Talk Elections

The ALP is trailing pretty badly in the polls....

And the ALP are being decimated on the state level and in the state opinion polls.

But don't the Australians basically hate Gillard and Abbott though? Is there a leadership spill in sight for either party? I still say they should've stuck with Rudd.

Basically yeah. It's a similar situation to Blair-(Michael) Howard, I think.

Election is still in two years, no ? Well, I know Gillard has only a two seat majority, but I've not heard about the possibility of a dissolution so far.

I hope we'll be spared from crazy Abbott.

Cameron, Key, Harper and Abbott would be like an Anglosphere of Doom.

Seriously? John Key has been a wonderful Prime Minister in New Zealand.

Fair enough, he is the best of the four PMs mentioned.

No love for Enda Kenny?

Was thinking in terms of the Westminster System, but he hasn't been Taoiseach long enough to know much.

Ireland isn't either Westmister System nor Commonwealth country, and many Irishmen would be pissed off on "Anglosphere" label ;)

Most of those Irishmen would actually live in Massachusetts, though.

Most of the (Republic of) Irishmen keen on the label would write for the Sunday Independent.

All three of them?

No incumbant leader is ever done two years before an election. We never saw a PM Roy Jenkins after all, or PM Mona Sahlin.

 

...President Strauss-Kahn

  What about if the Republicans win in the US, that would mean for the first time in at least 20 years, possibly longer,  all Anglosphere countries have right of centre governments.  Mind you, I believe almost all EU countries have right of centre governments now and I think about 70%, maybe even 80% of developed countries have right of centre governments so far whatever reason it seems the developed world is swinging to the right.  Not much to celebrate for those on the left.  Off course things go in cycles, so that will change in time, but I think the overall trend in the West and rich countries is rightward.  My guess is the aging population is big part of it as people tend to become more conservative as they get older and the rich countries generally have older populations than elsewhere.

France is almost certain to go socialist next year and Ireland has swung strongly to the left. Germany is swinging left as well these days.

France is the exception, not the rule. And Germany is swinging towards the non-traditional left (The Greens, not the SPD).

Yeah but more importantly, Germany is swinging away from the right. If elections were held today, it would almost certainly result in an SPD-Green coalition.

I don't care whether people swing to the "traditional left" or the "non-traditional left" - the point is that in Germany - the "right" is extremely unpopular.

France is indeed the exception of modern countries... We elected our only socialist President at the time when Thatcher, Reagan and Kohl had just taken or were about to take over ! ;D

But yeah, in the long term I think modern countries will start - or are starting - to move toward the left. The rightwards swing has just been too strong since the 1980s.

France actually seems to be swinging towards the far right with the success Marine LePen is having. The Socialists are probably going to blow another presidential election seeing as they have already lost their strongest candidate in a sex scandal. Whether or not LePen is elected president is another story, but who would have thought five years ago that the Front National, True Finns, Danish People's Party, and PVV would actually be having a decent shot at government.

Anybody who thinks Marine will become President is a retard.

Most the the rise of the far-right is from the blatent failure of the European Socialist/SOcial Democratic Parties. The only countries with a centre-left "on the up" are France, Greece, Denmark and Germany. If the left win in Spain or Portugal, it'll be a major coup.

The left also made major gains in Ireland and all polls suggest that the Labour Party would sweep back into power if an election were held now in the UK.

I am not so sure about France.  I agree the Socialist will probably win if they make it into the second round, but some polls suggest a repeat of 2002 in the second round, i.e. National Front vs. UMP.  Off course if the National Front is in the second round, they will lose badly to whomever they face.  As for Germany, swinging left, I agree the likelihood of a Black-Yellow coalition is diminishing, but I still think most show the Red-Green short of a majority.  A Red-Red-Green coalition is feasible now, but both the Greens and SPD and are against forming a coalition with the Left Party.  A Grand coalition, Jamaica Coalition, or Traffic Light coalition seem the most likely at this point.  The big if, though is does the FDP get above 5%.  If they fall under 5% that changes everything and then a Red-Green coalition is more likely since their combined vote only has to 50% of whatever percent of the population voted for parties that got over 5%, so 45% would probably be sufficient in this case, rather than 48-49%.

No one is suggesting that, but I'm saying she is a legitimate contender for the second round of voting. A Socialist could win, but the left has a bad habit of shooting themselves in the foot with presidential elections.

You're right, however when the far right makes it to the second round it is mostly due to vote split. After all, Le Pen's 2002 score wasn't that higher than his 1988 and 1995 performances. The main difference is that there were around 10 candidates these times, against 16 (!) in 2002. Sure, the FN has never been as strong as it is nowadays, but it's still "only" around 20%.

Also to note, a lot of Le Pen's support is due to her associating the usual xenophobe anti-immigration rhetoric, to a kind of left-wing populist position (anti-globalization, anti-corporations, etc...). It's certainly playing a "the left has betrayed the working class" game, which works well in France since the 1980. So, in some way, a lot of her voters can be considered "left-wing".

Gillard has become a liability, but there doesn't seem to be any appetite on the part of Labor to dump her.  There's really no one ready to take her place.  The polls say the voters would like a return to Rudd, but I can't see the party going along with that now.  The same people who axed Rudd are not going to bring him back.

This seems to be a more extreme version of the Obama/Clinton dynamic in the USA.  Once HRC lost the nomination and was appointed Secretary of State, her favorability improved.  She's now more popular than she's ever been, and markedly more popular than Obama.  But of course, if she had been elected president instead of him, then it would be reversed.

Why do I feel like bashing my head repeatedly against a solid stone wall? If you're going to have discussions on this sort of issue then please do not use both opinion polls and regional/municipal elections and general election results. Why? Well, beyond the immediately obvious, there's that old devil of bias in selection - and Lord have we just seen it on display.

This is an interesting realignment and one that could cause issues for the traditional left going forward.  There are some synergies between the xenophobic right and the populist left, much to the consternation of the philosophical/elite lefties.  Seems to be cropping up elsewhere: Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008 dabbled at the edges of that, in opposition to Obama's more esoteric/urbane leftism.  Some of the Democratic Party's anti-China rhetoric seems to go in that direction as well, and lines up with some of the trade policies they espouse (e.g., pro-labor rules).

Certainly not trying to compare Hillary to Marine, but there's a common thread in there somewhere.  It'll be curious to see how the parties migrate over the next decade.

It's because of the general rightward lurch that many centre-left parties took in the 1990s (Clinton's Third Way, New Labour, etc.). As these parties left office throughout the 2000s, under waves of unpopularity (in Europe anyway) and the perception that they sold out their old core voters in an attempt to break the centre-right, the traditional left-wing, "Socialist" voters became heavily disillusioned. It also didn't help that these same centre-left governments got quite lax on immigration, an easy scapegoat for the Daily Mail, Sun, Star (and their international equivalents) reading working class.

I think France's excuse, quite different from the rest, is just that Le Parti Socialiste is just so incompetent at running itself.

Well, in some way there are always been two lefts, at least here in Europe : a progressive, universalist, intellectual and open-minded left opposed to a populist, anti-modernist and particularist one. In France we have the historic opposition between Jaurès and Guesde. But surely, today's situation is particularely favorable to a narrowing of the gap between the populist left and the populist right : globalization being perceived as the cause of the growth of inequalities, immigrates as the cause of unemployment, islam as a threat to the western culture, etc... So it's not weird to see the far-right appropriating itself these left-wing themes, despite the fact the "solutions" they propose would only dramatically worsen the situation.

Agreed with regards to the failure of the Left; the biggest problem for me is Right has all the populism and thus the key to reaching voters; the Left has completely emasculated themselves by accepting and then playing apologist for right-wing economics, rendering it an almost apolitical sphere - a sphere where they would traditionally draw all their populism and appeal from to counter the Right's successful social-populism. Just look at the amazing wealth of populism that could've been capitalised upon (no pun intended) with regards to bankers, and yet our 'democratic socialist' party has at times looked even softer on them than the Tories! Populism, like it or not, is a massive vote-winner (and paper seller - just compare the broadsheets to populist tabloid circulation figures here) and the mainstream left has in recent times lost it all.

The centre-left, in Britain anyway, is too scared to venture outside their post-Thatcherite comfort zone. Terrified by the fates of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock in 1983 (for sliding left) and 1992 (for not trying hard enough).

You can still be left-wing and not a socialist, without wearing Tory clothes, Labour just don't seem to have picked up on that quite yet. It doesn't help that Labour's stuck with a leader who seems unwilling and unable to try and halt this "mess we inheritied from the previous lot" narrative. Obama was definately right to tell Ed to stop being all doom and gloom.

And as we all should know, this is infact the "mess" that Labour left behind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Y8DYXRxac).

Yep; those defeats were due to a split left and now it's united again. Labour's task is to keep it united, and ironically the one thing that'll ensure it isn't is if they're still Tory-lite. Hopefully the policy review will start the ball rolling on that - as well as a promise to reverse some of the more harmful coalition policies.

I agree. If anything, the LibDems unraveling of their left-wing vote calls for Labour to take a more dominant left-wing stance. It's easy to forget that, although they maybe far from being an election winning party, they're up atleast 8%-10% on the general election from former Liberals alone. Not many oppositions (Labour after 1992 excluded, for obvious reasons) have been able to boast a post-election bounce like that. None of the swings in the by-elections of this parliament have had Labour outside of majority government territory.

I wouldn't even say Labour were far from winning an election; as you say, their by-election swings have rivalled '97-'01 levels, and they've been consistently ahead in every VI poll for months. The pro-coalition vote is also split between two parties. Even if they don't have the most popular leader, I don't think it'll hurt Labour electorally - there's a desire to get rid of the coalition and the Tories' centrism - which could and did win over swing voters - has been revealed to be nonsense.

The 2001 G/E was repeated recently, and a poll by the BBC/ICM showed the extent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVTgwGjaI_k&t=6m26s) of leftists voting Liberal at the time; now if you were to assign those percentages to each parties respective 2001 G/E vote, there's at least 42% agreeing with social-democratic policies - which is where the Labour vote is at these days.

Haha, I say that and ComRes release a poll (http://www.comres.co.uk/page1902494155.aspx) showing the parties tied...

Exactly. Over-confidence, lack of media presence and an "uncool" leader is a massive problem for Labour. They haven't had all 3 of them since 1994.

Last month's Scottish election needs to be a massive, unmissable, unavoidable warning to them.

It should be, but it won't. The Labour Party wasn't just beaten. It was replaced.

I agree and disagree.

Over-confidence: you could argue the opposite, with people itching to rid Labour of Ed Miliband even though he's improved their standing by at least double figures; and Kinnock's loss in '92 still holds a huge cloud over the party. It seems like if they're not reaching Blair-like leads (leads which will be impossible if Labour want to be on the left), something's wrong.

Lack of media presence: here I agree and disagree - firstly, given the press' inclinations, the less they mention Labour the better, but it does look bad when Miliband's nowhere to be found opposing some hard-to-stomach issues.

Uncool leader: John Smith was sailing away in the polls, despite his uncoolness pre-'94.

Scottish elections: I agree that they need to be a wake-up call; but not in the 'Ian Gray's a poor leader, we need to get rid of Ed' way, but in the sense Labour gave Scots very little reason to vote for them, whereas SNP did. Going back to the ComRes poll, the lower Labour figure seemingly comes primarily from a cross-break of Scots voting SNP rather than Labour.

I think the Scottish lesson is that when there's another social-democratic option there, Labour's lacklustre efforts make them easy evacuates. Of course, a better leader is helpful, but policies that actually inspire people to go out and vote for them is the best vote winner (Attlee etc) and I don't think the other Miliband is anywhere near Ed in willingness to visit that.

I know another big Social Democratic Party who was brought down on those very three things not even a year ago. ;D Although their leader was worse than uncool.

That's exactly the danger Labour has.

Must admit that I've not noticed any outbreaks of 'over confidence' amongst Labour members, activists or even senior figures, but then I guess, that counts as 'over confidence', right? Ah... but then such is circular logic.

(but this thread is so going to be re-named)

I support the renaming of this thread. It ought to be good for a laugh now and then.

Roy Morgan released a poll, the Coalition ahead 58-42, over 50 on primary votes, if anyone cares.

The latest Newspoll poll shows Gillard's satisfactory rating down to 28%, and she now trails Abbott for "Preferred Prime Minister" for the first time, by 40% to 39%.