UK General Election, June 8th 2017

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

ComRes

Con 50(+4) Lab 25(-) LD 11(-) UKIP 7(-2)

That would see a majority of 200 with Labour reduced to 140 seats

lol why would anyone put stock in polls that produce figures like this? This is utterly insane; for Labour to do this badly, they would need to be in power during the Great Depression and betray their voters. I don't think that having an incompetent, bumbling leader is sufficient (though it is necessary) for the Tories to garner 50% of the vote.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

ComRes

Con 50(+4) Lab 25(-) LD 11(-) UKIP 7(-2)

That would see a majority of 200 with Labour reduced to 140 seats

This is utterly insane; for Labour to do this badly, they would need to be in power during the Great Depression and betray their voters.

You were saying?

That was the allusion, yes.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Current day Battersea is not the Battersea of 1997...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Example of why the Lord Ashcroft model is almost certainly junk

Poll of Northeast voters:
Labour 42.6%
Conservative 32.9%

How the Northeast actually voted:
Labour 46.8%
Conservative 25.3%

There are massive sampling issues here. I doubt that they can be resolved easily as it is most likely a case of Labour voters not wanting to respond to surveys. This could mean that they won't be voting or are shy Tories but it could also mean that they are shy Labour voters.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

1. Labour 79%
2. Plaid Cymru 76%
3. SNP 75%
4. LibDem 75%
5. Green 69%

As the English say, "Im labour"

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Have the IRA hot take artists considered that the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer has the surname "McDonnell"? There's a very substantial number of people in Britain who have Irish ancestry or who are Catholic and they tend to be Labour voters. With this in mind, the idea that this issue is going to destroy Labour in its heartlands is very strange to me.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The smears of Corbyn amount to re-stating that he's on the "hard left" of the Labour Party. I'm not fond of the hard left and I think many of his actions were distasteful but nothing he's done crosses the boundary that lies between being a useful idiot and being actively malicious. The problem of the right is that, as of late, has decided that portraying him as a shadowy and malicious figure is a better tactic than portraying him as a bumbling simpleton. The latter portrayal is accurate and believable. The former portrayal is not.

Corbyn, in many respects, is an unpleasant man and he's clearly a bumbling fool but it's pretty hard to argue that he doesn't have the right intentions or that he doesn't care for the welfare of people. He's clearly not someone who approves of violence and the right's insistence that this is the case comes across as hysterical and deranged.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Breitbart is not antisemitic.

Corbyn, in many respects, is an unpleasant man and he's clearly a bumbling fool but it's pretty hard to argue that he doesn't have the right intentions or that he doesn't care for the welfare of people. He's clearly not someone who approves of violence and the right's insistence that this is the case comes across as hysterical and deranged.

He doubtlessly cares about the welfare of his people, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hugo Chavez probably cared about his people too. As for Corbyn not being someone who approves of violence, surely you could see why some think that him speaking of his "friends of Hamas and Hezbollah" suggests otherwise?

My argument is that the right's anti-Corbyn isn't persuasive, not that Corbyn is Good (he is not) or that he's anywhere near my first choice. You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that he approves of Hamas or Hezbollah and their atrocities. A much more credible criticism is that he's a dunce who doesn't understand basic facts about the organizations and, thus, should not be PM.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Regarding the Survation poll of Jewish voters... polls of specific minorities are problematic. Particularly when the minority is diverse, not very concentrated and quite small. I suspect the sort of figures Survation showed in 2015 and this survey are about right for people who are at least technically Orthodox, subscribe to the JC and are at least vaguely involved in community organisations (which is hardly a coincidence as unless their methodology has changed then that's basically the only people they're polling anyway). Not uninteresting,* but, as I said, obviously problematic as one of the main political dividing lines in British Jewry has always been Orthodox/Secular (note for Americans: in Britain the former are the majority, not a relatively small minority). Some attempts by other firms have been made in the past for a much broader sample, but I'd guess that'd either be crazy expensive or heading deep into voodoo territory. There have been similar issues with e.g. surveys of Sikhs etc. Not that there's much doubt that Corbyn-as-Leader is not great news for Labour candidates in certain constituencies.

_{*But in the same way that e.g. specific surveys of regular Anglican churchgoers - which are sometimes wheeled out during elections as well - are.}

Interestingly, the JC released a survey of Jewish voters in 2010 that showed Labour with 30% of the Jewish vote. Presumably, this was a much stronger and robust survey that took more secular voters into account. It's unfortunate that JC dropped the ball here because it would have been very interesting to have some vague idea of how Corbyn has been received by Jewish Labour voters. Is he driving them away from the party or are they willing to hold their nose?

I guess we'll never really know because secular Jews aren't concentrated in particular neighborhoods in the manner that orthodox Jews are.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Tonight's BBC debate was one of the best in this campaign..
May struggled in social care.. and Corbyn was destroyed in Trident...

Jeremy Corbyn is asked about Trident

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWt3rS27vzY

"Would you nuke another country?"

"No, you sick freak."

wow owned

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Maybe this makes me crazy but the idea that this would move anyone's vote strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of the right, unless Trident is some sort of Shibboleth for something else, I fail to see why the refusal to commit a "tit for tat" policy of murdering millions of innocents is scandalous, particularly considering that the Cold War ended 25 years ago.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Corbyn won't retaliate to a nuclear attack that isn't going to happen? outrageous!

Things can change a lot in 5 years. People deserve to know that if we are attacked, we are not just gonna sit back.

yea man, i'm sure that the irradiated zombies living in the rubble of post-nuke london would be primarily concerned about britain's ability to incinerate moscow or pyongyang and not about the fact that they are  dying a horrible death.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Maybe this makes me crazy but the idea that this would move anyone's vote strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of the right, unless Trident is some sort of Shibboleth for something else, I fail to see why the refusal to commit a "tit for tat" policy of murdering millions of innocents is scandalous, particularly considering that the Cold War ended 25 years ago.

So, I watched a clip of the entirety of this exchange. A woman interjected that "I don't understand why many in this audience are so keen on murdering millions of people" and received enthusiastic/excited applause for saying this. The year is not 1987, it's not a salient or relevant question and, frankly, if you are concerned about this, I'd suggest that you're a sadist and a sick freak.