Friday 3 May 2024
Seismically Bamboozled
Blackpool South by-election: Sir Keir Starmer hails 'seismic win' as Labour takes seat from Conservatives
Chris Webb wins the constituency with a majority of more than 7,000, as the Tories only just beat Reform UK into second place.
Wikipedia
A 2012 paper by six American political scientists called "A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics" challenged the idea that Republicans want a low-information electorate and argued instead that both major American parties do. Noting that 95% of incumbents in the highly polarized House of Representatives win re-election despite voters' preference for centrist representation, the paper theorizes that voters' infrequent penalizing of extremist behaviour represents not approval, but a lack of attention and information. This, the paper says, is supported by the fact that when congressional districts and media markets overlap to create more informed electorates, extremist House members are at much greater risk for defeat. The paper proposes that in the American political system interest groups and activists are the key actor and that the electorate is uninformed and bamboozled.
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4 comments:
"Did you just hear that, dear? Some bloke on the news just said that some women can have penises!"
"Did they dear? That's a bit odd. Who was it?"
"I'm not sure. I only switched it on a bit early so we didn't miss the start of Strictly. But I think it might have been that one in a suit who told us that we had to buy an electric car. Looked like him, anyway..."
"Well, don't worry about it. Strictly's just starting. I've made you a nice cuppa. Let's hope the electricity lasts, because it's at this time of the week that we keep having those little power cuts."
How things have changed since 2012.
Now the electorate are like the lowly creatures in Animal Farm last scene.
The creatures outside looked from pig (conservative, capitalists) to man (liberal, socialists), and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which ..
Our boozles are all fully bammed.
Come back Lord Sutch. Screaming.
It's the sort of by-election where there are (in my opinion) too many confounding factors to draw a simple message.
Yes, the Conservatives were punished - and this is probably the greatest factor. Yes, Labour gained - but perhaps by default rather than enthusiasm. But Reform did well. The Lib Dems and Greens didn't seem to benefit from the Conservative failure. Plus it's a by-election no more than a few months before a General Election so people may have been relaxed about voting and who they voted for.
Doesn't stop the parties from 'spinning' the result though, and that's getting tiresome.
Sam - ha ha very good, but oh dear it's probably close.
Doonhamer - and still they vote for more of the same.
DJ - to my mind, one problem is that we shouldn't be starting from here. It makes analysis particularly difficult in that we end up having to compare different types of failure as if this is the best we can hope for, which apparently it is.
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