So Keir probably has another 22 seats without doing much. Thanks all for your calculations.
So Keir probably needs to win another 40-70 seats to be PM. That will explain and focus his messaging, I would assume.
What are these next 40 seats? The swing required is a decent 5-7%, slightly less if the Lib Dems perform better than expected.
The current EMA shares are C/L/LD 43.6/37.1/7.4 This gives the Tories a majority of 26 A further 2% swing from Tory to lab leaves the Tories 11 short of a majority. The Labour gains are shown here:
On the bottom numbers you could almost cobble together some kind of leftist coalition. Perhaps enough to get voting reform through and then another election - but it would be a mess
If the LibDems recover 6% points, 3% from Tory (no Corbyn) and 3% from Lab (tactical anti Tory) then the result is a more comfortable coalition or "understanding".
Really can't see the Tories dropping below 40% myself.
The next election is a very long way away, but at this juncture I'd be inclined to agree.
When looking at politics in England, it would do some good to look at the situation in Scotland. Why does the SNP keep winning everything? Because the major parties represent opposite sides of the Nationalist/Unionist axis. The SNP holds almost all the votes on the Nationalist side, whereas the Unionist side is hopelessly split.
In England, whichever way you choose to regard the dominant political axis - Left/Right or Open/Closed - the Tories have cleaned up on one end and the other is divided. So the Tories are almost bound to keep cleaning up. Remember, at last year's General Election the SNP won 45.0% of the vote in Scotland, but the Tories won 47.2% of the vote in England. The distribution of the non-Tory vote is more efficient in England than that of the Unionist vote in Scotland so the English Conservative victory was not quite so overwhelming, but nonetheless the Conservative overall majority in England alone is 157 seats. Realistically, Starmer probably won't come anywhere close to erasing that advantage.
If we then also make the logical assumption that the SNP will continue to win at least an overall majority of Commons seats in Scotland then, assuming that Scotland doesn't have a second referendum and become independent before 2024, that leaves Labour with two very serious problems. Firstly, barring a total transformation of the political landscape, it has no realistic route to a Commons majority and will have to rely on the SNP for a majority - and that could be used as an effective weapon with which to beat Starmer in the same way as it was used against Ed Miliband. Secondly, if Starmer does manage to make it to Number 10 then Labour will be in the position where, for the four-fifths of the time when the UK Government is effectively just the English Government (over the NHS, schools, policing, local government and much else besides) it has to ram through every piece of English legislation with Scottish votes, whilst the majority of the English MPs fulminate helplessly on the Opposition benches.
At least when Scotland had to put up with the long succession of Tory Governments in the Thatcher-Major era, Britain was a unitary state in practice as well as theory and every MP had the same rights over legislation everywhere; because of the insane asymmetric devolution programme of the Blair era, and the consequent salience of the West Lothian Question, this situation would be "Governments we didn't vote for" on steroids. Any sensible Tory leader would not only play the English nationalist card as a simple matter of political expediency under such circumstances, but would arguably be obliged to put the issue front and centre as a matter of democratic necessity. It could very easily burn the fragile Union to the ground and destroy the Labour party along with it.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
The USA is still on its first wave.
Its got real problems if it gets a second wave as well.
Excellent header. This has long been my view. Trump is toast and it will be NOT be close.
The 9/4 on under 200 in the EC is spectacular value. It should be close to evens.
Simply laying Trump also remains great value. Just because you missed out when he was much shorter does not mean you should miss out again now.
But of course dyor.
You always seem supremely confident on this.
I was burnt too badly last time to even dare hope you are right.
Wet you are, wet.
But more likely is you very badly want to see the big Trump defeat and your natural pessimism is forcing you to not believe it till it happens. Which is fair enough.
Thank you for the piece, David, as always an excellent read to start the weekend.
I'm going to offer something different which I think shows the polls aren't as good for Biden as the headline figures suggest.
Taking the latest PBS/Marist poll and comparing it to the 2016 vote and looking at the four "regions" of the US:
In the Northeast which provided 19% of the vote in 2016, Biden leads 62-34 whereas Clinton won the region 55-40 in 2016. That might give Biden a shot at PA and Maine 2 but the Democrats already have a stranglehold on most of the other states.
In the West (21% of the vote in 2016), Biden leads 60-36 compared to 55-39 last time. Biden might win Arizona but all he is doing is piling up votes where he doesn't need them in California.
In the South (37% of the vote in 2016), Trump leads 49-45 whereas he won the region 52-44 in 2016 so the position is little changed with Biden so the question is whether Biden is making any headway in Georgia or Florida or is Trump piling up votes in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi to name but three.
Finally, to the battleground, the Midwest which contributed 23% of the vote last time and which Trump won 49-45. Currently he is up 52-45 so he has improved his position on 2016.
So my reading is Trump's position is far stronger than the headline numbers suggest. Biden is piling up votes where he doesn't need them (the Northeast and the West) but not picking them up where he does in the Midwest and South.
This election is far from over.
That's a welcome reality check, but, on those swings, Biden would pick up PA, ME-2, AZ, FL & NC, with Trump taking MN in the other direction for a margin of 298-240 in Biden's favour.
It is close though. FL+ME-2, or PA+(NC or FL) would both be enough to hand Trump victory.
What's the 'entirely false' tweet ? Doesn't need to be repeated here, just would like to know what's being refferred to.
It says something outrageous about “whites”. The tweet was deftly photoshopped and looked real, and wasn’t THAT far from some of the outrageous stuff this lady already says - “white lives don’t matter” etc
I wonder if it was cleverly created to procure exactly this outcome
Even if it was, you have to be pretty dumb to get caught out. Also, that person doesn't have a blue tick mark next to them. That basically would tell me to not touch their account with a barge pole if I were a public-ish figure.
What's the 'entirely false' tweet ? Doesn't need to be repeated here, just would like to know what's being refferred to.
It says something outrageous about “whites”. The tweet was deftly photoshopped and looked real, and wasn’t THAT far from some of the outrageous stuff this lady already says - “white lives don’t matter” etc
I wonder if it was cleverly created to procure exactly this outcome
Even if it was, you have to be pretty dumb to get caught out. Also, that person doesn't have a blue tick mark next to them. That basically would tell me to not touch their account with a barge pole if I were a public-ish figure.
But it was retweeted by some blue tickers, who then hastily deleted.
The Daily Mail is screwed here, they have no defence; I expect they’ll settle first thing Monday
Unless those blue tickers were part of the conspiracy, then that doesn't matter. On a similar point, RLB should have read that Peake piece in full before endorsing it.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
So Keir probably has another 22 seats without doing much. Thanks all for your calculations.
So Keir probably needs to win another 40-70 seats to be PM. That will explain and focus his messaging, I would assume.
What are these next 40 seats? The swing required is a decent 5-7%, slightly less if the Lib Dems perform better than expected.
The current EMA shares are C/L/LD 43.6/37.1/7.4 This gives the Tories a majority of 26 A further 2% swing from Tory to lab leaves the Tories 11 short of a majority. The Labour gains are shown here:
On the bottom numbers you could almost cobble together some kind of leftist coalition. Perhaps enough to get voting reform through and then another election - but it would be a mess
If the LibDems recover 6% points, 3% from Tory (no Corbyn) and 3% from Lab (tactical anti Tory) then the result is a more comfortable coalition or "understanding".
Really can't see the Tories dropping below 40% myself.
The next election is a very long way away, but at this juncture I'd be inclined to agree.
When looking at politics in England, it would do some good to look at the situation in Scotland. Why does the SNP keep winning everything? Because the major parties represent opposite sides of the Nationalist/Unionist axis. The SNP holds almost all the votes on the Nationalist side, whereas the Unionist side is hopelessly split.
In England, whichever way you choose to regard the dominant political axis - Left/Right or Open/Closed - the Tories have cleaned up on one end and the other is divided. So the Tories are almost bound to keep cleaning up. Remember, at last year's General Election the SNP won 45.0% of the vote in Scotland, but the Tories won 47.2% of the vote in England. The distribution of the non-Tory vote is more efficient in England than that of the Unionist vote in Scotland so the English Conservative victory was not quite so overwhelming, but nonetheless the Conservative overall majority in England alone is 157 seats. Realistically, Starmer probably won't come anywhere close to erasing that advantage.
If we then also make the logical assumption that the SNP will continue to win at least an overall majority of Commons seats in Scotland then, assuming that Scotland doesn't have a second referendum and become independent before 2024, that leaves Labour with two very serious problems. Firstly, barring a total transformation of the political landscape, it has no realistic route to a Commons majority and will have to rely on the SNP for a majority - and that could be used as an effective weapon with which to beat Starmer in the same way as it was used against Ed Miliband. Secondly, if Starmer does manage to make it to Number 10 then Labour will be in the position where, for the four-fifths of the time when the UK Government is effectively just the English Government (over the NHS, schools, policing, local government and much else besides) it has to ram through every piece of English legislation with Scottish votes, whilst the majority of the English MPs fulminate helplessly on the Opposition benches.
At least when Scotland had to put up with the long succession of Tory Governments in the Thatcher-Major era, Britain was a unitary state in practice as well as theory and every MP had the same rights over legislation everywhere; because of the insane asymmetric devolution programme of the Blair era, and the consequent salience of the West Lothian Question, this situation would be "Governments we didn't vote for" on steroids. Any sensible Tory leader would not only play the English nationalist card as a simple matter of political expediency under such circumstances, but would arguably be obliged to put the issue front and centre as a matter of democratic necessity. It could very easily burn the fragile Union to the ground and destroy the Labour party along with it.
The union is dead, only a case of when independence comes, if you look at the numbers it is only pensioners and English born people who are under 50% for Independence. Support will continue to rise and with any luck if SNP can grow a pair they will make next year's election an independence vote.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
It's all right, Robert, I've snipped your ramblings.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
What's the 'entirely false' tweet ? Doesn't need to be repeated here, just would like to know what's being refferred to.
It says something outrageous about “whites”. The tweet was deftly photoshopped and looked real, and wasn’t THAT far from some of the outrageous stuff this lady already says - “white lives don’t matter” etc
I wonder if it was cleverly created to procure exactly this outcome
Even if it was, you have to be pretty dumb to get caught out. Also, that person doesn't have a blue tick mark next to them. That basically would tell me to not touch their account with a barge pole if I were a public-ish figure.
But it was retweeted by some blue tickers, who then hastily deleted.
The Daily Mail is screwed here, they have no defence; I expect they’ll settle first thing Monday
Unless those blue tickers were part of the conspiracy, then that doesn't matter. On a similar point, RLB should have read that Peake piece in full before endorsing it.
It was very foolish not to check the tweet at its source. Her editor should have checked it even if Platell forgot. Shoddy journalism
So Keir probably has another 22 seats without doing much. Thanks all for your calculations.
So Keir probably needs to win another 40-70 seats to be PM. That will explain and focus his messaging, I would assume.
What are these next 40 seats? The swing required is a decent 5-7%, slightly less if the Lib Dems perform better than expected.
The current EMA shares are C/L/LD 43.6/37.1/7.4 This gives the Tories a majority of 26 A further 2% swing from Tory to lab leaves the Tories 11 short of a majority. The Labour gains are shown here:
On the bottom numbers you could almost cobble together some kind of leftist coalition. Perhaps enough to get voting reform through and then another election - but it would be a mess
If the LibDems recover 6% points, 3% from Tory (no Corbyn) and 3% from Lab (tactical anti Tory) then the result is a more comfortable coalition or "understanding".
Really can't see the Tories dropping below 40% myself.
The next election is a very long way away, but at this juncture I'd be inclined to agree.
When looking at politics in England, it would do some good to look at the situation in Scotland. Why does the SNP keep winning everything? Because the major parties represent opposite sides of the Nationalist/Unionist axis. The SNP holds almost all the votes on the Nationalist side, whereas the Unionist side is hopelessly split.
In England, whichever way you choose to regard the dominant political axis - Left/Right or Open/Closed - the Tories have cleaned up on one end and the other is divided. So the Tories are almost bound to keep cleaning up. Remember, at last year's General Election the SNP won 45.0% of the vote in Scotland, but the Tories won 47.2% of the vote in England. The distribution of the non-Tory vote is more efficient in England than that of the Unionist vote in Scotland so the English Conservative victory was not quite so overwhelming, but nonetheless the Conservative overall majority in England alone is 157 seats. Realistically, Starmer probably won't come anywhere close to erasing that advantage.
If we then also make the logical assumption that the SNP will continue to win at least an overall majority of Commons seats in Scotland then, assuming that Scotland doesn't have a second referendum and become independent before 2024, that leaves Labour with two very serious problems. Firstly, barring a total transformation of the political landscape, it has no realistic route to a Commons majority and will have to rely on the SNP for a majority - and that could be used as an effective weapon with which to beat Starmer in the same way as it was used against Ed Miliband. Secondly, if Starmer does manage to make it to Number 10 then Labour will be in the position where, for the four-fifths of the time when the UK Government is effectively just the English Government (over the NHS, schools, policing, local government and much else besides) it has to ram through every piece of English legislation with Scottish votes, whilst the majority of the English MPs fulminate helplessly on the Opposition benches.
At least when Scotland had to put up with the long succession of Tory Governments in the Thatcher-Major era, Britain was a unitary state in practice as well as theory and every MP had the same rights over legislation everywhere; because of the insane asymmetric devolution programme of the Blair era, and the consequent salience of the West Lothian Question, this situation would be "Governments we didn't vote for" on steroids. Any sensible Tory leader would not only play the English nationalist card as a simple matter of political expediency under such circumstances, but would arguably be obliged to put the issue front and centre as a matter of democratic necessity. It could very easily burn the fragile Union to the ground and destroy the Labour party along with it.
The union is dead, only a case of when independence comes, if you look at the numbers it is only pensioners and English born people who are under 50% for Independence. Support will continue to rise and with any luck if SNP can grow a pair they will make next year's election an independence vote.
But Malcolm you are sacrificing your Celtic cousins here in Wales to servitude and the whim of our Anglo-Saxon oppressors.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
It's all right, Robert, I've snipped your ramblings.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
It is, of course, worth remembering that the number of Registered Republicans has dropped sharply of late. Back in Reagan's day (1980), it was around 40% of the electorate. Under George W it was 35%. It's was under 29% in 2018, and might be as little as 27-28% now.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
The Trafalgar poll, which uses questions that ask how your neighbours will vote to pick up shy voters, is a robo phonepoll. You aren't talking to a human. Do not assume the shy voter effect is just related to talking to people.
People may also not feel conformable sharing their vote to an online pollster when we live in an age that people get cancelled for views they share online. The effect of this may be that the less outspoken Trump supporters aren't responding to polls. That might explain why Trump is doing very well on the enthusiasm question.
Just because you've met 1 outspoken Trump supporter doesn't mean there aren't another 4 who want to avoid an argument.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
I say second wave because the US had rising cases (Feb, March), falling cases (April, May), and now has rising cases again. Now you can (justifiably) say that they never got rid of the virus and so it's all part of the first wave. But it's all semantics.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why.
The Trafalgar poll, which uses questions which ask how your neighbours will vote to pick up shy voters, is a robo phonepoll. You aren't talking to a human. Do not assume the shy affect is just related to talking to people.
People may also feel conformable sharing their vote to an online pollster when we live in an age that people get cancelled for views they share online. The effect of this may be that the less outspoken Trump supporters aren't responding to polls. That might explain why Trump is doing very well on the enthusiasm question.
Just because you've met 1 outspoken Trump supporter doesn't mean there aren't another 4 who want to avoid an argument.
What's the 'entirely false' tweet ? Doesn't need to be repeated here, just would like to know what's being refferred to.
It says something outrageous about “whites”. The tweet was deftly photoshopped and looked real, and wasn’t THAT far from some of the outrageous stuff this lady already says - “white lives don’t matter” etc
I wonder if it was cleverly created to procure exactly this outcome
US Dem Veep betting seems a bit volatile today -- has someone said something? Tbh I am only judging by my "green up" offer jumping around -- too busy losing money on the horses to investigate.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
I say second wave because the US had rising cases (Feb, March), falling cases (April, May), and now has rising cases again. Now you can (justifiably) say that they never got rid of the virus and so it's all part of the first wave. But it's all semantics.
I guess it's another of those things where the terminology is tricky because of the unprecedented action taken to mitigate the first wave. As I understand it, the first wave of Spanish Flu fell away by its own accord.
I'd have thought a second wave is more likely this time simply because we have taken action to reduce the impact of the first wave. Whether that means a second wave is a true second wave is, as you say, semantics.
Really, if Labour can get 262+ seats, Starmer can probably become PM. Of course it's a damning indictment of Labour's performance to only achieve that after so many years in opposition.
PM while your own party is 60+ seats short of a majority? That'll be a strong government all right ...
Certainly the price of such a coalition would be another referendum in Scotland and maybe independence. And that of course might make it even more challenging for Labour to govern in rUK.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
I say second wave because the US had rising cases (Feb, March), falling cases (April, May), and now has rising cases again. Now you can (justifiably) say that they never got rid of the virus and so it's all part of the first wave. But it's all semantics.
Isn't it more that its taken longer for the first wave to reach different parts of the USA ?
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
The Trafalgar poll, which uses questions that ask how your neighbours will vote to pick up shy voters, is a robo phonepoll. You aren't talking to a human. Do not assume the shy voter effect is just related to talking to people.
People may also not feel conformable sharing their vote to an online pollster when we live in an age that people get cancelled for views they share online. The effect of this may be that the less outspoken Trump supporters aren't responding to polls. That might explain why Trump is doing very well on the enthusiasm question.
Just because you've met 1 outspoken Trump supporter doesn't mean there aren't another 4 who want to avoid an argument.
That's an excellent point.
*However*, don't forget that polls like YouGov sample the same people tens of times, and always in an on-line setting. You would therefore expect them to see far less "shy supporter" syndrome - especially as the people on the panels get paid, which is no small thing in this time of general CV-19 economic issues.
If there was a really major shy Trump syndrome, shouldn't YouGov be giving him better figures?
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
I wonder what background these uber wealthy people had? 🤔
Besides it's clearly total nonsense since the top 10% wealthiest constituencies decisively broke for Remain.
Although interestingly, nine of the ten went Conservative - who were the clear party of Leave - in 2019.
I remember the English constituencies being ordered by deprivation level and the only in the least deprived one won by Labour was Sheffield Hallam.
Though there is a difference between wealthiest and least deprived.
Indeed, even in the leafy London suburbs where Labour have been making gains they do better where there is a high level of private and social renting and worse where there are high homeownership rates.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Yes, there was a flaw in Hyufd's logic. There is no reason to assume Trump supporters are shy of revealing their intentions to pollsters, automated or otherwise. They might be shy with friends, but why not tell a pollster? Anyway Trump supporters of my acquaintance tend to be anything but shy. On the contrary they seldom miss the opportunity to tell you what they think.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
I say second wave because the US had rising cases (Feb, March), falling cases (April, May), and now has rising cases again. Now you can (justifiably) say that they never got rid of the virus and so it's all part of the first wave. But it's all semantics.
Isn't it more that its taken longer for the first wave to reach different parts of the USA ?
Yes, I think that's right.
It also hit the Blue states first, where local State politicians were more inclined to implement lockdown measure to combat its spread.
It is now hitting the Red states where such measures have less support.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Mark Lilla's "The Once and Future Liberal" book is an excellent summary of the situation in US.
US Dem Veep betting seems a bit volatile today -- has someone said something? Tbh I am only judging by my "green up" offer jumping around -- too busy losing money on the horses to investigate.
Demings seems to have become 2nd fav overnight, so maybe something has happened.
Edit: Could be this:
"CNN spoke to more than a dozen people close to the Biden search process who believe that four of the leading prospects are Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms."
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
It's all right, Robert, I've snipped your ramblings.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
I find it mildly amusing that some of the worst polling for Trump comes from Fox and some of the best from PBS.
Marist has some of the best numbers for Trump (44%), but a similar lead to other pollsters (eight points). If Marist is correct, and he can pull back two to three points from Biden, then he's in with a good shot.
But I'm sceptical. Firstly because I think CV-19 is going to be a massive issue. The "power of positive thinking" has no effect on the virus. And things are getting worse in America. Secondly, have you looked at the details of President Trump's unfavourable numbers? There has been a significant shift away from "somewhat unfavourable" to "very unfavourable". This is one of those things that I think is really important, and has been missed. Some polls now have over 50% of voters have "very unfavourable" views of President Trump, up from 30-35%.
Government blunder hands ownership of Help to Buy website over to third party for £40k
An unknown party has bought a prominent Government website for £40,000 after a blunder allowed ownership of the Help to Buy domain name to lapse, leading to fears its new owner could have fraudulent plans.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
The Enlightenment represented a massive leap in human thought, but it was not the end of progress. Science and world views are all just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what we sense and perceive. None of them are true in an absolute sense, not even the laws of physics. What is true for you is not necessarily true for me.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
The Enlightenment represented a massive leap in human thought, but it was not the end of progress. Science and world views are all just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what we sense and perceive. None of them are true in an absolute sense, not even the laws of physics. What is true for you is not necessarily true for me.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
If the main issue of the election is law and order it's going to be difficult for Biden to win IMO.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
The Enlightenment represented a massive leap in human thought, but it was not the end of progress. Science and world views are all just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what we sense and perceive. None of them are true in an absolute sense, not even the laws of physics. What is true for you is not necessarily true for me.
Very deep. What did you have for breakfast today, Tim?
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
If the main issue of the election is law and order it's going to be difficult for Biden to win IMO.
I think different parts of the US will have different main issues.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
I think there's a strong sense of Trump's actions being 'worse than a crime, a blunder'.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
I only ever call him an immigrant when I want to wind him up. But yes, you are right.
He married an American girl to get a green card. They then divorced. You can imagine what his views are of foreigners doing something similar to get into the UK, but he doesn't see the irony, and he certainly doesn't like anyone trying to point it out.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
This well coordinated and often repeated theme about universities now peddling nothing but pure woke Marxism seems to go unchallenged. I don’t know if it’s true, my own children are at least 12 years out so can’t comment. My nieces and nephews give the impression life at university is focused on results and jobs not politics. Is there anyone out there, Who isn’t playing to an agenda, with an objective view?
Government blunder hands ownership of Help to Buy website over to third party for £40k
An unknown party has bought a prominent Government website for £40,000 after a blunder allowed ownership of the Help to Buy domain name to lapse, leading to fears its new owner could have fraudulent plans.
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
The Enlightenment represented a massive leap in human thought, but it was not the end of progress. Science and world views are all just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what we sense and perceive. None of them are true in an absolute sense, not even the laws of physics. What is true for you is not necessarily true for me.
Except maybe death and taxes.
LOL. What is a Buddhist's position on death? So just taxes, then.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
I think you'd be missing a digit in from the of the 50k debt.
Really, if Labour can get 262+ seats, Starmer can probably become PM. Of course it's a damning indictment of Labour's performance to only achieve that after so many years in opposition.
PM while your own party is 60+ seats short of a majority? That'll be a strong government all right ...
Depends on your allies. Adern isn't that far off majority, but she is some way off but it works.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
If the main issue of the election is law and order it's going to be difficult for Biden to win IMO.
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
It's all right, Robert, I've snipped your ramblings.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
I find it mildly amusing that some of the worst polling for Trump comes from Fox and some of the best from PBS.
Marist has some of the best numbers for Trump (44%), but a similar lead to other pollsters (eight points). If Marist is correct, and he can pull back two to three points from Biden, then he's in with a good shot.
But I'm sceptical. Firstly because I think CV-19 is going to be a massive issue. The "power of positive thinking" has no effect on the virus. And things are getting worse in America. Secondly, have you looked at the details of President Trump's unfavourable numbers? There has been a significant shift away from "somewhat unfavourable" to "very unfavourable". This is one of those things that I think is really important, and has been missed. Some polls now have over 50% of voters have "very unfavourable" views of President Trump, up from 30-35%.
As you said Robert, it is mildly amusing with which pollsters Trump does best with / not. I tend to take the view that what is more interesting is the trend in polls from the same pollster as - unless there has been a change to their methodology - it creates a more stable timeline even if there are flaws in the underlying numbers. That's why it doesn't feel like Trump's position isn't necessarily getting worse - Biden's lead with CBS and YouGov is stable at +8 and the lead in the Hill for Biden more than halved.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
You are right, most Trump supporters are not at all shy about their position and many wear it not on their arm but on their head. MAGA hats. But that does not exclude there also being some shy Trump voters.
I suspect there are some. But it would take a lot to win him the election at this point. I don't see the evidence for there being a lot of them.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
Water building until the dam breaks is one of my favourite supporting visuals for the upcoming Trump hammering at the polls - which really is, and I cannot stress this enough, inevitable.
One can write reams on the ins and outs of why it's going to happen but what it boils down to is something quite simple which is as follows -
He was unfit for office in 2016 but there were many people of a non-partisan and apolitical nature who did not know this for sure. Now they do. Because of this he has become unelectable for a 2nd term.
They didn't tell him to, they advised him to. That he took so long to follow it, however, is very silly even if things were above board. Stepping back in these situations protects the decision maker more than anything else,it's stupid to do otherwise.
What's the 'entirely false' tweet ? Doesn't need to be repeated here, just would like to know what's being refferred to.
It’s in the print Daily Mail apparently, you can find a screenshot on Twitter if you go looking. A paraphrase of the fake tweet might be: "Now we can get on with the job of eliminating white people & giving all their jobs to BAME and LGBTQ people". It’s obviously well beyond anything she’s actually said & the Daily Mail may as well open the cheque-book right now.
(Hard to believe that the DM don’t bother to fact check these columns, at least to avoid the obvious land mines. Maybe they like paying large sums of cash to Carter-Ruck?)
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
I think you'd be missing a digit in from the of the 50k debt.
Yep, that would be one year of tuition in most of the Ivy League, not including living expenses. And undergrad studies are 4 years here. Although, mommy and daddy probably paid for it, put her up in a better condo than her profs can afford, and gave her a nice BMW.
The union is dead, only a case of when independence comes, if you look at the numbers it is only pensioners and English born people who are under 50% for Independence. Support will continue to rise and with any luck if SNP can grow a pair they will make next year's election an independence vote.
At the risk of stating the obvious, if Scotland is going to get away in the near future then three hurdles have to be cleared:
1. First, and most straightforward, the SNP have to win outright next year on a commitment to holding a second referendum, or at least be able to assemble another pro-independence majority with the Greens. That seems likely.
2. Sturgeon then needs to successfully demand that Johnson sign a section 30 order allowing the Scottish Parliament to legislate for the second referendum. That's where things get a great deal more complicated.
If Johnson is serious about saving the Union then he'd arguably be mad not to: whereas it is certain that many Scottish voters don't want Indyref2 (or at least not yet,) and possible that an outright majority don't want it, it is one thing for them to say that and another thing entirely for Boris Johnson to tell them and their new Parliament that it is not allowed. Saying no could put the second referendum off in the short term but further weaken support for the Union in the long term.
On the other hand, if Johnson's main concern is not to go down in history as the Prime Minister who lost Scotland then such calculations won't matter to him. He can stonewall, using the "once in a generation" argument as his defence, with a reasonable chance that the issue will erupt and spew lava all over some future UK administration instead. Thus, even an SNP victory next year doesn't make a second referendum in this Parliament a foregone conclusion. Absent the consent of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament can't attempt to go ahead and legislate for one anyway: it lacks the authority and such an Act would therefore be struck down in Scotland's own courts.
3. If Johnson does permit Indyref2 then the Yes campaign still has to win this time, and that's not going to be so smart and easy. There aren't enough convinced pro-independence electors to turn the vote into a victory procession. The Scottish Government will therefore need to persuade a majority of the electorate that they have a workable plan to deal with Scotland's budget deficit, for what currency the country will use, and that the negative consequences of the dissolution of the Union - notably the end of a seamless single market between Scotland and the rest of the UK - are more than compensated for by the benefits of full sovereignty and the new opportunities and levers of power that this will deliver to the Scottish people. If the middling, transactional voters who are willing to jump either way aren't convinced, then they will stick to nurse and the Union will win out with room to spare just like it did last time.
I think that you're probably right in that independence is a matter of "when" rather than "if" - the supporters of independence only require one decisive victory over the Unionists at some point in the future to make it happen - but it doesn't necessarily follow that "when" won't be a long time coming.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
I think you'd be missing a digit in from the of the 50k debt.
Thinking about Shouty Woman and another video trending on twitter of a Black man being criticised for trying to defend a statue that was paid for by former slaves, I started to think about a variation of David's piece which is "what if Black voters stay at home for this election?"
Older Black voters are the most reliable voting block for the Democrats but they are also the most conservative and place a high emphasis on respect for elders and overall behaviour. They go to church. I would place a fairly large bet that having a young woman scream in the face of an elder Black gentleman is not to do down too well, especially if a scene that gets repeated. I can easily see a situation where, if this continues, these voters start to harbour doubts over whether a Democrat victory is really what they want.
Now, I can't see many of them voting for Trump given their historical ties and there is a belief about voting given the struggles for the vote in the 1950s and 1960s. However, I doubt many would tolerate a situation where young people are screaming abuse in their faces.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
I think you'd be missing a digit in from the of the 50k debt.
Yep, that would be one year of tuition in most of the Ivy League, not including living expenses. And undergrad studies are 4 years here. Although, mommy and daddy probably paid for it, put her up in a better condo than her profs can afford, and gave her a nice BMW.
Well done you correctly deciphered my unchecked comment
It should have been ' ... in front of the 50k debt'.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
This well coordinated and often repeated theme about universities now peddling nothing but pure woke Marxism seems to go unchallenged. I don’t know if it’s true, my own children are at least 12 years out so can’t comment. My nieces and nephews give the impression life at university is focused on results and jobs not politics. Is there anyone out there, Who isn’t playing to an agenda, with an objective view?
I studied a social science at university 15-25 years ago and it's total bollocks.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
This well coordinated and often repeated theme about universities now peddling nothing but pure woke Marxism seems to go unchallenged. I don’t know if it’s true, my own children are at least 12 years out so can’t comment. My nieces and nephews give the impression life at university is focused on results and jobs not politics. Is there anyone out there, Who isn’t playing to an agenda, with an objective view?
Well I did go as an adult and it was exactly that. I was really surprised, at the extent of it; I honestly didnt think people like that existed, it was like living in The Modern Parents from Viz's world. It turned me from a Labour voter into a UKIP member
Based on axioms and logic. Tautology - "a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form". See Russells Principia Mathematica. (I know it was holed below the water line by Godel but the basic definitions still hold).
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
Hardly. It's simply obvious that there are instances where the weight of a person's opinion on something is impacted by who they are (or are not).
Think back to the other day and that video showing the white woman berating the black police officer for being part of a racist organization.
Cue many many comments on here on about how naff that was - none of which (as I recall) triggered you to intervene and support the woman in the name of the Enlightenment.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
I think you'd be missing a digit in from the of the 50k debt.
Yep, that would be one year of tuition in most of the Ivy League, not including living expenses. And undergrad studies are 4 years here. Although, mommy and daddy probably paid for it, put her up in a better condo than her profs can afford, and gave her a nice BMW.
Well done you correctly deciphered my unchecked comment
It should have been ' ... in front of the 50k debt'.
Emory University (Atlanta, GA) built a whole complex of very nice apartment buildings between Emory, the Emory Conference Center and CDC, intended as housing for its faculty to purchase. Most of the apartments were purchased by students' parents as housing for their precious ones. Nary a professor in sight.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
This well coordinated and often repeated theme about universities now peddling nothing but pure woke Marxism seems to go unchallenged. I don’t know if it’s true, my own children are at least 12 years out so can’t comment. My nieces and nephews give the impression life at university is focused on results and jobs not politics. Is there anyone out there, Who isn’t playing to an agenda, with an objective view?
I studied a social science at university 15-25 years ago and it's total bollocks.
Brilliant thread header from David Herdson, precisely what PB.com was originially designed for, i.e. POLITICAL BETTING and we are very fortunate to have his very sound advice. Unfortunately by the time i caught up with his main tip this morning, i.e. Trump to win between 101-150 Electoral College votes, the odds had shortened considerably from 6/1 to 4/1. As a result I opted for the lower risk "Less than 200 Electoral College votes", still on offer at 9/4 with SkyBet which looks like cracking value, where I staked £40 to win £90. I'll add this to my earlier bets on the Dems winning Wisconsin, then on offer at 1.85 with Betfair, but now a good deal shorter and starting to look like free money.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
I only ever call him an immigrant when I want to wind him up. But yes, you are right.
He married an American girl to get a green card. They then divorced. You can imagine what his views are of foreigners doing something similar to get into the UK, but he doesn't see the irony, and he certainly doesn't like anyone trying to point it out.
Ha ha, immigrants who hate immigrants are something special. You should tell him he is exhibiting a textbook case of white privilege, sounds like that might send is blood pressure northwards.
Based on axioms and logic. Tautology - "a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form". See Russells Principia Mathematica. (I know it was holed below the water line by Godel but the basic definitions still hold).
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
A statement's validity does not depend on the type of person making it.
Depends. It can do.
And so the Enlightenment dies in four words...
Hardly. It's simply obvious that there are instances where the weight of a person's opinion on something is impacted by who they are (or are not).
Think back to the other day and that video showing the white woman berating the black police officer for being part of a racist organization.
Cue many many comments on here on about how naff that was - none of which (as I recall) triggered you to intervene and support the woman in the name of the Enlightenment.
I doubt black men are forced into the US Police Force the way many women are into religious garb though. I would buy US black policeman's agency over Burqa & Niqab wearing Muslim women's in a highly unlikely hypothetical spread match bet
EHRC results should be out quite soon, Starmer has a lot of good will IMHO if he sacks the people that deserve it
I hope sack means "remove the whip" not "remove from Shadow Cabinet".
When will Johnson be sacking Jenrick and removing the Whip from him?
When he engages in a sustained campaign of antisemitism so awful it draws the ire of the EHRC perhaps?
The Tory Party has a massive Islamophobia problem as you well know.
Your views as usual are inconsistent, we know if a Labour MP had been found to be doing what Jenrick has done, you'd be calling for them to lose the Whip.
I know no such thing. Any racists should be expelled from the party.
Criticising Islam, critising the niqab, criticisng misogyny, criticising homophobia is not racism. Any more than criticising paedophile priests is racist. Consistency is not racist.
It can be. Indirect discrimination is when a policy is consistently applied to everyone but particularly affects a group of people because of their protected characteristic. This type of discrimination can sometimes be justified if a policy is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This legitimate aim can be something like maintaining a company image or protecting health and safety. Insisting that fruit pickers (as opposed to teachers) speak perfect English, for example, is consistent, but racist as it is a policy that has no legitimate aim - there is no need for fruit pickers to have much more than a basic grasp of English, if that. While criticising homophobia and misogyny in all cases is clearly a legitimate aim, I fail to see how blanket criticism of the niqab is always justified and therefore and not racist.
BTW indirect discrimination also means that provisions impacting Muslims disproportionately impact people of South Asian and Middle Eastern decent, so can be racist as well as islamophobic. Similarly discrimination against Catholics in the UK has often been coded discrimination against Irish people.
The niqab is a misogynistic garment designed to subjugate women and separate them from men so how is it racist to criticise it?
No race demands people wear it. No religion demands people wear it.
It is cultural subjugation and I see nothing racist in condemning misogyny.
Lots of white men on here today chiming in. Maybe we should ask someone who actually wears one about it?
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
You are right, most Trump supporters are not at all shy about their position and many wear it not on their arm but on their head. MAGA hats. But that does not exclude there also being some shy Trump voters.
I suspect there are some. But it would take a lot to win him the election at this point. I don't see the evidence for there being a lot of them.
I have permanent bruises on my breast from the stubby fingers of Trump supporters jabbing me as they boom '...And another thing, Buddy.'
No I don't think he can win from here but he won't be crushed, as long as he doesn't admit to being a closet liberal.
How much BrainForce did he need to work that one out?
Here is a taster:
In Principia Mathematica (PM) the notion of identity is defined following Leibniz as indiscernibility, namely indiscernible objects are identical. That is, ∀ϕ(ϕx≡ϕy)⊃x=y. But since the axiom of reducibility guarantees that if there is any type of function on which x and y differ, they will differ on some predicative function, PM uses the following definition of identity:
xτ=yτ=df∀ϕ[ϕ!(x)⊃ϕ!(y)],∗13⋅01 for ϕ! a predicative function.
In contemporary systems of logic an axiom or rule of inference allows that if x=y, then for any predicate ϕ, ϕx≡ϕy. In other words, identicals are indiscernible. The given definition of identity only suffices if it is not possible that entities x and y which share all predicative properties, cannot be distinguished by some property of a higher order. The axiom of reducibility guarantees that x and y sharing properties of any given higher order will entail sharing predicative properties, and so by the definition of identity, as in ‘x=y’.
In the appendix B to the second edition of PM, which was written by Russell, there is a technical discussion of the consequences of abandoning the axiom of reducibility. A faulty proof is proposed to show that the principle of Induction can be derived without using the axiom of reducibilty in a modified theory of types (see Linsky 2011). As Russell points out, however, it is not possible to show that the theory of real numbers as based on “Dedekindian” classes of rational numbers, without assuming the axiom of reducibility. (The thesis that every class of reals with an upper bound has a real number as its least upper bound, discussed above, would not be provable.) As a result, Russell says “analysis would collapse”. In all of this discussion, however, Russell does not indicate what would replace the definition of Identity in ∗13, which so crucially depends on the axiom of reducibility."
On topic, @HYUFD posted a very interesting poll the other day asking people about how they felt about supporting Trump, and if they worried about what their friends and neighbours thought about this. It showed that only about a third of voters would be happy if people knew they supported Trump.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
It's all right, Robert, I've snipped your ramblings.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
I find it mildly amusing that some of the worst polling for Trump comes from Fox and some of the best from PBS.
Marist has some of the best numbers for Trump (44%), but a similar lead to other pollsters (eight points). If Marist is correct, and he can pull back two to three points from Biden, then he's in with a good shot.
But I'm sceptical. Firstly because I think CV-19 is going to be a massive issue. The "power of positive thinking" has no effect on the virus. And things are getting worse in America. Secondly, have you looked at the details of President Trump's unfavourable numbers? There has been a significant shift away from "somewhat unfavourable" to "very unfavourable". This is one of those things that I think is really important, and has been missed. Some polls now have over 50% of voters have "very unfavourable" views of President Trump, up from 30-35%.
As you said Robert, it is mildly amusing with which pollsters Trump does best with / not. I tend to take the view that what is more interesting is the trend in polls from the same pollster as - unless there has been a change to their methodology - it creates a more stable timeline even if there are flaws in the underlying numbers. That's why it doesn't feel like Trump's position isn't necessarily getting worse - Biden's lead with CBS and YouGov is stable at +8 and the lead in the Hill for Biden more than halved.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education system, by the markets.
That girl almost certainly goes, or went, to a liberal university where she studies - or studied - Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies and all the rest of the neo-Marxist identtitarian bullshit. That's why she can't debate, they are not taught to debate, they are taught the secular religious truth, and then told to go out and disseminate it. By shouting, if necessary.
But who actually wants their child to receive an education like this, when we can now see what it does to young brains? This girl might have $50k of student debt to go with her ridiculous education, and she is basically unemployable.
Parents will start turning away from this. Foreign parents will look at US Colleges and start thinking, Er, maybe not.
Market forces may deconsrtruct Marxism. It is arguably already happening in Australia, where the universities are in crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
This well coordinated and often repeated theme about universities now peddling nothing but pure woke Marxism seems to go unchallenged. I don’t know if it’s true, my own children are at least 12 years out so can’t comment. My nieces and nephews give the impression life at university is focused on results and jobs not politics. Is there anyone out there, Who isn’t playing to an agenda, with an objective view?
I studied a social science at university 15-25 years ago and it's total bollocks.
Er, that was 15-25 years ago
Also: you did a ten year degree???
I have three degrees and worked for a few years in between the second and third. I don't think universities have changed so much in the meantime. The right is attacking universities because they've figured out that the more educated people are the less likely they are to be taken in by their bollocks.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Based on axioms and logic. Tautology - "a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form". See Russells Principia Mathematica. (I know it was holed below the water line by Godel but the basic definitions still hold).
'True by necessity' is what you've still to prove. Pull that off and you'll be up there with Plato and Kant as one of the greatest philosophers mankind has ever produced.
Brilliant thread header from David Herdson, precisely what PB.com was originially designed for, i.e. POLITICAL BETTING and we are very fortunate to have his very sound advice. Unfortunately by the time i caught up with his main tip this morning, i.e. Trump to win between 101-150 Electoral College votes, the odds had shortened considerably from 6/1 to 4/1. As a result I opted for the lower risk "Less than 200 Electoral College votes", still on offer at 9/4 with SkyBet which looks like cracking value, where I staked £40 to win £90. I'll add this to my earlier bets on the Dems winning Wisconsin, then on offer at 1.85 with Betfair, but now a good deal shorter and starting to look like free money.
I think 200-250 EC for Trump at 7/2 is better value.
Comments
When looking at politics in England, it would do some good to look at the situation in Scotland. Why does the SNP keep winning everything? Because the major parties represent opposite sides of the Nationalist/Unionist axis. The SNP holds almost all the votes on the Nationalist side, whereas the Unionist side is hopelessly split.
In England, whichever way you choose to regard the dominant political axis - Left/Right or Open/Closed - the Tories have cleaned up on one end and the other is divided. So the Tories are almost bound to keep cleaning up. Remember, at last year's General Election the SNP won 45.0% of the vote in Scotland, but the Tories won 47.2% of the vote in England. The distribution of the non-Tory vote is more efficient in England than that of the Unionist vote in Scotland so the English Conservative victory was not quite so overwhelming, but nonetheless the Conservative overall majority in England alone is 157 seats. Realistically, Starmer probably won't come anywhere close to erasing that advantage.
If we then also make the logical assumption that the SNP will continue to win at least an overall majority of Commons seats in Scotland then, assuming that Scotland doesn't have a second referendum and become independent before 2024, that leaves Labour with two very serious problems. Firstly, barring a total transformation of the political landscape, it has no realistic route to a Commons majority and will have to rely on the SNP for a majority - and that could be used as an effective weapon with which to beat Starmer in the same way as it was used against Ed Miliband. Secondly, if Starmer does manage to make it to Number 10 then Labour will be in the position where, for the four-fifths of the time when the UK Government is effectively just the English Government (over the NHS, schools, policing, local government and much else besides) it has to ram through every piece of English legislation with Scottish votes, whilst the majority of the English MPs fulminate helplessly on the Opposition benches.
At least when Scotland had to put up with the long succession of Tory Governments in the Thatcher-Major era, Britain was a unitary state in practice as well as theory and every MP had the same rights over legislation everywhere; because of the insane asymmetric devolution programme of the Blair era, and the consequent salience of the West Lothian Question, this situation would be "Governments we didn't vote for" on steroids. Any sensible Tory leader would not only play the English nationalist card as a simple matter of political expediency under such circumstances, but would arguably be obliged to put the issue front and centre as a matter of democratic necessity. It could very easily burn the fragile Union to the ground and destroy the Labour party along with it.
This is suggestive, perhaps very suggestive, of there being "a shy Trump syndrome".
However, against this, one normally sees with "unpopular" opinions a big difference between on-line and phone surveys. People might not want to tell nice Maureen on the phone that they support President Trump, but they are usually much less reticent telling the truth to an unjudging computer.
Unfortunately for the President there is no meaningful gap between phone and on-line polls. Plus, very few US polls actually use live humans: they tend to use either on-line panels or automated voice response.
This doesn't mean there aren't shy Trump voters. And in Los Angeles, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rather a lot. (I know lots of people who identify as Republican voters here... but none who have nice things to say about Trump. Though I bet at least some of them will go Trump at the beginning of November.)
There's also the risk, identified by @MrEd, that the Democrats are not enthused, with weak House Special Election results held up as evidence. This is not a bad point. And certainly, I think in general it's better to have people voting for you, and not against your opponent. But I would also caution about reading too much into elections with turnouts of sub 30%, that are effectively 'dead rubbers' in that the composition of the House won't change meaningfully, when there is a pandemic, and with only half a year until the next national elections.
I've rambled a bit.
But the core point is this: I have absolutely no idea how predictive the polls are likely to be at this point.
However, I think the US is going to have (or is having) by far the most serious "second wave" in the world right now. Hundreds of thousands more people will die, and the US economy is likely to suffer from a continued de facto lockdown. I cannot see that being good news for President Trump, especially with large parts of the rest of the world now appearing to be on improving trends. For that reason, I think the possibility of a blow out win for Biden is far from impossible.
Its got real problems if it gets a second wave as well.
@Eadric Bit like Corbyn in Russian hats.
But more likely is you very badly want to see the big Trump defeat and your natural pessimism is forcing you to not believe it till it happens. Which is fair enough.
But trust me it WILL happen. ☺
It is close though. FL+ME-2, or PA+(NC or FL) would both be enough to hand Trump victory.
It was actually a Stalin quote with some find and replace done on it.
Btw, on what evidence do you conclude that the US is entering a second wave? Fauci reckons it's not out of the first wave yet, and it's not hard to see why he would believe so.
I think anyone looking at any US poll has to look at the crosstabs in detail. The NYT/Siena College Poll gave Biden a 50-36 lead over Trump and had Biden 16 points ahead in the Midwest.
However, White votes (61%) and Republican voters (26%) look seriously under-sampled so that one's for the bin. The PBS-Marist poll I quoted earlier had much more realistic crosstabs and illustrated just hoe much Biden still has to do in the Midwest and South though he is piling up votes in the NE and West where he doesn't need them in EC terms.
I've not found the crosstabs for the Hill-Harris-X poll and until they are published, I'm sceptical of that and of course these polls also have large margins of error (anything up to 3.5 points).
https://twitter.com/JohnnyMercerUK/status/1276835361285713930?s=20
ttps://twitter.com/digitaldjeli/status/1276829948934840320?s=20
Please stay.
People may also not feel conformable sharing their vote to an online pollster when we live in an age that people get cancelled for views they share online. The effect of this may be that the less outspoken Trump supporters aren't responding to polls. That might explain why Trump is doing very well on the enthusiasm question.
Just because you've met 1 outspoken Trump supporter doesn't mean there aren't another 4 who want to avoid an argument.
I'd have thought a second wave is more likely this time simply because we have taken action to reduce the impact of the first wave. Whether that means a second wave is a true second wave is, as you say, semantics.
*However*, don't forget that polls like YouGov sample the same people tens of times, and always in an on-line setting. You would therefore expect them to see far less "shy supporter" syndrome - especially as the people on the panels get paid, which is no small thing in this time of general CV-19 economic issues.
If there was a really major shy Trump syndrome, shouldn't YouGov be giving him better figures?
Though there is a difference between wealthiest and least deprived.
It also hit the Blue states first, where local State politicians were more inclined to implement lockdown measure to combat its spread.
It is now hitting the Red states where such measures have less support.
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
Edit: Could be this:
"CNN spoke to more than a dozen people close to the Biden search process who believe that four of the leading prospects are Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms."
Marist has some of the best numbers for Trump (44%), but a similar lead to other pollsters (eight points). If Marist is correct, and he can pull back two to three points from Biden, then he's in with a good shot.
But I'm sceptical. Firstly because I think CV-19 is going to be a massive issue. The "power of positive thinking" has no effect on the virus. And things are getting worse in America. Secondly, have you looked at the details of President Trump's unfavourable numbers? There has been a significant shift away from "somewhat unfavourable" to "very unfavourable". This is one of those things that I think is really important, and has been missed. Some polls now have over 50% of voters have "very unfavourable" views of President Trump, up from 30-35%.
Government blunder hands ownership of Help to Buy website over to third party for £40k
An unknown party has bought a prominent Government website for £40,000 after a blunder allowed ownership of the Help to Buy domain name to lapse, leading to fears its new owner could have fraudulent plans.
Homes England, a governmental body, admitted that an “administration error” had allowed ownership of the Helptobuy.org.uk website to expire. It was then bought by a third party and sold on for more than £40,000 at auction.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/government-blunder-hands-ownership-help-buy-website-third-party/
You can tell the pickings are thin.
He married an American girl to get a green card. They then divorced. You can imagine what his views are of foreigners doing something similar to get into the UK, but he doesn't see the irony, and he certainly doesn't like anyone trying to point it out.
which is a revealing way of stating it
EDIT I love this stuff. A friend once called it mental masturbation.
You are right, most Trump supporters are not at all shy about their position and many wear it not on their arm but on their head. MAGA hats. But that does not exclude there also being some shy Trump voters.
I suspect there are some. But it would take a lot to win him the election at this point. I don't see the evidence for there being a lot of them.
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
One can write reams on the ins and outs of why it's going to happen but what it boils down to is something quite simple which is as follows -
He was unfit for office in 2016 but there were many people of a non-partisan and apolitical nature who did not know this for sure. Now they do. Because of this he has become unelectable for a 2nd term.
(Hard to believe that the DM don’t bother to fact check these columns, at least to avoid the obvious land mines. Maybe they like paying large sums of cash to Carter-Ruck?)
1. First, and most straightforward, the SNP have to win outright next year on a commitment to holding a second referendum, or at least be able to assemble another pro-independence majority with the Greens. That seems likely.
2. Sturgeon then needs to successfully demand that Johnson sign a section 30 order allowing the Scottish Parliament to legislate for the second referendum. That's where things get a great deal more complicated.
If Johnson is serious about saving the Union then he'd arguably be mad not to: whereas it is certain that many Scottish voters don't want Indyref2 (or at least not yet,) and possible that an outright majority don't want it, it is one thing for them to say that and another thing entirely for Boris Johnson to tell them and their new Parliament that it is not allowed. Saying no could put the second referendum off in the short term but further weaken support for the Union in the long term.
On the other hand, if Johnson's main concern is not to go down in history as the Prime Minister who lost Scotland then such calculations won't matter to him. He can stonewall, using the "once in a generation" argument as his defence, with a reasonable chance that the issue will erupt and spew lava all over some future UK administration instead. Thus, even an SNP victory next year doesn't make a second referendum in this Parliament a foregone conclusion. Absent the consent of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament can't attempt to go ahead and legislate for one anyway: it lacks the authority and such an Act would therefore be struck down in Scotland's own courts.
3. If Johnson does permit Indyref2 then the Yes campaign still has to win this time, and that's not going to be so smart and easy. There aren't enough convinced pro-independence electors to turn the vote into a victory procession. The Scottish Government will therefore need to persuade a majority of the electorate that they have a workable plan to deal with Scotland's budget deficit, for what currency the country will use, and that the negative consequences of the dissolution of the Union - notably the end of a seamless single market between Scotland and the rest of the UK - are more than compensated for by the benefits of full sovereignty and the new opportunities and levers of power that this will deliver to the Scottish people. If the middling, transactional voters who are willing to jump either way aren't convinced, then they will stick to nurse and the Union will win out with room to spare just like it did last time.
I think that you're probably right in that independence is a matter of "when" rather than "if" - the supporters of independence only require one decisive victory over the Unionists at some point in the future to make it happen - but it doesn't necessarily follow that "when" won't be a long time coming.
Older Black voters are the most reliable voting block for the Democrats but they are also the most conservative and place a high emphasis on respect for elders and overall behaviour. They go to church. I would place a fairly large bet that having a young woman scream in the face of an elder Black gentleman is not to do down too well, especially if a scene that gets repeated. I can easily see a situation where, if this continues, these voters start to harbour doubts over whether a Democrat victory is really what they want.
Now, I can't see many of them voting for Trump given their historical ties and there is a belief about voting given the struggles for the vote in the 1950s and 1960s. However, I doubt many would tolerate a situation where young people are screaming abuse in their faces.
It should have been ' ... in front of the 50k debt'.
Think back to the other day and that video showing the white woman berating the black police officer for being part of a racist organization.
Cue many many comments on here on about how naff that was - none of which (as I recall) triggered you to intervene and support the woman in the name of the Enlightenment.
Unfortunately by the time i caught up with his main tip this morning, i.e. Trump to win between 101-150 Electoral College votes, the odds had shortened considerably from 6/1 to 4/1. As a result I opted for the lower risk "Less than 200 Electoral College votes", still on offer at 9/4 with SkyBet which looks like cracking value, where I staked £40 to win £90. I'll add this to my earlier bets on the Dems winning Wisconsin, then on offer at 1.85 with Betfair, but now a good deal shorter and starting to look like free money.
No I don't think he can win from here but he won't be crushed, as long as he doesn't admit to being a closet liberal.
In Principia Mathematica (PM) the notion of identity is defined following Leibniz as indiscernibility, namely indiscernible objects are identical. That is, ∀ϕ(ϕx≡ϕy)⊃x=y. But since the axiom of reducibility guarantees that if there is any type of function on which x and y differ, they will differ on some predicative function, PM uses the following definition of identity:
xτ=yτ=df∀ϕ[ϕ!(x)⊃ϕ!(y)],∗13⋅01
for ϕ! a predicative function.
In contemporary systems of logic an axiom or rule of inference allows that if x=y, then for any predicate ϕ, ϕx≡ϕy. In other words, identicals are indiscernible. The given definition of identity only suffices if it is not possible that entities x and y which share all predicative properties, cannot be distinguished by some property of a higher order. The axiom of reducibility guarantees that x and y sharing properties of any given higher order will entail sharing predicative properties, and so by the definition of identity, as in ‘x=y’.
In the appendix B to the second edition of PM, which was written by Russell, there is a technical discussion of the consequences of abandoning the axiom of reducibility. A faulty proof is proposed to show that the principle of Induction can be derived without using the axiom of reducibilty in a modified theory of types (see Linsky 2011). As Russell points out, however, it is not possible to show that the theory of real numbers as based on “Dedekindian” classes of rational numbers, without assuming the axiom of reducibility. (The thesis that every class of reals with an upper bound has a real number as its least upper bound, discussed above, would not be provable.) As a result, Russell says “analysis would collapse”. In all of this discussion, however, Russell does not indicate what would replace the definition of Identity in ∗13, which so crucially depends on the axiom of reducibility."
I don't think universities have changed so much in the meantime.
The right is attacking universities because they've figured out that the more educated people are the less likely they are to be taken in by their bollocks.
Deaths: 100
Cases: 890
Tests: 155,359