Just been watching PMQ's. The Prime Ministers performance must rank as the most pathetic, embarressing, incompetent, unprofessional and worrying that I have ever seen. He is clearly completely out of his depth. I cannot see him surviving much longer. There must be someone on the Government benches he could speak up for th government, he just blunders and tries to spread confusion, but has met the wrong person in Starmer. The IRA reference was quite despicable.
What was despicable was the Labour party continuing to tolerate Corbyn and then electing him leader despite his collaboration with the IRA. As someone who chose to be on his front bench, as opposed to those who stayed on the back benches, SKS does have to justify that even although his own record in anti-terrorism is clearly a lot stronger than Boris's.
Given Boris has a Revolutionary Communist Party member as a senior advisor and just elevated another to the Lords I think that is beyond dodgy ground for Johnson to get on to.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
I suppose Essex would be Alabama.
No, culturally Essex would be New Jersey.
Lincolnshire might be Alabama with the highest Brexit vote of any county in the UK
Ok that's better. Yes, Lincolnshire. They would have lots of guns there if they could and many of them are missing some teeth. I can see "dueling banjos" in Lincolnshire.
I hate to spoil your fun, but the Electoral College does one pointless undemocratic thing: "interprets" the result of a national vote for a national office, occasionally randomly changing it so that the person who comes second wins, and then it goes home. It has no UK equivalent. It is nothing at all like the House of Commons. The closest US equivalent to the House of Commons would be the House of Representatives, if anything.
DavidL. Despicable, the comment was and despicable the PM was. Whatever Corbyn may have done or said, is totally irrelevant. It was directed at Starmer , that cannot and should not be avoided. I voted Tory in 2015!
Starmer was content to serve in Corbyn's Cabinet and to make Corbyn Prime Minister. He can't just dismiss that as irrelevant.
I'm not going to try and score Shagger vs SKS. Just to giggle like a child that anyone thinks the PM has even the remotest grasp on anything thats going on.
Far more interesting is the Speaker. Tories HATED Bercow intervening on Tory ministers. And here is Hoyle doing the same thing for the same reasons in pretty much the same patronising tone.
Just been watching PMQ's. The Prime Ministers performance must rank as the most pathetic, embarressing, incompetent, unprofessional and worrying that I have ever seen. He is clearly completely out of his depth. I cannot see him surviving much longer. There must be someone on the Government benches he could speak up for th government, he just blunders and tries to spread confusion, but has met the wrong person in Starmer. The IRA reference was quite despicable.
What was despicable was the Labour party continuing to tolerate Corbyn and then electing him leader despite his collaboration with the IRA. As someone who chose to be on his front bench, as opposed to those who stayed on the back benches, SKS does have to justify that even although his own record in anti-terrorism is clearly a lot stronger than Boris's.
Given Boris has a Revolutionary Communist Party member as a senior advisor and just elevated another to the Lords I think that is beyond dodgy ground for Johnson to get on to.
You might just be missing "former" somewhere in there....
Corbyn has never been a "former" anything, with the exception of virgin.
I watched PMQs. The PM was dreadful. His technique of refusing to answer a straight question, and seeking to divert to a pre-planned attack line (including the absurd IRA line), is running out of road. Even the Speaker is getting fed up with it. Any objective observer would conclude that BJ was an embarrassment. He keeps pushing on the school thing, but it's sinking - Starmer's kids have been at school throughout. I can't believe Tory backbenchers would have been at all happy with this.
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
I'm not going to try and score Shagger vs SKS. Just to giggle like a child that anyone thinks the PM has even the remotest grasp on anything thats going on.
Far more interesting is the Speaker. Tories HATED Bercow intervening on Tory ministers. And here is Hoyle doing the same thing for the same reasons in pretty much the same patronising tone.
I do not think Hoyle was patronising. PMQs are supposed to be about holding the PM to account, not about letting the PM rant, babble, dodge and swerve.
I'm not going to try and score Shagger vs SKS. Just to giggle like a child that anyone thinks the PM has even the remotest grasp on anything thats going on.
Far more interesting is the Speaker. Tories HATED Bercow intervening on Tory ministers. And here is Hoyle doing the same thing for the same reasons in pretty much the same patronising tone.
The difference is Hoyle's remained steadfastly neutral on the biggest non party-political political issue of our times.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
“You as a leftwinger” Bzzt.
“Would want to make it easier to win...” We’re not proposing an Electoral reform; we’re illustrating how rolling up populations to a big size and allocating population-based seats/EVs on a winner-take-all basis leads to distorted and perverse outcomes.
The point of this wasn’t to derive a system for a favoured party to win, old chap.
We can take it further: England get 500 EC votes Scotland 60 Wales 30 and NI 20. Whoever wins the election in England becomes prime minister, the others are irrelevant.
A bit too far. No single US State has anything close to a majority of the EVs. Regions are fairly close size-wise to US States, and no region has more than 11% of all EVs (cf the largest US State has just over 10% of all EVs).
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
“You as a leftwinger” Bzzt.
“Would want to make it easier to win...” We’re not proposing an Electoral reform; we’re illustrating how rolling up populations to a big size and allocating population-based seats/EVs on a winner-take-all basis leads to distorted and perverse outcomes.
The point of this wasn’t to derive a system for a favoured party to win, old chap.
We can take it further: England get 500 EC votes Scotland 60 Wales 30 and NI 20. Whoever wins the election in England becomes prime minister, the others are irrelevant.
A bit too far. No single US State has anything close to a majority of the EVs. Regions are fairly close size-wise to US States, and no region has more than 11% of all EVs (cf the largest US State has just over 10% of all EVs).
Counties are surely more equivalent proportionally to states than regions are?
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
No, that's the entire point of your discussion.
The rest of us, before you came in, were discussing the distortive effects of the Electoral College with winner-take-all summing up of entire population-based Electoral Votes when the areas in question are about the size they are in the US. And reading that effect across to the UK. Read back on the discussion.
Not everything is about proving that the Tories won, or should win, or whatever.
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
It's surprising no-one has shouted it out yet, even if the Speaker did advise against it. Could an MP really be censured for using his freedom of speech?
Watch for someone in the Lords doing it too, Guido seems to think that there's a campaign asking around members of the red benches to name the MP.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
“You as a leftwinger” Bzzt.
“Would want to make it easier to win...” We’re not proposing an Electoral reform; we’re illustrating how rolling up populations to a big size and allocating population-based seats/EVs on a winner-take-all basis leads to distorted and perverse outcomes.
The point of this wasn’t to derive a system for a favoured party to win, old chap.
We can take it further: England get 500 EC votes Scotland 60 Wales 30 and NI 20. Whoever wins the election in England becomes prime minister, the others are irrelevant.
A bit too far. No single US State has anything close to a majority of the EVs. Regions are fairly close size-wise to US States, and no region has more than 11% of all EVs (cf the largest US State has just over 10% of all EVs).
Rutland could be the Wyoming and the City of London the Washington DC de nos jours.
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
I suppose Essex would be Alabama.
No, culturally Essex would be New Jersey.
Lincolnshire might be Alabama with the highest Brexit vote of any county in the UK
Ok that's better. Yes, Lincolnshire. They would have lots of guns there if they could and many of them are missing some teeth. I can see "dueling banjos" in Lincolnshire.
100%. The Isle of Axholme was responsible for some of the original duelling banjo types in the US (via the Mayflower). I'm afraid the tune always comes to my mind when passing though some of the villages...some of which are rather down-at-heel.
That probably says more about me than them, though.
Polls moving well for Trump in the critical states. Forget the national vote, its the individual states, no good Biden getting 65 - 70% in New York etc, Trump seems to be ahead in the marginal areas, which won him the election last time. It is not just one pollster now, its becoming a steady drift. Lets be fair Biden does not look the ticket really, does he, very staid, no inspiratriuon for the young to go out and vote.Over the past week seems as if Trump has picked up the undecided, presumably the violence in Wisconsin. The Oregon sitiation died not seem to have any impact on the national situation. 4 more years, God help us.
So with the exception of the Trafalgar Group who are these "not just one" pollsters?
Trafalgar Group had Trump ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida in 2016 too, no other pollster had Trump ahead in all those 3 states and without them Trump would have lost
You keep saying that. But if you want to look at the track record from 2016 (which is anyway of questionable value) the honest question to ask would be which pollster was closest in those states - (and other states)? For example, I think there were 8 pollsters who got the Florida result closer than Trafalgar in 2016 in their last polls before the election.
So what, you don't get EC votes by voteshare margin you get EC votes by winning a state even if you win by only 1 vote.
Trafalgar Group as I said was the only pollster who correctly forecast Trump was ahead in enough states to win the Electoral College and the Presidency.
Which doesn't make them right, their polls were awfully wrong and by coincidence not accuracy got the right result.
Every single pollster last time said that Trump was within margin of error of being the winner in Florida. Every single pollster was more accurate in Florida than Trafalgar.
So what, the only thing that mattered was forecasting who won the state, which Trafalgar did in Florida but also Michigan and Pennsylvania which other pollsters did not.
Now that might mean you can pay more attention to Trafalgar Group's Michigan and Pennsylvania polls this year and look at other pollsters for Florida polling but that does not dispute the fact Trafalgar Group were correct in 2016 in calling the winner
You are making an assumption that getting an error that happened to fall on the right side of the line in a handful of US States in 2016 means they have a particularly predictive force this time around.
Does this mean that you think whoever got the last UK General Election closer is likely to always get the subsequent one closest? (Hint - doesn't usually work out that way).
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Just seen some new forecasts come through for Q3. City consensus looks like 17%, European and American banks closer to 15%, UK banks (and UK branches of European banks) closer to 20%. There isn't usually such a big spread but I think European banks especially have underestimated the scale of WFH in the UK and are misunderstanding the real-time indicators showing that public transport use is still only 55% of the prior year.
One of our guys thinks that the £500m EOTHO spend has got close to a 9x economic multiplier based on transaction data we've received from POS and merchant services companies. He says it's the single most successful economic policy of the last 50 years. He thinks the chancellor should extend it for non franchise restaurants with 50 or fewer locations until the end of the year, essentially locking out the big chains like McDonalds and KFC but allowing smaller chains and independents to continue benefiting. It would also cut the cost of the policy by 50-60%.
July GDP data is going to be a very big day for the UK, it should show that the UK is currently the fastest growing global economy and is having the best bounceback and give us a sense of where we're headed by December.
On topic, the odds on Harris and Pence should be the other way around, the one that is the incumbent Vice President should be the shortest odds.
Anyhoo aren't we in the window where as per Betfair's terms and conditions the winner can only be either Trump or Biden*, as they will be the ones on the ballot papers/electoral college electors**
*I'm excluding third party candidates
**Faithless voters won't count.
No. It is wrong to suppose that Betfair are accepting bets on candidates who can't win. Excluding third parties and disregarding faithless voters, the winner according to BF's Ts&Cs does NOT have to be one of Trump and Biden.
Here's why. Assume it's Trump who leaves the race, although it could be Biden. So if Trump leaves the race and the RNC choose let's say Pence for the sake of argument, then if some or all states say Trump must nonetheless "stay on the ballot paper", then the GOP will say that a vote for "Trump" means a vote for Pence in those states. Then if "Trump" i.e. Pence wins pluralities in enough states to bag 270 ECVs on the assumption of no faithless electors, the "projected" EC winner according to Betfair's Ts&Cs will be PENCE. It doesn't matter whether you call an EC vote for Pence "faithless" or not. The Ts&Cs say that events "subsequent" to a person becoming the PROJECTED winner are not taken into account.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Somebody is upset their man got destroyed today
Not really. I stand by what I said earlier - reheated stale old arguments. Nobody will change their minds.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
Stocky wrote a comment earlier saying he doesn't know where Trump's extra voters come this time round vs 2016 so I will provide an idea:
1. 3rd party voters, namely those who voted Libertarian or McMullin in 2016. Roughly, 5m more voted in 2016 than 2012. Clinton was equal with Obama on votes, with Trump picking up roughly 1/3 of the extra votes but most of the rest going to third parties. I haven't seen any polling on this but there is a decent chance many of these were Republicans who couldn't stand Trump. I think they still don't like him but, given the culture wars and Trump's judicial appointment (and the Kavanaugh case), there is a chance he recoups some of these.
2. Black voters, mainly in inner cities who are tired of the violence. There are some signs that there is more Black voters are willing to vote for Trump (e.g. Emerson) and, while Trump will never get a huge shift, if he can get an extra couple of percentage points whilst also persuading a larger number not to vote for the Democrats, that is a crucial difference in states like MI, PA, MN and, arguably, VA.
3. Hispanic voters. There have been signs for a while now of a drift to the GOP (Julian Castro warned Biden about this several weeks back). Note the talk about The Wall and Mexican r*pists has dropped off the radar. Also note that the Hispanic community has been entirely absent from the BLM debate and has been somewhat shunted out of the picture.
Also apologies if these have been highlighted but two state polls out, Trump at +2 with ECU in NC and +7 in Georgia. There looks to have been a drop off recently in comments that the Democrats can take Georgia, which ties in with this poll.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Somebody is upset their man got destroyed today
Not really. I stand by what I said earlier - reheated stale old arguments. Nobody will change their minds.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
Well the poll gap keeps shrinking, so I think the public are coming round to my views more and more
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
It's surprising no-one has shouted it out yet, even if the Speaker did advise against it. Could an MP really be censured for using his freedom of speech?
Watch for someone in the Lords doing it too, Guido seems to think that there's a campaign asking around members of the red benches to name the MP.
We know they're a Tory, and male. Narrows it down to about 300 I think. And that they're not currently heading to the Commons. You can figure it out like a giant Guess Who game I think.
I'm not going to try and score Shagger vs SKS. Just to giggle like a child that anyone thinks the PM has even the remotest grasp on anything thats going on.
Far more interesting is the Speaker. Tories HATED Bercow intervening on Tory ministers. And here is Hoyle doing the same thing for the same reasons in pretty much the same patronising tone.
The difference is Hoyle's remained steadfastly neutral on the biggest non party-political political issue of our times.
No, the difference is the personal animosity between Cameron and Bercow that started long before Brexit. Whether Bercow slapped Sam's arse at a Royal Garden Party or each wound the other up with his de haut en bas manner, it veered towards the unprofessional on both sides.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Somebody is upset their man got destroyed today
Not really. I stand by what I said earlier - reheated stale old arguments. Nobody will change their minds.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
Well the poll gap keeps shrinking, so I think the public are coming round to my views more and more
Shrinking? I'm flabbergasted Labour aren't in the lead already.
Except when Corbyn was LOTO the Tories almost never keep poll leads while in office. Labour leads in the polls are absolutely ironclad inevitable but won't bother me when they happen. Labour poll leads absolutely nailed on guarantee.
2010-2015 by this stage there was a Labour lead that remained consistent for 4 years. Labour lost the subsequent election.
I remember the day after the bombings Red Ken made a point of being seen on the Tube. It was one of the more impressive things he did. Ministers (and the current Mayor) really should be doing the same. Now.
So what, the only thing that mattered was forecasting who won the state, which Trafalgar did in Florida but also Michigan and Pennsylvania which other pollsters did not.
Now that might mean you can pay more attention to Trafalgar Group's Michigan and Pennsylvania polls this year and look at other pollsters for Florida polling but that does not dispute the fact Trafalgar Group were correct in 2016 in calling the winner
You are making an assumption that getting an error that happened to fall on the right side of the line in a handful of US States in 2016 means they have a particularly predictive force this time around.
Does this mean that you think whoever got the last UK General Election closer is likely to always get the subsequent one closest? (Hint - doesn't usually work out that way).
They were not so hot in 2018, called the result correctly but they were way off in some races by 10 points or so. As said below just because you on the correct side of the line does not mean you are the most accurate. They had a good 2016, a not so great 2018, so I am not taking them as a gold standard by any means.
New Director-General making himself heard on his first day.
A promising start.
And coming soon - some right wing comedy!
Although with "Boris" Johnson on TV quite regularly, is there really a need?
It's not to do with left-wing comedy or right-wing comedy.
It's that comedy is supposed to be funny, rather than just a rant any anyone who disagrees with the woke ideology.
It's not difficult to come up with a comedy show that pokes fun at everyone in equal measure and in an amusing manner. If they make it funny, everyone will watch, rather than just the metropolitan woke subset of the population.
You’d think that the UK was the only country to reopen schools the way Johnson is using it as great progress even before he knows if it will be a success.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Somebody is upset their man got destroyed today
Not really. I stand by what I said earlier - reheated stale old arguments. Nobody will change their minds.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
One drop, then two then three. Eventually the bucket overflows.
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
It's surprising no-one has shouted it out yet, even if the Speaker did advise against it. Could an MP really be censured for using his freedom of speech?
Watch for someone in the Lords doing it too, Guido seems to think that there's a campaign asking around members of the red benches to name the MP.
We know they're a Tory, and male. Narrows it down to about 300 I think. And that they're not currently heading to the Commons. You can figure it out like a giant Guess Who game I think.
If an MP shouted out the name, and caused legal issue with the courts (screwing up a trial), I would imagine the Speaker would have something to say.
Polls moving well for Trump in the critical states. Forget the national vote, its the individual states, no good Biden getting 65 - 70% in New York etc, Trump seems to be ahead in the marginal areas, which won him the election last time. It is not just one pollster now, its becoming a steady drift. Lets be fair Biden does not look the ticket really, does he, very staid, no inspiratriuon for the young to go out and vote.Over the past week seems as if Trump has picked up the undecided, presumably the violence in Wisconsin. The Oregon sitiation died not seem to have any impact on the national situation. 4 more years, God help us.
So with the exception of the Trafalgar Group who are these "not just one" pollsters?
Trafalgar Group had Trump ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida in 2016 too, no other pollster had Trump ahead in all those 3 states and without them Trump would have lost
You keep saying that. But if you want to look at the track record from 2016 (which is anyway of questionable value) the honest question to ask would be which pollster was closest in those states - (and other states)? For example, I think there were 8 pollsters who got the Florida result closer than Trafalgar in 2016 in their last polls before the election.
So what, you don't get EC votes by voteshare margin you get EC votes by winning a state even if you win by only 1 vote.
Trafalgar Group as I said was the only pollster who correctly forecast Trump was ahead in enough states to win the Electoral College and the Presidency.
Which doesn't make them right, their polls were awfully wrong and by coincidence not accuracy got the right result.
Every single pollster last time said that Trump was within margin of error of being the winner in Florida. Every single pollster was more accurate in Florida than Trafalgar.
So what, the only thing that mattered was forecasting who won the state, which Trafalgar did in Florida but also Michigan and Pennsylvania which other pollsters did not.
Now that might mean you can pay more attention to Trafalgar Group's Michigan and Pennsylvania polls this year and look at other pollsters for Florida polling but that does not dispute the fact Trafalgar Group were correct in 2016 in calling the winner
You are making an assumption that getting an error that happened to fall on the right side of the line in a handful of US States in 2016 means they have a particularly predictive force this time around.
Does this mean that you think whoever got the last UK General Election closer is likely to always get the subsequent one closest? (Hint - doesn't usually work out that way).
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
It's surprising no-one has shouted it out yet, even if the Speaker did advise against it. Could an MP really be censured for using his freedom of speech?
Watch for someone in the Lords doing it too, Guido seems to think that there's a campaign asking around members of the red benches to name the MP.
We know they're a Tory, and male. Narrows it down to about 300 I think. And that they're not currently heading to the Commons. You can figure it out like a giant Guess Who game I think.
It's pretty easy to work it out (I think) from the clues that were given at the start of the scandal. Each newspaper individually didn't provide enough details to identify the man, but if you read them all you could get it down to a handful pretty quickly.
The reason most people don't go on the tube but do go to pubs etc is not because the tube is not thought safe but because they dont like wearing masks. If they acknowledge that without pressing the mask thing then more people will use public transport again.
The tube probably has a younger average age than the population .The younger the population is then the more likely they are not going on public transport because they dont like wearing masks not because they think it is not safe. Why else are beaches crowded , pubs and restaurants full etc but not public transport? Its the compulsory nature of having to wear a mask that is the problem and definitely not the solution to reducing gridlock
If Trump does win in the EC, but loses the national vote by 2-3%, how sustainable is this? In a national vote for a national president, with effectively a 2 party system, that the party that keeps getting millions fewer votes keeps winning?
Add to that the gerrymandered House and Senate, and the highly political judiciary stuffed with increasingly out of touch with majority opinion ultra-conservative judges - isn't it a recipe for the disenfranchised majority getting extremely pissed off?
It's entirely sustainable. The Democrats if that happens will need to target states other than California.
That is the system working by design and not a flaw.
It IS a flaw, and plenty of Americans hate it quite understandably. The fact that you think it is a good system doesn't make it one. None of the better democracies use such a stupid system, and I don't see any country racing to copy it. That might tell you something.
We use an equivalent one in the U.K.
Fundamentally it represents communities not individuals.
You disagree. Fine. But it’s not stupid
The Electoral College is stupid (if you like it, fine, but it is still stupid). And we do not use an equivalent one in the UK.
States / constituencies elect MPs
The MPs caucus together and select a head of the executive branch
What’s fundamentally different?
What's fundamentally different is the winner-takes-all nature of the Electoral College at a statewide level. Take Florida 2000 as a famous example. Even discarding the hanging chads issues, there were millions of votes for both candidates but only a few hundred lead for Bush and the result was that all 25 Electoral College votes went to Bush. A few hundred votes the other way and all 25 would have switched to Gore.
The UK doesn't switch MPs en bloc like that. Since the 1948 Representation of the People Act each constituency in the United Kingdom is only worth a single MP. That is completely different to the US system.
As an example if we were to operate like the USA then take Lancashire. Lancashire has 16 constituencies which have gone 11 to the Tories, 4 to Labour and 1 to The Speaker. Under the US system it would be 16 to the Tories. In 2005 Labour won 12 of 15, with the Tories getting 3, while in 2010 the Tories won 9, Labour 6 and LDs 1. In the US system it would have been 2005 Labour 15, Tories 0; in 2010 Tories 16, Labour 0.
That's a big difference.
I've had a quick look at the past 4 elections. If we'd voted by region as Electoral College votes, we'd have had:
2019: Con 356, Lab 217, SNP 59, DUP 18 votes. Con win 2017: Con 302, Lab 271, SNP 59, DUP 18. No winner; vote goes "to the house" and voted on by State Delegations. Con have 5, Lab have 5, SNP have 1, DUP have 1. House likely split; there'll be a lot of voting until either the SNP buckle and put the Tories in (unlikely!) or the DUP get bought off by Labour. Likely Corbyn Government. 2015: Exactly the same as 2017. 2010: Con 302, Lab 330, Sinn Fein 18. Gordon Brown wins.
Prior to that, Labour did better, so I can't see a Tory Government under Regional Electoral College voting until 1992 at the closest, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still lost there. Labour's grip on the Electoral Votes of Scotland, Wales, the NE, NW, London, and Yorkshire and Humberside prior to that means they've got 330 EVs in the bag. Since losing Scotland's EVs to the SNP, that's been hit, but that's not helpful to the Tories. The 2019 election, instead of being a Tory landslide, came down to a 4% gap in Yorkshire & Humberside. A tiny slip there puts Labour back into Downing Street.
Except if we were voting on EC college lines we would be voting by county not on regional lines, Essex and Kent and Yorkshire for example have bigger populations than some US states.
In the US the regions are the West, South, North East and Midwest, which split 50-50 in 2016 between Trump and Hillary even though Trump won a big EC margin statewide.
At GE19 the Tories won 40 counties, Labour won just 6.
No, we wouldn't. Counties would be an absurd comparator.
In England, they range from 39,000 population, with a median population of just over 900,000 Compare with the US; states range from just under 600,000, with a median population of 4.7 million.
The entire point of the discussion was about lumping in loads of votes like that on winner-take-all. FPTP gets less and less distorted the smaller the constituency size; comparing counties with States totally sidesteps the entire point.
Oh yes we would.
As I said Essex, Yorkshire, Kent etc all have populations in the millions which are bigger than US states with EC votes from Vermont and Maine to Wyoming and Montana. Indeed Yorkshire has a bigger population than 29 US states. As the UK population is a fifth of the US population the comparison also works on a percentage basis.
The entire point of the discussion is leftwingers would want to impose artificial regions to make it easier to win on our historic counties which have a history longer in fact than US states, the US uses states in the EC we would use counties in a UK EC.
I suppose Essex would be Alabama.
No, culturally Essex would be New Jersey.
Lincolnshire might be Alabama with the highest Brexit vote of any county in the UK
Ok that's better. Yes, Lincolnshire. They would have lots of guns there if they could and many of them are missing some teeth. I can see "dueling banjos" in Lincolnshire.
I hate to spoil your fun, but the Electoral College does one pointless undemocratic thing: "interprets" the result of a national vote for a national office, occasionally randomly changing it so that the person who comes second wins, and then it goes home. It has no UK equivalent. It is nothing at all like the House of Commons. The closest US equivalent to the House of Commons would be the House of Representatives, if anything.
Fun duly spoiled. My view on the EC is the same as my view on FPTP here. I like it for the drama and the quirks it brings to an election but my head tells me there are better and fairer ways to turn votes into representation.
Just seen some new forecasts come through for Q3. City consensus looks like 17%, European and American banks closer to 15%, UK banks (and UK branches of European banks) closer to 20%. There isn't usually such a big spread but I think European banks especially have underestimated the scale of WFH in the UK and are misunderstanding the real-time indicators showing that public transport use is still only 55% of the prior year.
One of our guys thinks that the £500m EOTHO spend has got close to a 9x economic multiplier based on transaction data we've received from POS and merchant services companies. He says it's the single most successful economic policy of the last 50 years. He thinks the chancellor should extend it for non franchise restaurants with 50 or fewer locations until the end of the year, essentially locking out the big chains like McDonalds and KFC but allowing smaller chains and independents to continue benefiting. It would also cut the cost of the policy by 50-60%.
July GDP data is going to be a very big day for the UK, it should show that the UK is currently the fastest growing global economy and is having the best bounceback and give us a sense of where we're headed by December.
And still people witter on about the tenths of one percent that a bad deal with the EU might cost our economy. There are so many more important things to worry about.
At PMQs there was a suggestion that the furlough scheme should be retained but restricted to particular sectors which are still closed down. Holiday companies might be an obvious start. Definitely worth some thought although Boris is right to hammer the general principle that its time to get back to work (he could start by applying that to public bodies though).
The results of the EOTHO scheme are just unbelievably good and your colleague's idea of how it might be extended in a more limited form is a good one.
There are going to be significant tax and cash flow issues in the next year as deferred tax and VAT becomes payable. We need plans now as to how that is going to be managed. ATM I am facing 2 tax bills payable in January based on my earnings before lockdown. I will not be alone.
Another point made at PMQs was the lack of availability of bounce back loans for those not using bank funding but secondary lenders. Many of these will be quite dynamic companies which will be important to future growth and this needs to be addressed.
On topic, the odds on Harris and Pence should be the other way around, the one that is the incumbent Vice President should be the shortest odds.
Anyhoo aren't we in the window where as per Betfair's terms and conditions the winner can only be either Trump or Biden*, as they will be the ones on the ballot papers/electoral college electors**
*I'm excluding third party candidates
**Faithless voters won't count.
No. It is wrong to suppose that Betfair are accepting bets on candidates who can't win. Excluding third parties and disregarding faithless voters, the winner according to BF's Ts&Cs does NOT have to be one of Trump and Biden.
Here's why. Assume it's Trump who leaves the race, although it could be Biden. So if Trump leaves the race and the RNC choose let's say Pence for the sake of argument, then if some or all states say Trump must nonetheless "stay on the ballot paper", then the GOP will say that a vote for "Trump" means a vote for Pence in those states. Then if "Trump" i.e. Pence wins pluralities in enough states to bag 270 ECVs on the assumption of no faithless electors, the "projected" EC winner according to Betfair's Ts&Cs will be PENCE. It doesn't matter whether you call an EC vote for Pence "faithless" or not. The Ts&Cs say that events "subsequent" to a person becoming the PROJECTED winner are not taken into account.
We went through this in 2016 when someone people thought Hillary Clinton had weeks to live and it was too late to take her off the ballot papers.
If she had withdrawn/died and the Dems won, Betfair wouldn't pay out on a Paine victory in the electoral college, even if he won the electoral college 538-0.
Plus there's this.
There are 33 states (plus the District of Columbia) that require electors to vote for a pledged candidate. Most of those states (16 plus DC) nonetheless do not provide for any penalty or any mechanism to prevent the deviant vote from counting as cast. Five states provide a penalty of some sort for a deviant vote, and 14 states provide for the vote to be canceled and the elector replaced (two states do both). The constitutionality of these laws was upheld by the Supreme Court in Chiafalo v. Washington on July 6, 2020.
Someone of us remember how much of a pain Betfair were over the Theresa May exit date market, and the effort and time it took to get stuff sorted.
Many people didn't.
If this doesn't scare you, from Betfair's Ts&Cs
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. ...
..If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.
I'm very confused, was Johnson's gotcha on Starmer for the exams seriously "will you congratulate the students on their hard work"
Wut
QTWAIN.
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
Somebody is upset their man got destroyed today
Not really. I stand by what I said earlier - reheated stale old arguments. Nobody will change their minds.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
One drop, then two then three. Eventually the bucket overflows.
Oh indeed but this is same dripping wet nonsense we were dealing with weeks ago.
I appreciate there was no PMQs at the time so Starmer couldn't get his digs in, in the Commons, at the time . . . but was there nothing new to talk about? Nothing about the return to schools, the future of the economy, forthcoming issues?
Nah just repeat the same drops that we've all heard repeatedly already. That'll change people's minds!
Just seen some new forecasts come through for Q3. City consensus looks like 17%, European and American banks closer to 15%, UK banks (and UK branches of European banks) closer to 20%. There isn't usually such a big spread but I think European banks especially have underestimated the scale of WFH in the UK and are misunderstanding the real-time indicators showing that public transport use is still only 55% of the prior year.
One of our guys thinks that the £500m EOTHO spend has got close to a 9x economic multiplier based on transaction data we've received from POS and merchant services companies. He says it's the single most successful economic policy of the last 50 years. He thinks the chancellor should extend it for non franchise restaurants with 50 or fewer locations until the end of the year, essentially locking out the big chains like McDonalds and KFC but allowing smaller chains and independents to continue benefiting. It would also cut the cost of the policy by 50-60%.
July GDP data is going to be a very big day for the UK, it should show that the UK is currently the fastest growing global economy and is having the best bounceback and give us a sense of where we're headed by December.
Public transport usage at 55%? That's a massive return to usage in recent weeks...
You’d think that the UK was the only country to reopen schools the way Johnson is using it as great progress even before he knows if it will be a success.
At least reopening schools is actually news. Starmer didn't have anything new to talk about so he dug out the stale leftovers from the news of a month ago and put that in the microwave instead.
And everyone who enjoyed that dish at the time sang his praise for it again. Because that's new.
The reason most people don't go on the tube but do go to pubs etc is not because the tube is not thought safe but because they dont like wearing masks. If they acknowledge that without pressing the mask thing then more people will use public transport again.
The tube probably has a younger average age than the population .The younger the population is then the more likely they are not going on public transport because they dont like wearing masks not because they think it is not safe. Why else are beaches crowded , pubs and restaurants full etc but not public transport? Its the compulsory nature of having to wear a mask that is the problem and definitely not the solution to reducing gridlock
I've gone to the local shops far less since masks came in - for that very reason.
I now only do essential grocery shopping, or shop online, or go to pubs and restaurants (where they aren't necessary).
You’d think that the UK was the only country to reopen schools the way Johnson is using it as great progress even before he knows if it will be a success.
At least reopening schools is actually news. Starmer didn't have anything new to talk about so he dug out the stale leftovers from the news of a month ago and put that in the microwave instead.
And everyone who enjoyed that dish at the time sang his praise for it again. Because that's new.
It is tragic how you thought that was a good PMQs performance for Johnson
The reason most people don't go on the tube but do go to pubs etc is not because the tube is not thought safe but because they dont like wearing masks. If they acknowledge that without pressing the mask thing then more people will use public transport again.
The tube probably has a younger average age than the population .The younger the population is then the more likely they are not going on public transport because they dont like wearing masks not because they think it is not safe. Why else are beaches crowded , pubs and restaurants full etc but not public transport? Its the compulsory nature of having to wear a mask that is the problem and definitely not the solution to reducing gridlock
Polls moving well for Trump in the critical states. Forget the national vote, its the individual states, no good Biden getting 65 - 70% in New York etc, Trump seems to be ahead in the marginal areas, which won him the election last time. It is not just one pollster now, its becoming a steady drift. Lets be fair Biden does not look the ticket really, does he, very staid, no inspiratriuon for the young to go out and vote.Over the past week seems as if Trump has picked up the undecided, presumably the violence in Wisconsin. The Oregon sitiation died not seem to have any impact on the national situation. 4 more years, God help us.
So with the exception of the Trafalgar Group who are these "not just one" pollsters?
Trafalgar Group had Trump ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida in 2016 too, no other pollster had Trump ahead in all those 3 states and without them Trump would have lost
You keep saying that. But if you want to look at the track record from 2016 (which is anyway of questionable value) the honest question to ask would be which pollster was closest in those states - (and other states)? For example, I think there were 8 pollsters who got the Florida result closer than Trafalgar in 2016 in their last polls before the election.
So what, you don't get EC votes by voteshare margin you get EC votes by winning a state even if you win by only 1 vote.
Trafalgar Group as I said was the only pollster who correctly forecast Trump was ahead in enough states to win the Electoral College and the Presidency.
Which doesn't make them right, their polls were awfully wrong and by coincidence not accuracy got the right result.
Every single pollster last time said that Trump was within margin of error of being the winner in Florida. Every single pollster was more accurate in Florida than Trafalgar.
So what, the only thing that mattered was forecasting who won the state, which Trafalgar did in Florida but also Michigan and Pennsylvania which other pollsters did not.
Now that might mean you can pay more attention to Trafalgar Group's Michigan and Pennsylvania polls this year and look at other pollsters for Florida polling but that does not dispute the fact Trafalgar Group were correct in 2016 in calling the winner
You are making an assumption that getting an error that happened to fall on the right side of the line in a handful of US States in 2016 means they have a particularly predictive force this time around.
Does this mean that you think whoever got the last UK General Election closer is likely to always get the subsequent one closest? (Hint - doesn't usually work out that way).
So the UK pollster which was closest in 2017 was also nearly spot on in 2019 too
2019: Opinium closest 2017: tie - Survation/Kantor closest 2015: All wrong (with published polls; non-published polls don't count for forecasting purposes); ComRes and Opinium least worst. 2010: ICM closest 2005: NOP closest
You're totally ignoring that the actual error in most Trafalgar polls is greater than most other polls. They happened to err in the right direction in one election in appropriate States. They were absymal in 2018.
These aren't horoscopes. It's not arcane magic. You don't pick the pattern of the constellations. It's statistics, and the mechanics of polling. You don't seem to give a stuff about what's behind it as long as you can pick out something that fits whatever-it-is you've decided in advance.
And it displays a remarkable level of cognitive dissonance.
The crocodile tears over this on the soft-left over the past 24 hours have been instructive and very revealing. However, not all soft-left comics aren't able to recognise the obsessions and tedium of their own side when it comes to comedy:
Comments
Far more interesting is the Speaker. Tories HATED Bercow intervening on Tory ministers. And here is Hoyle doing the same thing for the same reasons in pretty much the same patronising tone.
[EDIT: I had a look through your post history. I presume you mean the 1922 letter post]
Corbyn has never been a "former" anything, with the exception of virgin.
Otherwise this could all have been resolved when the tweet first came out and before the entirely predicable response.
A promising start.
Oh, and we also know for sure that the MP facing allegations of sexual offences is definitely not Damien Green.
Even if this goes better than I expect, there are going to be teething troubles. And Boris is going to abandon the bridge at the key moment?
That would be the act of an incredibly selfish man. The honourable things would be to go now, or stick it out.
So we can guess what's more likely to happen.
Regions are fairly close size-wise to US States, and no region has more than 11% of all EVs (cf the largest US State has just over 10% of all EVs).
Wut
The rest of us, before you came in, were discussing the distortive effects of the Electoral College with winner-take-all summing up of entire population-based Electoral Votes when the areas in question are about the size they are in the US. And reading that effect across to the UK. Read back on the discussion.
Not everything is about proving that the Tories won, or should win, or whatever.
Indeed I voted for Blair twice despite being a lifelong conservative
Watch for someone in the Lords doing it too, Guido seems to think that there's a campaign asking around members of the red benches to name the MP.
As I said before, my political ideology is just the same, still a social democrat
Johnson accurately pointed out that Labour was opposed to teacher assessed grades and had agreed with Ofqual. Labour said teacher assessed grades would be the wrong thing to do. Captain Hindsight then changed to saying the grades were wrong at the same time as everyone else did and is trying to score points on the government's u-turn when the Labour government in Wales and the Labour Party under Starmer had made the identically same u-turn!
But why let facts get in the way of childishly giggling "hee hee hee you made a u-turn"
That probably says more about me than them, though.
Does this mean that you think whoever got the last UK General Election closer is likely to always get the subsequent one closest? (Hint - doesn't usually work out that way).
Plenty more to come, I hope!
One of our guys thinks that the £500m EOTHO spend has got close to a 9x economic multiplier based on transaction data we've received from POS and merchant services companies. He says it's the single most successful economic policy of the last 50 years. He thinks the chancellor should extend it for non franchise restaurants with 50 or fewer locations until the end of the year, essentially locking out the big chains like McDonalds and KFC but allowing smaller chains and independents to continue benefiting. It would also cut the cost of the policy by 50-60%.
July GDP data is going to be a very big day for the UK, it should show that the UK is currently the fastest growing global economy and is having the best bounceback and give us a sense of where we're headed by December.
Corbyn and Starmer are as different as chalk and cheese
Here's why. Assume it's Trump who leaves the race, although it could be Biden. So if Trump leaves the race and the RNC choose let's say Pence for the sake of argument, then if some or all states say Trump must nonetheless "stay on the ballot paper", then the GOP will say that a vote for "Trump" means a vote for Pence in those states. Then if "Trump" i.e. Pence wins pluralities in enough states to bag 270 ECVs on the assumption of no faithless electors, the "projected" EC winner according to Betfair's Ts&Cs will be PENCE. It doesn't matter whether you call an EC vote for Pence "faithless" or not. The Ts&Cs say that events "subsequent" to a person becoming the PROJECTED winner are not taken into account.
People attacking the government for u-turns 3 weeks ago or whenever it was are still doing so. People who didn't aren't. Has anyone changed or been influenced by PMQs today?
1. 3rd party voters, namely those who voted Libertarian or McMullin in 2016. Roughly, 5m more voted in 2016 than 2012. Clinton was equal with Obama on votes, with Trump picking up roughly 1/3 of the extra votes but most of the rest going to third parties. I haven't seen any polling on this but there is a decent chance many of these were Republicans who couldn't stand Trump. I think they still don't like him but, given the culture wars and Trump's judicial appointment (and the Kavanaugh case), there is a chance he recoups some of these.
2. Black voters, mainly in inner cities who are tired of the violence. There are some signs that there is more Black voters are willing to vote for Trump (e.g. Emerson) and, while Trump will never get a huge shift, if he can get an extra couple of percentage points whilst also persuading a larger number not to vote for the Democrats, that is a crucial difference in states like MI, PA, MN and, arguably, VA.
3. Hispanic voters. There have been signs for a while now of a drift to the GOP (Julian Castro warned Biden about this several weeks back). Note the talk about The Wall and Mexican r*pists has dropped off the radar. Also note that the Hispanic community has been entirely absent from the BLM debate and has been somewhat shunted out of the picture.
Also apologies if these have been highlighted but two state polls out, Trump at +2 with ECU in NC and +7 in Georgia. There looks to have been a drop off recently in comments that the Democrats can take Georgia, which ties in with this poll.
https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1301076662554107905?s=21
Ideologically I am more with Starmer than Corbyn, although I still think Corbyn would have been a better PM than Johnson.
I think I said at the time, the 2019 manifesto went too far even for me, I liked 2017 which was firmly social democratic
Although with "Boris" Johnson on TV quite regularly, is there really a need?
Except when Corbyn was LOTO the Tories almost never keep poll leads while in office. Labour leads in the polls are absolutely ironclad inevitable but won't bother me when they happen. Labour poll leads absolutely nailed on guarantee.
2010-2015 by this stage there was a Labour lead that remained consistent for 4 years. Labour lost the subsequent election.
So infections per x1000 in the population remain stable, with the number of cases rising.
So we are (as we have previously been) seeing an increase in the effectiveness of targeting of testing combined with a steady infection rate.
It's that comedy is supposed to be funny, rather than just a rant any anyone who disagrees with the woke ideology.
It's not difficult to come up with a comedy show that pokes fun at everyone in equal measure and in an amusing manner. If they make it funny, everyone will watch, rather than just the metropolitan woke subset of the population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2017_United_Kingdom_general_election
In 2019 Survation's final poll had the Tories up by 11% and the Tories won by 12%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
So the UK pollster which was closest in 2017 was also nearly spot on in 2019 too
https://twitter.com/iainjwatson/status/1301133199330902016
Oh, it wasn't a typo fo 69%.
The tube probably has a younger average age than the population .The younger the population is then the more likely they are not going on public transport because they dont like wearing masks not because they think it is not safe. Why else are beaches crowded , pubs and restaurants full etc but not public transport? Its the compulsory nature of having to wear a mask that is the problem and definitely not the solution to reducing gridlock
At PMQs there was a suggestion that the furlough scheme should be retained but restricted to particular sectors which are still closed down. Holiday companies might be an obvious start. Definitely worth some thought although Boris is right to hammer the general principle that its time to get back to work (he could start by applying that to public bodies though).
The results of the EOTHO scheme are just unbelievably good and your colleague's idea of how it might be extended in a more limited form is a good one.
There are going to be significant tax and cash flow issues in the next year as deferred tax and VAT becomes payable. We need plans now as to how that is going to be managed. ATM I am facing 2 tax bills payable in January based on my earnings before lockdown. I will not be alone.
Another point made at PMQs was the lack of availability of bounce back loans for those not using bank funding but secondary lenders. Many of these will be quite dynamic companies which will be important to future growth and this needs to be addressed.
Woah!
If she had withdrawn/died and the Dems won, Betfair wouldn't pay out on a Paine victory in the electoral college, even if he won the electoral college 538-0.
Plus there's this.
There are 33 states (plus the District of Columbia) that require electors to vote for a pledged candidate. Most of those states (16 plus DC) nonetheless do not provide for any penalty or any mechanism to prevent the deviant vote from counting as cast. Five states provide a penalty of some sort for a deviant vote, and 14 states provide for the vote to be canceled and the elector replaced (two states do both). The constitutionality of these laws was upheld by the Supreme Court in Chiafalo v. Washington on July 6, 2020.
https://www.fairvote.org/faithless_elector_state_laws
Someone of us remember how much of a pain Betfair were over the Theresa May exit date market, and the effort and time it took to get stuff sorted.
Many people didn't.
If this doesn't scare you, from Betfair's Ts&Cs
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
...
..If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.
I appreciate there was no PMQs at the time so Starmer couldn't get his digs in, in the Commons, at the time . . . but was there nothing new to talk about? Nothing about the return to schools, the future of the economy, forthcoming issues?
Nah just repeat the same drops that we've all heard repeatedly already. That'll change people's minds!
PM'd you.
And everyone who enjoyed that dish at the time sang his praise for it again. Because that's new.
Quick two lines on PMQs pls.
Thx
I now only do essential grocery shopping, or shop online, or go to pubs and restaurants (where they aren't necessary).
Interesting
Johnson won*
*delete as appropriate.
2017: tie - Survation/Kantor closest
2015: All wrong (with published polls; non-published polls don't count for forecasting purposes); ComRes and Opinium least worst.
2010: ICM closest
2005: NOP closest
You're totally ignoring that the actual error in most Trafalgar polls is greater than most other polls. They happened to err in the right direction in one election in appropriate States. They were absymal in 2018.
These aren't horoscopes. It's not arcane magic. You don't pick the pattern of the constellations. It's statistics, and the mechanics of polling. You don't seem to give a stuff about what's behind it as long as you can pick out something that fits whatever-it-is you've decided in advance.
Does the "H" stand for "Hedgehog"?
The crocodile tears over this on the soft-left over the past 24 hours have been instructive and very revealing. However, not all soft-left comics aren't able to recognise the obsessions and tedium of their own side when it comes to comedy:
https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1300803450113060865?s=20