Jeff I didn't drink tonight so that I could drink tomorrow without feeling guilty then you go and post that. Cuts to the heart.

And I've read so much crap over the past few weeks debating the merits of uniform swing method and the various methods on improving it, I'm rather excited to see who has it right. This has less to do with what I'm rooting for and more to do with the election results themselves, which you'd have gotten from my posts on the UK election by now if you weren't so insistent in having a negative opinion about everything I post about politics.

Also to see how their electoral system does at fucking up voter preferences.

And for the drinking question, I know a lot of my posts about it sound like bragging, but I mostly like to write it down to keep myself aware of how many nights I do drink in a record keeping manner and also to introduce a little shame/Catholic guilt into the equation. I'm not proud of it or anything, although I do wake up every morning and thank the baby jesus that I'm not as miserable as you are, even if I am hungover. In my current job, it hasn't had an impact on my work product. I get my work done, I've been able to save a good bit of money for grad school, and I drink too much 2-4 nights a week. I could do something else with my time that's less potentially destructive, but this is working for me at the moment. I'm planning on stopping drinking once late August hits, except for any school related happy hours. We'll see how that goes. I stopped drinking for a week or two back in the winter without getting the shakes, so I have that going for me. Thanks for your concern, as always.

jerseyhoya wrote:
I'm going to say the Tories get into the 320s and make some sort of pact with the Ulster Unionists that makes them look bad.





There's really not much reason for me to think any better than Nate's number. I'm basing it on the Tories creeping up a point or two (been 33-36, now 35-37) in most preelection polls and the improved position of the Lib Dems possibly confusing tactical voting decisions of left of center voters. Which is to say I'm just being biased, and predicting the Conservatives to win more seats than logic says they will.

Jerz, I think this is the first time I've ever had to ask your professional opinion. We've still got this unusually high set of undecided voters, and I'm assuming that the conservatives and labour are going to benefit (especially in light of Broon's barnstorming in labour heartlands), but I wondered in professional pollster land how you make assumptions about them.

Plus, I wondered how you guys take into account postal votes. As I type, Radio 4 is telling me that 1/4 voters have already voted by postal vote, which will have been done before the lib dems boost has slacked off. My guess is that this will firm up their marginal seats, and make it harder for labour and conservative to win in marginal seats that are on the lib dems target list, but again I'm curious as to how it's accounted for.

Regarding the unionists - it's possible you already know this, but if not I feel I should clarify. The conservatives have backed the UUP, the party that used to represent unionism. They currently have no seats, and the last person who did hold a seat went independent because she opposed a lot of what they stood for. At the Nor'n Irish Leaders debate, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Democratic Unionist Party were all taking a similar point of view to both the SNP and Plaid Cymru - they were going to ask pretty high demands for their cooperation in a parliament. Peter Robinson (head of the DUP) is an obdurate and canny man, and frankly, I rate any politician in Nor'n Ireland a country mile better then any of the major parties at negotiating to get what they want. It's been the principal part of the political process in the 6 counties since before the Good Friday agreement in 1997, and all the heavyweights that the UK have sent in have come away bemused at how many angels they have to count on the head of a sectarian pen to get any progress. Splitting hairs is the difference between keeping your electorate and the UUP's political oblivion. In sum, I don't think the DUP are the conservatives answer:

“No party will ever get us to put our hands up for £200m of cuts and double-dip recession in Northern Ireland,” he said.

If I had to guess, the cons will be closer to 305 than 312, and I suspect that labour will get the benefit of those seats. But part of me just can't see how the libdems manage 100. If they do, it will be an incredible achievement. so either labour does better than anyone expects, or the cons get their narrow majority.

I'm assuming the latter, because I don't think the UK electorate care to understand how electoral reform has helped bring about our current mess, and they have swallowed conservative talk of spending and cutting at the same time. It's going to be a brutal 5 years and a spectacularly messy parliament.

VoxOrion wrote:Interesting WSJ bit:

Mr. Clegg's Liberal Democrats reacted like the British troops in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign. Having seized the high ground, they didn't know what to do next. Instead of telling voters what a Liberal Democrat Britain would look like, Mr. Clegg speculated about potential coalition partners and repeated his party's age-old demand for proportional representation. He thus demonstrated that if any party hadn't changed in 50 years, it was the Liberal Democrats.

Obviously, I haven't read the whole article, but that excerpt strikes me as spectacularly glib and uncomprehending. The libdems main message necessarily has to be vote for us to get a shot at a hung parliament, because they simply cannot contend the vast majority of seats under first past the post. They have to strike a balance between a generic optimism and a cautious outlook about their vision of the UK, because the electorate knows that if they get into power, they can only realistically put forward a programme for the economy (cable as chancellor on a coalition govt) and perhaps the home office (clegg taking over). They were always appealing to disaffected voters and saying 'vote for us, and your vote will always count for more here on out (because we'll change the voting system)'.

Vote reform is a powerful rallying call this time round in wake of the extensive coverage and anger about the MPs expenses row. Labour and the conservatives didn't come off well out of it and makes it easier to cast them as the old, out of touch parties who are insulated from the electorate by the vagaries of the electoral system.

I think the problem will be that ultimately, the conservatives and labour managed to turn the focus to 'a vote for the liberals is a vote for the other guy, AND YOU DON'T WANT THEM'.

Fucking feeble. But it works. I hate this fucking neanderthal voting system. Even wizlette was getting freaked this morning by the thought of letting the tories back in.

jerseyhoya wrote:Also to see how their electoral system does at $#@! up voter preferences.

And for the drinking question, I know a lot of my posts about it sound like bragging, but I mostly like to write it down to keep myself aware of how many nights I do drink in a record keeping manner and also to introduce a little shame/Catholic guilt into the equation. I'm not proud of it or anything, although I do wake up every morning and thank the baby jesus that I'm not as miserable as you are, even if I am hungover. In my current job, it hasn't had an impact on my work product. I get my work done, I've been able to save a good bit of money for grad school, and I drink too much 2-4 nights a week. I could do something else with my time that's less potentially destructive, but this is working for me at the moment. I'm planning on stopping drinking once late August hits, except for any school related happy hours. We'll see how that goes. I stopped drinking for a week or two back in the winter without getting the shakes, so I have that going for me. Thanks for your concern, as always.

Yes, the posts do sound like bragging, so stop it. You're 25 years old, it's not cool to look forward to "getting ripped" to watch a freaking election... that's not even your country! So stop talking about it as such and fix the damn problem. I'm a relatively happy guy who doesn't need alcohol to hang out with my 2 kids and lovely wife. You need to get drunk to watch an election in Britain.

You say need, I say want.

jerseyhoya wrote:You say need, I say want.

I like reading about your drinking.

jerseyhoya wrote:You say need, I say want.

Ok, and that's a good point. Perhaps it's want (actually, hopefully it's want). But bragging about getting drunk was cool in high school and perhaps the first year of college (for Woody it was cool as a sophomore, but he got a late start.)

And of course beyond your alcohol problems, there is a disturbing tendency to want to root for EVERYTHING EVERYDAY. My coworker and I are supposed to meet in the lobby at 8:30 PST, who do you want to make it to the lobby first, me or him? Do you want me to post the results?

Jeff, I'm about to spend the next five years of my life getting my PhD in political science and I plan on focusing on electoral systems, public opinion, etc. If seeing the results come in for one of the most unpredictable British elections in decades didn't seriously interest me, I think that would be problematic. It's not primarily about rooting, as I said last night. You could continue to believe otherwise. That's fine. Being wrong is cool, and something you're pretty good at.

JH, I'm just trying to make you a better person, it's not even like we disagree with the drinking as you've talked about your Catholic guilt - I'm helping with the shame. You'll thank me for this later. We've talked about you on the orange board, they wanted me to do an intervention for you earlier but I was busy. I'm just hoping it's not too late.

No one is going to call Jeff2sf on his "Only America Matters" Sarah Palin like I can see Russia from my house parochialism?

Well, then, I will. It's mind bending how ignorant even educated Americans are about political issues that go on beyond our borders, reflecting an arrogance and chauvinism that in the end harms us globally.

Jeff, you're wrong that the British parliamentary elections don't affect us. They do. Most obviously, what happens in Afghanistan going forward depends in part in what happens today. Britain is the closest ally the US has. Second, the global economy, as you well know, is interconnected. Britain's response to what might be an unraveling European financial system is absolutely critical to the fragile recovery.

There's also at least some reason to think that what happens in Britain may have portends for what will happen in the US. In some respects, the equivalent of the Lib Dems is our own Tea Party movement--reflecting not so much a coherent ideology but expressing an emotional dissatisfaction with current alternatives. How the Lib Dems do compared to expectations may tell us something about our own politics.

I do have some advice for you JH--stop using the word problematic. Also, your PhD is likely going to take more than 5 years.

Thanks, Paul, a buttefly crapped on a flower in the former Czech Republic, should I care about that too?

Yes, EVERYTHING somehow affects America, larry literal, but A.) we don't sit around watching the election returns while getting drunk and B.) the day to day impact of what happens in Britain is both minimal and very tricky to predict based on what happens. As you're fond of telling everyone, the American presidential election matters the least to our day to day lives yet we vote that but not the local elections. Well, it stands to reason that an international election would have even less impact on us.

Wizlah wrote:Jerz, I think this is the first time I've ever had to ask your professional opinion. We've still got this unusually high set of undecided voters, and I'm assuming that the conservatives and labour are going to benefit (especially in light of Broon's barnstorming in labour heartlands), but I wondered in professional pollster land how you make assumptions about them.

Plus, I wondered how you guys take into account postal votes. As I type, Radio 4 is telling me that 1/4 voters have already voted by postal vote, which will have been done before the lib dems boost has slacked off. My guess is that this will firm up their marginal seats, and make it harder for labour and conservative to win in marginal seats that are on the lib dems target list, but again I'm curious as to how it's accounted for.

Regarding undecided voters, the general rule here is they break against the incumbent, usually something like 2-1, so that would be bad for Labour. However it's not that simple, and a pollster who has more demographic information about the person can make a better call. Are they undecided because they live in a Con/Lib Dem marginal, and they're deciding between a vote for Labour or a tactical vote for the Lib Dems? Having a legitimate third party would make any simple assumptions difficult to feel confident about. Looking at the numbers it doesn't seem like there's a great deal of undecideds. The three big parties are summing to 90%+ of the vote, figure in people going for the Greens and UKIP and BNP, there's only a small number of undecideds in those numbers.

Postal votes are interesting, and your instinct that they could help the Liberal Democrats a bit is probably right. One thing I would say as a caution on that is even before the Lib Dems started to give back some of their poll gains, their support was softer. In polls they had more of their voters saying they might change their mind before election day, and I imagine people like that are less likely to vote early.

jeff2sf wrote:Thanks, Paul, a buttefly crapped on a flower in the former Czech Republic, should I care about that too?

Yes, EVERYTHING somehow affects America, larry literal, but A.) we don't sit around watching the election returns while getting drunk and B.) the day to day impact of what happens in Britain is both minimal and very tricky to predict based on what happens. As you're fond of telling everyone, the American presidential election matters the least to our day to day lives yet we vote that but not the local elections. Well, it stands to reason that an international election would have even less impact on us.

It has less impact on us, but they're our longest and closest ally for one thing, and also people love drawing parallels between UK and US politics, however wrongheaded (see: TV's attempt to link the tea parties and the Lib Dem surge).

I just downed half a bottle of Jack while reading what JH wrote about an election for which he'll drink while watching tonight.

Achtung, Achtung. I'm willing to concede that JH, given his passions and future work goals, should in fact sit around watching a British election.

(but drink some Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi straight)

That's mighty big of you

I'm nothing if not fair.

Put some whiskey in it, don't be a bitch