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Rob Ford Profile picture
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16 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
So much of this is just name recognition. Top 3 are "guy who was universally argued over President until one month ago, whose impeachment trial literally just finished" "guy who was vice President until one month ago" and "guy whose name is 99% same as former President".
All the others are people most respondents will have little/no opinion on, if they've even heard of them at all. And even the opinions they *have* will primarily be seen through the lens of their views about the recently departed President.
tl;dr WTF is the point of polls like this, and even more so WTF is the point of articles claiming polls like this tell us something
(I'm guessing the answer to the latter is that its one of many pegs on which to hang an "AAARGH TRUMP IS GOING TO DESTROY EVERYTHING *AGAIN*" articles, which journalists suffering Trump withdrawal really really want to write right now.

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More from @robfordmancs

Rob Ford Profile picture
18 Feb
Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause
I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.
I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views
Read 15 tweets
Rob Ford Profile picture
18 Feb
One of the authors of the Policy Exchange report on academic free speech thinks it is "ridiculous" to expect him to accurately portray an incident at Cardiff University in his study, both in the reporting and in a question put to a student sample.
Here is the incident Kaufmann incorporated into his study, as told by a Cardiff professor who was there. As you can see, the incident involved the university intervening to *uphold* free speech principles:
Here is the first mention of the Greer at Cardiff incident in Kaufmann's report. It refers to the "concrete case" of the "no-platforming of Germaine Greer". Any reasonable reader would assume that refers to an incident of no-platforming instead of its opposite. Image
Read 16 tweets
Rob Ford Profile picture
15 Feb
Behold the NIMBY left
It is a truth universally acknowledged that once people are home owners preventing other people moving in or building houses near them shoots to the top of their hierarchy of political priorities
Be interested to know how many political abs economic outcomes can be explained by the degree to which political institutions are captured by the Universal NIMBY impulse
Read 4 tweets
Rob Ford Profile picture
8 Feb
Maybe, maybe not.
Case for: Votes Lab has won since 2010, & particularly 2015, tend to be younger, more socially liberal, more concerned about environment & (crucially) have much lower partisan attachment to Labour party. So they're likely to be flightier when unhappy with Lab
Greens are the obvious place for such voters to go - as the party of "all the things people like me like, and none of the compromises/half measures of Labour". Likely to be particularly appealing to those attracted primarily by Corbyn, whose appeal was also "no half measures".
OTOH, as we saw in 2019, first past the post has a hell of a squeezing impact come election time. Lib Dems peaked at low to mid 20s in summer 2019, ahead of Lab on some polls. then collapsed like a punctured bouncy castle as voters forced to focus on binary first past post choice
Read 6 tweets
Rob Ford Profile picture
7 Feb
So, one more set of thoughts on Labour and patriotism. Last one for now, I promise. I think there are some interesting underlying similarities between Labour's patriotism headache and the Conservatives' traditional NHS headache
In both cases you have an issue where (1) A consensus "this is a good thing" view is held by lopsided majority of the country (2) A substantial & vocal group of activists within the party dissents from this view (3) (partly because of this) the party is less trusted on the issue
For example, with the Tories on the NHS. Since the foundation of the NHS, voters have suspected that the Tories cannot "be trusted" with it. That they secretly dislike it. That, given the chance, they would privatise it. Etc, etc. Lab campaigns always play on this.
Read 19 tweets
Rob Ford Profile picture
6 Feb
Nerd trivia: The inauguration of Joe Biden means the beginning of the fifth period of time with 6 living Presidents. Four of the five periods have come since 1993:
1993-4: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton
2001-4: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II
2017-18: Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump
2021-: Carter, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump, Biden

The earlier one was 1861-62: Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln.

There have never been seven Presidents alive at the same time
Another trivia 6 - there have been 6 Presidents who at one point in their lives were the only President alive:
Washington
Adams
Grant
T Roosevelt
Hoover
Nixon

Nixon is the only President who has been the only President alive and one of a set of 6 living Presidents
Read 11 tweets

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