
No Labour wrongdoing in Kamala Harris campaign row, says ex-Tory minister
Robert Buckland says it appears Labour activists covered their own expenses, after Trump team files legal complaint
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/23/no-labour-wrongdoing-in-kamala-harris-campaign-row-says-ex-tory-minister
Clue though, they won’t, because they haven’t and cannot do so. Politicians do not give out contracts under our system of government. Covid contract were let in an emergency situation without the normal procurement or protections.
£20 to your favorite charity that no conservative member of the last *government* will be charged of any offense related to the letting of covid contracts.
Realistically, speaking, polls are not going to a be big factor again for a couple of years.
EDIT: Saw the mistype as I hit save, may as well leave it in!
Means Trump is still extraordinarily dangerous. It’s really worrying to hear people defend him saying that he doesn’t really mean what he says.
I am not sure you should bank the future of things like nato on that sentiment.
Any other politician trying this would be serious cringe.
https://x.com/MSNBC/status/1848886755778289952
And I'd go a little further, because everyone is convinced - to use @Jonathan's words - that Trump has the Mo, they are tending to share datapoints that are consistent with that (like Nevada early voting), while passing over ones which are more ambiguous or contradict it (Georgia early voting).
They got absolutely demolished mate. Well, I say they. You got absolutely demolished.
Don't try the holier than thou act, that's reserved for HYUFD.
EDIT - you said "emergency situation". That happens in business all the time. Business critical drop everything and get it done now situations. There are basics. Boiler plate contracts. No,. we wont pay the £120m if you don't deliver any PPE we can use. No, we won't pay you to store unusable PPE. No, you have to pay us back if your Temu PPE is useless and not to spec.
Basics. These things could have been included. And should have been included. That your lot are so openly corrupt as not to ask their mates such basics like sign here is why you got demolished.
Indeed, there's a small negative correlation between one week's poll movements and the next.
(The VP at the time was the runner up of the previous election, so it was actually a rematch of 1796)
Just mind blowing sums of money.
I too have that sinking feeling, although I don't believe Harris is the dud Trumpers on here make her out to be.
On the second, that Trump will win, two or three things tip the balance: Harris is a second/third rate candidate, boring and uncharismatic; Trump's base will turn out; undecideds will on balance go for Trump as the candidate more likely to further their personal interests. If it is close, the SC is likely to be biased in favour of Trump.
Right now, Google and YouTube and Facebook, etc., are impossibly expensive channels for us. The campaigns are prepared to pay extraordinary sums to show their slogans.
Interesting that Putin clearly rates Musk very highly from that Carlson interview, unlike Trump who he clearly despises.
I’m worried about the scenario where Trump is popularly acclaimed as winning the campaign, but Harris’ message discipline works quietly under the radar.
Like U.K. 1992, but with conspiracy nuts, outrage and guns.
This is happening in Russia. Putin waits.
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1848843492228841778
iirc Trump had really poor favourability ratings through most his presidency.
Now they want him back?
And I have no doubt that - should he lose - Trump will cry foul. But he does not have the same levers he did before. He's not the incumbent President.
The risk - really - is that the new Republican Senate tries to hold up confirmation, in which case civil war really is possible.
But it's a small risk right now. Let's hope it stays that way.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/what-to-know-about-e-coli-and-the-mcdonald-s-outbreak/ar-AA1sNW87?ocid=BingNewsVerp
George W was thick was a running joke.
You can make an argument that pretty much any politician is 'fake' and of all the ones I'd have said it least of, and I am not a fan at all, I'd say Badenoch was up there. If you're faking being that abrasive it's a good act.
With the ECHR it depends what one is talking about. Even with the current high levels of arrivals those arriving here undocumented is a fraction of overall immigration - that it often serves as a proxy for in debate. I get that it has an outsized negative impact, but there are ways of dealing with that while remaining in the ECHR. Meanwhile there are liable to be international agreements that aim to deal with it, as it's pretty much in every European country's interests to slow migration flows.
It's fine to argue we should leave as we'd be better off (though as with Brexit advocates rarely mention negatives and complications) - if that's what one thinks - but it's the making it your centrepiece or dealbreaker that I find vaguely absurd.
If much lower net migration is your goal - which is generally what those who are animated about the issue mean unless are the limited number on the frontline - then you need to get to grips with how you are changing our economic and social model so that we rely on it less. Otherwise, oh, you might deport some people who might have stuck around before, but the same complaints will be there. Farage will jump on to the next problem and 'neat trick' to solve it and we'll do it all again, ad infinitum.
Not my circus, not my monkeys. But just if I were a Tory I'd be much more suspicious of the one telling me things I wanted to hear as a miracle cure given past experience.
On Putin, I'm not entirely sure thar he despises Trump, even through a hidden lack of respecf for a client. The man has certainly been very useful for him.
If there is corruption the police will find it. They banged up a minister for lying about a speeding ticket. The reality is, all your shouting of corruption is little more than that. Lots of winks and implications but not actual evidence.
But, ad I said, if you do have the all important ‘evidence’ you really should present it to the police. It is your duty.
If you read Robert's posts this evening the door for Harris remains ajar."
What this board has objected to is the posting of any Trump positive polls or Trump positive arguments and, when they are, has reacted by attacking the poster.
As you just did.
You can think that Musk has been a dick on twitter, but he isn't that big of an outlier in this election supporting Trump e.g Bill Ackman is another incredibly wealthy man doing so. And that doesn't make them Putinists.
SFAICS he is broadly a supporter of Reform, and I am not. But I don't think anything is gained by dismissing him in ad hominem ways.
Where he is less impressive is in his Daily Mail like attacks based on the worst and most criminal examples of particular groups.
Saying Musk is more dangerous than China is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
What is telegraphs is that we're far more comfortable attacking people who sound and look like us from within our own culture than those outside and, in fact, we will do more of it the worse things get outside because it's a form of comfort blanket.
Downwards.
There are a large number of Labour MPs who are not in exactly safe seats.
If Labour heads below 30% and looks like staying there, then there’ll be trouble ‘at mill.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1gaf3aw/i_met_donald_when_he_was_president_of_the_united/
TL;DR
Not an idiot, can be charming. Tends to be vain and narcissistic.
Which I realize probably aligns with what many of us already think.
You can't just do whatever the fuck you like to whomever you like in the months after a general election and just assume a good number of those same people will return to your colours 4 years later.
They might, if you explain why it was necessary, deliver on your manifesto, achieve good results, and you still look like the better alternative come the next election, but there's no law that says that must happen. You must work for it. Hard.
The more likely default is you just piss off groups of your voting coalition for good.
According to mental health charity Mind Cymru, external, cosy gaming can provide a coping mechanism for people dealing with mental health issues, and is also a good way of practising mindfulness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cglk8wl3lylo?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
Genius
I do get frustrated when William posts exclusively Trump favourable polls whilst others post the whole picture. For a betting site don't we need the full picture?
Hilary Clinton's dismissal of her as a Russian asset is rather unconvincing, in this respect, and there's some interesting signs here and there of Trumo picking up a few anti-war votes that would have been Democrat.two decades ago. I've also several Trunmpists using formulations about the IraqmWar that.actually originate on the U.K left.