John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
Nov 7, 2024 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
We’re going to hear lots of stories about which people, policies and rhetoric are to blame for the Democrats’ defeat.

Some of those stories may even be true!

But an underrated factor is that 2024 was an absolutely horrendous year for incumbents around the world 👇 Image
Harris lost votes, Sunak lost votes, Macron lost votes, Modi (!) lost votes, as did the Japanese, Belgian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Lithuanian governments in elections this year.

Any explanation that fails to take account for this is incomplete.

More here ft.com/content/e8ac09…
Did Biden hold on too long?

Has progressive politics alienated some Hispanic and Black men?

Yes and yes, but taking action to address those issues probably wouldn’t have produced a fundamentally different outcome.
People *really* hate inflation!

Though it’s also notable that most countries seeing political reversals this year have also had record high immigration, and parties on the right have made big gains.

Economic upheaval + social upheaval = 2024 election results. Image
And to clarify: this isn’t just the first time since WW2 that all incumbent parties in developed countries lost vote share.

It’s the first time since this data was first recorded in 1905. Essentially the first time in the history of democracy (universal suffrage began in 1894). Image
@C1aranMurray Or do you mean one of the coalition parties (FG) is on course to gain vote share?
Apparently some Dems are concluding from this that they were powerless to avoid a heavy defeat, so I will take this opportunity to plug my column from last month warning that progressives’ leftward shift on social issues was alienating Hispanic voters ft.com/content/84b816…Image

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More from @jburnmurdoch

Feb 16
Underrated factor in why English-speaking countries have especially bad housing crises is their common law systems (adversarial and litigious) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere.

Makes Anglo planning/permitting systems especially vulnerable to NIMBYs and other objections. Image
Good piece today from @dsquareddigest touching on this from the infrastructure perspective samf.substack.com/p/build-the-ra…
@dsquareddigest “We’d like to build this”

Europe: “Right let me check that against the rules”

Anglo: “K everyone go away and prepare your arguments”
Read 4 tweets
Aug 29, 2025
NEW: Progressives have a birth rate problem

For all the talk of a general fall in births, the drop is overwhelmingly driven by people on the left having fewer kids.

By ceding the topic of family and children to the right, progressives risk ushering in a more conservative world. Image
There’s something of a paradox at play here.

On the one hand, pro-natalism often implies constraining individual liberty and setting back women’s progress. As such, the left’s aversion to worrying about birth rates is perfectly natural.
But: the consequence of this emerging ideological slant in birth rates is that each successive generation gets nudged rightwards, increasing the likelihood that conservative politicians (who want to constrain individual liberty and set back women’s progress) get elected.
Read 12 tweets
Aug 8, 2025
NEW: Is the internet changing our personalities for the worse?

Conscientiousness and extroversion are down, neuroticism up, with young adults leading the charge.

This is a really consequential shift, and there’s a lot going on here, so let’s get into the weeds 🧵 Image
First up, personality analysis can feel vague, and you might well ask why it even matters?

On the first of those, the finding of distinct personality traits is robust. This field of research has been around for decades and holds up pretty well, even across cultures.
On the second, studies consistently find personality shapes life outcomes.

In fact, personality traits — esp conscientiousness and neuroticism — are stronger predictors of career success, divorce and mortality than someone’s socio-economic background or cognitive abilities.
Read 17 tweets
Jul 18, 2025
NEW:

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment.

I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged:

Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay. Image
In fact, young men with a college degree now have the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college, completely erasing the graduate employment premium.

Whereas a healthy premium remains for young women. Image
What’s going on?

At first glance, this looks like a case of the growing masses of male computer science graduates being uniquely exposed to the rapid adoption of generative AI in the tech sector, and finding jobs harder to come by than earlier cohorts.
Read 14 tweets
May 15, 2025
NEW with @KuperSimon

The prevailing narrative around increased injuries and player workload in elite football is wrong.

Players don’t play more football than in the past. What has changed is a sharp rise in intensity of play.

Not more minutes, but each minute exerts more load. Image
Of course, that doesn’t mean a reduction in playing time wouldn’t help. But if one wants to solve the problem, it helps to know the cause.

Fixture schedules are barely busier than in the past, and squad sizes have grown to mean no rise in minutes per player regardless...
...But the recent evolution of much faster-paced gameplay both with and without the ball comes with elevated risk of soft-tissue injuries.

Here’s the full article: ft.com/content/36ebc9…
Read 5 tweets
Apr 11, 2025
NEW 🧵

The number of people travelling from Europe to the US in recent weeks has plummeted by as much as 35%, as travellers have cancelled plans in response to Trump’s policies and rhetoric, and horror stories from the border. Image
Denmark saw one of the steepest declines, in an indication that anger over Trump’s hostility towards Greenland may be contributing to the steep drop-off in visitor numbers. Image
Corporate quotes are usually pretty dry, but the co-founder of major travel website Kayak wasn’t mincing his words: Image
Read 5 tweets

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