In addition to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the big losers were the pollsters. I wonder if this will presage our own elections next year?
Have to confess; my favorite part of the UK elections was (finally!) the departure of that vile lunatic George Galloway from Parliament.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 8, 2015
[Update a few minutes later]
Seeing reports that the vast majority of British Jews voted Tory, only about 20% for Milliband. I’m totally unshocked. Nice to see the Brits starting to come to their senses. Maggie Thatcher’s Britain still stands.
Note that Milliband is Jewish.
Also note that the race could be cast as Obama’s campaign manager defeated Obama’s political advisor. For example:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/british-elections-jim-messina-david-axelrod-117759.html?ml=po
Note that Milliband is Jewish.
What’s your point? So is J-Street.
In the US, it is common to see arguments such as “the candidate is [insert group], so he’ll capture the [group] vote”. It is partiucularly common if the candidate would be the first, or among the first, of his or her group to reach that status. I was pointing out, to anyone who didn’t already know, that here we didn’t see the phenomenon actually happen. That is all.
( I was responding to your assertion that “only about 20% voted for Milliband”, but of course, aside from Milliband’s own constituents, the voters didn’t vote for or against Milliband directly, so that’s a complication at best and nullifies my point at worst. )
One of Milliband’s brilliant last-minute electoral brainwaves was announcing that Labour would ban ‘Islamophobia’ if elected.
And you’re surprised he lost the Jewish vote?
The poor performance of the polling even applied, to a lessor degree, to exit polling. (I recall exit polling showing a win for Kerry in 2004, so this is hardly a new issue).
My SWAG; polling is growing less accurate because of two factors; one is that some people, like me, either decline to be polled, or give false answers if the pollster is presumptuous enough to phone me. (I consider pollsters, be they political or pother marketing, using my phone offensive, just as I do telemarketing).
The second factor IMHO is the fact many people no longer have home phones, having gone totally cellular. This skews the demographics, and pollsters try to compensate by applying models, but that imparts more potential error.
My take; I’m not bothered by this at all, because I think it might be a good thing that we don’t know who’s ahead until after the election.
Maggie Thatcher’s England and Wales, more’s the pity. Here in Scotland, “we” returned a crowd of nationalist-socialists, by a landslide.
The best to be said for it is that the possibility of them entering a coalition with Labour has been averted. But it’s depressing, because their mere existence damages the integrity of our Union, and it’s frightening because of their complete lack of self-awareness. Jonah Goldberg is always at pains to point out that he doesn’t say that “liberals” are fascists, merely that their failure to recognise their common roots leaves them open to blundering down the same path. The Scottish Nationalists are several steps ahead of the internationalist Left, and still looking the other way.