elections – Robert Sharp

November 9, 2024

Reasons to be Cheerful

Donald Trump has won the presidential election.

This is terrible news. He is a convicted criminal and has no respect for the norms of democracy that keep societies together. He is unlikely help the poorest in society and the USA will remain divided for at least the next four years, probably much longer. The global climate is in greater peril. Ukraine’s predicament is worse. The outlook is bleak for the Gazans and the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

In the run-up to the election, the liberal press are full of warnings that this was somehow America’s last chance. The Atlantic posted articles on ‘The Fragility of American Freedom’ and the New Yorker Cover depicted Lady Liberty on a tightrope. The message is that now the USA has fallen to Trump, it will never recover.

The next few months and years will be galling and frustrating. But over the medium to long term, I remain optimistic. I think it’s helpful (if only to myself, as a coping mechanism) to list my heuristics and axioms.

July 29, 2015

Anyone calling for candidates to drop out of the Labour Leadership race is an innumerate idiot

A quick point, if I may: You know how Jeremy Corbyn is now 20 points ahead of his rivals, and some people are urging the lesser candidates to consolidate behind a single Anyone-But-Jeremy candidate?
That’s stupid and wrong.
Its stupid because the election is being conducted on an Alternative Vote system. The electors rank the candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their votes are divided up amongst the remaining candidates. That process is repeated until one candidate has a majoirty.
Mathematically, that is exactly the same as if the lesser candidates had pulled out… but with one important exception: its more democratic.
The ‘drop out’ suggestion is also morally wrong. With the AV system, each elector gets to express a preference for who drops out and in what order. That’s far better approach than a candidate being peer-pressured or media-pressured into dropping out mid-campaign, which is anti-democratic and makes the entire contest a hostage to bad opinion polling.
The fact that people are calling for the poorly polling candidates shows that they are stuck in a First Past The Post mentality, even though the election is being run with more sophisticated and fairer rules.

July 23, 2015

What if it's all just cyclical?

More banter from the political past today as John Prescott criticised Tony Blair’s “get a transplant” jibe.
Meanwhile, Margaret Beckett has somehow branded herself a ‘moron’ because she was one of Jeremy Corbyn’s sponsors, nominating-but-not supporting him so the Labour Party could have a debate.
Well, a debate is being had. A wider range of policies are being debated and the other candidates have found they are unable to triangulate their way to a victory on points. The contest is going to be far more interesting than any that has gone before and—here’s a radical thought—it could be that this moment of public disunity and ill-tempered argument could end up strengthening the eventual winner. Survival Of The Fittest, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, &cetera.
Continue reading “What if it's all just cyclical?”

July 22, 2015

Can Labour give the country what it wants?

Tony Blair gave a speech today, warning the post-defeat Labour Party of a lurch to the left. Meanwhile, the most left wing of the four Labour Party leadership candidates, Jeremy Corbyn, is apparently leading the polls.
I find the pragmatism of the centrists in the Labour Party to be enticing. If you want to win power and achieve social justice, they say, there is no point in positioning yourself too far away from the electorate. To place Jeremy Corbyn at the top of the Labour Party is to distance the party from the rest of Britain. And that means further election defeats. Instead, the answer is to be more centrist, more Blairite, because at least that is where the rest of the country sits. Continue reading “Can Labour give the country what it wants?”

November 4, 2012

Neck and Neck in the Polls?

This week, the BBC reports on the US Presidential this week have been consistently reporting the race “neck-and-neck”. This assertion is grounded on opinion polls: the latest BBC report trumpets an ABC News poll which places both candidates on 48% of the vote.
The problem is, one poll does not tell the whole story. Each polling outlet has a slightly different methodology which skews the results. For example, some poll only ‘likely voters’ and some ask everyone; some pollsters call cell-phones, while others use only landlines.
As a foreign media outlet, the BBC is not covering the race with the granularity of the domestic US media.
Rather than report the result of one poll, The corporation would do better to report on the polling averages between polling outfits, and the trend-lines of generated by each pollster over a given period. Both these macro views look better for President Barack Obama, whose polling in the last fortnight has been improving. More importantly, State Level polling shows the President ahead in battleground states like Ohio. Poll analysis site Five Thirty Eight (hosted by the New York Times) models the election on this basis, and is currently putting the chances of an Obama win at 85%.
This does not mean that Obama is coasting towards a second term. Governor Mitt Romney could still win. But given the totality of the polls, President Obama can be said to have the advantage. The situation does not really warrant the metaphor “neck-and-neck” which suggests either horse is equally likely to win. In the betting markets, Barack Obama is the clear favourite. He hasn’t won, but he is ahead.
So why does the BBC cherry-pick a single poll as its headline? Simples: “neck-and-neck” is a more sensational headline than “Obama ahead”. And the more sensational headline will deliver more viewers on Election Night.