Thread by @robfordmancs

Will do a thread of 2019 predictions tomorrow. First, a thread on things I got wrong in 2018. 1/?

Starting with the question which consumed us in Britain in 2018: Brexit. A year ago, my expectation was that we would have secured and voted through a deal by this point in time. The deal would pass at the second or third time of asking, with Labour votes to overcome ERG rebels.

3/? Not where we are of course. What did I get wrong? Several things, I think. I underestimated the size and inflexibility of the "no deal is better than a bad deal" faction in the Parl Cons. And underestimted the willingness of govt to take us right to the edge of No Deal

Two years ago, if you were to tell me the Health Sec would be stockpiling fridges for No Deal drugs and the Transport Sec would be seeking out ferries to carry No Deal veg, I would have thought you mad. A yr ago, I wld rate it unlikely. Yet here we are.

5/? Another factor I underestimated was how united Labour have proved despite the growing threat of a No Deal mess. I would have expected a clearer and more co-ordinated plan to prevent it from the Europhile MPs, and more overtures from the govt to pro-Brexit Lab MPs.

I guess what I would learn from these errors is that hostility to the partisan outgroup is more powerful than I anticipated. Despite weak leaders adopting positions they don't like, neither Lab nor Con MPs are willing (yet) to vote with the Other Side. Will that change?

I don't know, but given that my previous error was underestimating the willingness of both sides to take things to the brink rather than work with the Other Lot, I have to question my instinctive belief that No Deal will be avoided because nearly everyone realises it is awful.

At the very least, we may end up going right up to the brink, or even over it, before a majority for some kind of outcome is forced together. But that's getting on to prediction, which is tomorrow's story.

In the US, I think there are three big things I got wrong:
1. I expected Dems to take back the Senate as well as the House
2. I expected them to win more governorships
3. I expected Trump's approval to keep falling and end up much lower than it is.

The common factor in all three is partisanship. The strength of tribal partisan attachment is making it very hard for Dems to win Senate or governor's races in red states, even in a midterm year with an unpopular president.

And the strength of tribal partisanship seems to put a hard floor on Trump's approval at around 35%. The growing economy helped keep him a bit above that floor. With that hefty chunk of the population he is basically invulnerable.

In the local elections back here, the Lib Dems did better than I expected, though they remain a long way from the bumper performances of old.

I didn't offer any strong opinions on Italy, beyond that the election would be chaotic (it was). But I think the surge in support for Lega there is the polling trend that has most surprised me in Europe this year.I thought, like most rad rt parties in W Europe, they had a ceiling

Instead they've more or less doubled their support and become the main party of the right. I'd love to know how they've done it and who they won over. I wonder what (if anything) it means for politics elsewhere in Europe - like France 2017 it points to decay of old partisan order

Something I've gradually changed my mind about over the course of the year is the influence of the media. I've always been very sceptical of takes which blame the media for stuff (usually stuff the writer dislikes) but I now think I have been too sceptical of media influence

Two things in particular made me reconsider:
1. The remarkable shift in immigration attitudes since 2016
2. The Sides, Vavreck and Tesler account of Trump's rise in "Identity Crisis" (read it! Its excellent).
In both cases, role for media seems v clear.

I was already aware that the media did not treat all political phenomena equally - and indeed made some fairly snarky (and unfortunately accurate) predictions about how that would play out in 2018 in last yr's predictions thread. I'm now more convinced the media's choices matter.

I don't think they are the *most important thing* or anything like that, but they can encourage feedback loops - many many little things happen all the time, but little things media get interested in, because they fit a narrative, more likely to get bigger & last longer.

Nor does this mean media has a (conscious) political agenda, I think. Their agenda is the things that bring readers and viewers - novelty, controversy, emotion. But I'm coming round to the view that the political effects of this incentive structure are substantial

The US media were happy to make the 2016 election about Trump because Trump was/is box office. But by doing so, they played into Trump's hands despite being (mostly) opposed to him. The British media were happy to focus on immigration because it was what their readers wanted

But by doing so they encouraged people to link practically every social problem to immigration and elevated the level of concern about imm well above anything generated by direct experience of its effects. Immigration has barely fallen since 2016. Yet concern has collapsed

Nothing in the past few years has surprised me more. And it is hard to account for this without according at least some role to the media - attention to immigration was intense pre-Brexit, collapsed almost immediately after the vote and hasn't returned (until past wk or so).

Will be interesting to see polling next month - if concern abt imm ticks upwards after a handful of ppl in boats triggers a major surge in coverage, that wld fit my revised view abt media influence.