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 👇
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.
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.
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).
@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…
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My wish for the next election is that poll trackers look like the one on the right 👉 not the left
This was yet another election where the polling showed it could easily go either way, but most of the charts just showed two nice clean lines, one leading and one trailing. Bad!
Pollsters and poll aggregators have gone to great lengths to emphasise the amount of uncertainty in the polls in recent weeks...
But have generally still put out charts and polling toplines that encourage people to ignore the uncertainty and focus on who’s one point ahead. Bad!
The thing about human psychology is, once you give people a nice clean number, it doesn’t matter how many times you say "but there’s an error margin of +/- x points, anything is possible".
People are going to anchor on that central number. We shouldn’t enable this behaviour!
Many of the NHS’s difficulties can be traced back to the deep cuts in manager numbers.
Fixing this doesn’t just unblock waiting lists, it also gives doctors more time to be doctors, and alleviates the stress and poor morale that come from having to do things that aren’t your job
Here’s another fun NHS low hanging fruit example:
A trial last year found that by running two operating theatres side by side, they cut the time between operations from 40 minutes to 2, and were able to do a week’s worth of surgeries in one day thetimes.com/uk/article/lon…
In what might be one of the most significant trends I have ever charted, the US obesity rate fell last year.
My column this week is about this landmark data point, and what might be behind it ft.com/content/21bd0b…
We already know from clinical trials that Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs produce sustained reductions in body weight, but with mass public usage taking off — one in eight US adults have used the drugs — the results may now be showing up at population level.
It’s really striking how the Corbynite left has migrated to the Greens.
The result is a curious coalition between the older and more Nimby environmentalist base, and the new hard left/progressive influx.
These are quite different people with quite different politics!
In 2019, one in ten Green voters was from the most progressive/left segment of voters; now that’s one in four.
Big difference in policy preferences, priorities and pressure on the leadership, as we’ve seen in e.g reaction to Denyer’s Biden statement.
The most glaring tension between these two types of Green is on decarbonisation, where the older Nimby base doesn’t want pylons *or even onshore wind farms* but many of the new progressive Green vote do.
Greens are actually less keen on wind farms than Labour and Lib Dem voters!
Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by @Moreincommon_
The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.
And to the extent that people thought they were either too left or right wing, equal shares gave each answer.
There’s one very clear message and anything else is a distraction.
When asked what were the biggest mistakes the Conservatives made in government, the common themes are not left or right, but:
• Mismanagement
• Lack of integrity
• Incompetence
• Dishonesty
• Corruption
• “They are chaotic”