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The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

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Frank

Quote from: Professor Bear on 27 November, 2019, 03:24:40 PM
This has aged well.

Quote from: Frank on 26 November, 2019, 09:31:03 PM
Neil's got Johnson on tomorrow.




If he can't handle this line of questioning, you can see why he's not keen on facing Weetabix Head:

https://youtu.be/-6PxJg3rgD8 *


* Keep watching right to the end, to see the wee face he does, like he's just survived an ordeal.

TordelBack

Quote from: Frank on 29 November, 2019, 08:24:45 PM
If he can't handle this line of questioning, you can see why he's not keen on facing Weetabix Head:

https://youtu.be/-6PxJg3rgD8 *

Leader of your country. That. Openly admitting he can't make his own decisions about who to speak to, as his cunning plan for getting out of giving a straight answer. 

Mind, if there'd more of this style of interview a few years back, we mightn't all be in this mess.

Professor Bear

Cameron fucked a pig and still got elected, while Ed Milliband lost an election because he ate a bacon sandwich funny - presumably because he put it in his mouth rather than on his cock.

It doesn't matter what Johnson does, as we don't have a media that's worth a single fuck.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

It's too easy to blame the media. The Brits created a culture where three different versions of The Sweet could exist simutaneously
You may quote me on that.

shaolin_monkey


Frank

Quote from: Proudhuff on 28 November, 2019, 12:48:02 PM
I see the Tory's are doing the old 'its too close to call' rouse they use every election, but hey it works  :( 

Polling's an art, not a science, and it's too far away from Dec 12th for things not to change a little, but this methodology produced the most accurate picture of the 2017 election result: Tory majority.

It seems too generous to me. I don't think anyone's changed their mind at all in the 2 minutes since we last did this. The only change in the calculus is that - for reasons that are entirely lost on me - Johnson's a much less unpopular leader than May.

Assuming YouGov's forecast is a bit too generous to the Tories, Johnson should only win the kind of majority* that was predicted for May before she self-sabotaged her campaign.

Labour's problem seems to be that whatever new support they've gained since 2015 is concentrated in large cities they were winning anyway, rather than the fish market and mothballed car factory towns where everyone's old enough to remember Bernard Manning on telly.

I'm in a constituency where the SNP and Tories both have more than double the vote share of Labour, so a tactical SNP vote to minimize the size of Johnson's majority is the only realistic option. There are a number of sites which help you see what the best chance of doing the same in your own area might be:

https://tactical.vote/


* Predicting seat wins is too difficult for a layman, but the balance of the popular vote in YouGov's poll looks suspect, to me. Tories and Labour were neck and neck 2.5 years ago. Like I say, I don't think anyone's changed their minds about anything in that time, so the spectacular collapse in Labour support/turnout (or huge increase in Tory support/turnout) required to produce that swing doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's been long enough dor the Lib-Dems to have lived down the shame of the Coalition years and become a repository for protest votes. I'm speaking from inside the bubble of Scotland, where there's 100% unanimity that Johnson's a fucking fanny, so I can't possibly have any reliable insight into what it is about Johnson that seems to speak to something inside the hearts of (some) English voters

Professor Bear

As the saying goes, "Yougov is the only accurate poll, all the others are outliers."

Was May unpopular?  I know she was despised in the lefty liberal bubble of social media, but so was Cameron.  I keep seeing the claim bandied about - by those on the left - that she was more popular than Thatcher and Blair at their peak, and she did deliver three million more votes than Cameron managed.
And Johnson is supposedly more popular than that?  At some point we may have to admit to ourselves that we might be getting what we deserve.

IndigoPrime

The methodology for polling right now isn't equipped to deal with hyper-local shifts and tactical voting. So it's a generalist view. It may well turn out to be accurate. But for Johnson to get a majority, all of the following have to come to pass:

- Con MPs all hang on in Scotland
- Labour > Conservative gains
- No Conservative > Lib Dem gains

Because the Lib Dems and Labour have spent so much time kicking each-other's faces in, rather than recognising the enemy is Johnson, there is a real possibility we'll see a lot of Richmond Parks – seats Lab or Lib could have won/retained had the other side voted tactically. And yet constituency polling suggests although some seats under threat of being lost to Con, some are also heading the other way. A little nudge here and there and the Tories may well lose the likes of Wimbledon.

My concerns right now are:

- The first of the list above does come to pass, and SNP only gain from Lab, not Con
- The LD vote falls back en masse, rather than merely strategically, meaning Con seats in south remain safe
- The lack of noise from LD in the SW, suggesting they just aren't making inroads there
- Idiotic decisions being made by opposition parties in key marginals, like Stroud, Richmond Park, and Canterbury

I totally get why Greens and Lib Dems don't want to stand aside for Labour. Labour is supremely arrogant. They assume they 'should' rule. They've stated that even under a minority scenario, they would 'expect' other opposition parties to simply back its policies and get nothing in return. But right now, we're staring at the abyss. And as much as I value the likes of Molly Scott Cato as an MEP, she's making a catastrophic error in Stroud.

Professor Bear

Labour know they can't ask their voters to support a party led by someone who stones squirrels, IP.  I mean even the Tories draw the line at stuff like that - well you know, after Heath they did.  I am reasonably certain none of them since well maybe IDS he's got that look and Cameron wasn't technically inflicting cruelty because the pig was dead at the time but I forget what I was saying anyway

THIS HAS AGED WELL:

Quote from: Frank on 29 November, 2019, 08:24:45 PM


Frank

Quote from: Professor Bear on 30 November, 2019, 12:25:58 PM
As the saying goes, "Yougov is the only accurate poll, all the others are outliers."

Was May unpopular?  I know she was despised in the lefty liberal bubble of social media, but so was Cameron.  I keep seeing the claim bandied about - by those on the left - that she was more popular than Thatcher and Blair at their peak, and she did deliver three million more votes than Cameron managed.
And Johnson is supposedly more popular than that?  At some point we may have to admit to ourselves that we might be getting what we deserve.

I'll stick with my original choice of less unpopular to describe Johnson in relation to May. She got the wee bounce you'd expect for any new leader when she first took over from Cameron then crashed precipitously as soon as she announced the 2017 election and had to get out in front of the cameras.

Johnson's mysterious allure is as lost on me as it is on the many idiots he's pumped and dumped (and the unquantifiable number of children resulting from those couplings), but Tory (and Labour) support has only increased since Sturgeon & Swinson locked lips and gave Johnson a massive election *

But Jezza hasn't closed the gap in the way polling showed in 2017. Barring intervention from The Ghost Of Christmas Past, Doc Brown, or Vladimir Putin, it looks like the most the opposition can hope to do is limit the size of Johnson's majority and, therefore, the kind of Brexit deal he will get through the Commons.


* I still think Jezza only caved in to their demands to bankrupt me. He couldn't afford to see a general election being called against his will, and Sturgeon will make out like gangbusters, but Swinson was either deluded by ego or manipulated into signing her own death warrant.

Funt Solo

++ A-Z ++  coma ++

IndigoPrime

I see Electoral Calculus has now added a 'low' predictor alongside the terrifying 'high' one that predicts 437(!) Tory seats. Although this also suggests that every Green voter in Brighton will somehow forget to vote.

Professor Bear

As the polls narrow I just become increasingly convinced that a few million Tory voters are going to appear magically from somewhere.  I'm not sure where right now (if I was a betting man, "the youth vote came out for Johnson"), but in the days after the election I'm sure our fair and impartial media will let us know what the story is this time.

Professor Bear