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!

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.

More here ft.com/content/e8ac09…

“The NHS has too many managers” latest

https://twitter.com/alijanemoore/status/1846091404214141300

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

NEW: we may have passed peak obesity 🎉📈📉🙏

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…

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.

That incredible Noah Lyles victory in chart form.

Lyles was in last place until *50m*, and then surged past the field to take it on the line. A blue streak.

Thompson led from 25m to 95m, but not when it counted. Granular timing data via @jgault13 and the Olympics website

https://x.com/jgault13/status/1820190130868826340

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.

Full report here: moreincommon.org.uk/media/e3in12zd…

Under-appreciated stat from last week’s election:

Labour won its lowest ever share of the vote in deprived areas (<50% for the first time), and its highest ever share in affluent areas.

The result is a dramatic flattening of the class gradient in Labour support. Here’s the same thing laid out as a timeline so you can see specific elections.

Interesting how Blair 1997 and Corbyn 2017 had similarly steep class gradients.

And shows how Starmer’s landslide was quite different to Blair’s.

The lack of enthusiasm for Labour at this election really is striking.

Among those who plan to vote Labour tomorrow, the party is much less well-liked than in 2019, 2017 or 2015 (no data before that).

Quite a flimsy voter coalition that could unravel in the absence of results. The Conservatives weren’t especially popular with their backers in 2019 (mainly a vote for Brexit and against Corbyn), and this was a big part of why they fell so far since then, but Lab voters this time are even less enthusiastic about their party than Tory voters were in 2019.

NEW 🧵: how Britain became gripped by the worst homelessness crisis in the developed world Here the column in full

Now let’s get into the detail:ft.com/content/24117a…

NEW:

There has long been a gap between people’s views of crime locally (not a big issue) vs nationally (it’s terrible out there!), but there are signs this is now happening to economic perceptions too.

My finances? Going okay. The economy? Awful.

What’s going on? My column this week asks whether the media (both mainstream and social) and its incentives to maximise engagement could be playing a key role ft.com/content/8cd76c…

NEW: my column this week is about the coming vibe shift, from Boomers vs Millennials to huge wealth inequality *between* Millennials.

Current discourse centres on how the average Millennial is worse-off than the average Boomer was, but the richest millennials are loaded 💸🚀 That data was for the UK, but it’s a similar story in the US. The gap between the richest and poorest Millennials is far wider than it was for Boomers. More debt at the bottom, and much more wealth at the top.

In both countries, inequality is overwhelmingly *within* generations, not between them.

NEW 🧵:

American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment.

I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the US today, and one of the most poorly understood. Last week, an NYT poll showed Biden leading Trump by less than 10 points among non-white Americans, a group he won by almost 50 points in 2020.

Averaging all recent polls (thnx @admcrlsn), the Democrats are losing more ground with non-white voters than any other demographic.

The politics of America’s housing issues in one chart:

• People and politicians in blue states say they care deeply about the housing crisis and homelessness but keep blocking housing so both get worse

• Red states simply permit loads of new homes and have no housing crisis And if you were wondering where London fits into this...

It builds even less than San Francisco, and its house prices have risen even faster.

That cities like London & SF (and the people who run them) are considered progressive while overseeing these situations is ... something

NEW: we often talk about an age divide in politics, with young people much less conservative than the old.

But this is much more a British phenomenon than a global one.

40% of young Americans voted Trump in 2020. But only 10% of UK under-30s support the Conservatives. Why? One factor is that another narrative often framed as universal turns out to be much worse in the UK: the sense that young generations are getting screwed.

Young people are struggling to get onto the housing ladder in many countries, but the crisis is especially deep in Britain:

Quick response to this:

The confusion stems from the fact that I used the Gallup Poll Social Series, whereas the below is using the General Social Survey.

The Gallup poll samples 10,000+ people, whereas the GSS (below) only samples about 2,000 (and only about ~250 under-30s)

https://twitter.com/AllenDowney/status/1751643928846016646

Folks like @EconTraina are right to say the GSS data for 2022 is dubious because they changed the sample mode.

This is precisely why I didn’t use that data.

The divergence I find is due to using a different dataset, not including a dodgy data point

https://twitter.com/EconTraina/status/1751394204746723797

NEW: an ideological divide is emerging between young men and women in many countries around the world.

I think this one of the most important social trends unfolding today, and provides the answer to several puzzles. My column this week is on new global gender divide and its implications

But let’s dig deeper:ft.com/content/29fd9b…

NEW: we don’t reflect enough on how severe the housing crisis is, and how it has completely broken the promise society made to young adults.

The situation is especially severe in the UK, where the last time house prices were this unaffordable was in ... 1876. My column this week is on the complete breakdown in one of the most powerful cultural beliefs of the English-speaking world: that if you work hard, you’ll earn enough to buy yourself a house and start a family.



But let’s get into the details:ft.com/content/f21642…

It always blows my mind how much wider the partisan trust gap is for US media compared to the UK 🤯

Most British media is trusted (or distrusted) about equally by supporters of both major parties. That’s true of virtually no US media org.

Deeply corrosive for US society. The most divisive news org in the UK is GB News (deeply distrusted by Labour supporters, jury is out among Cons).

Fully 25 US media orgs have wider partisan divides in trust than that, including everything from Fox News to ABC, PBS, NYT, NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, Politico...

NEW: analysis of millions of books published over the centuries suggests western society is shifting away from a culture of progress, and towards one of caution, worry and risk-aversion.

I think this is one of the most important challenges facing us today. My column this week explores how language and culture have historically played under-rated roles in human progress, and what that means for our present and future

But let’s get into the details:ft.com/content/e57741…

Quick thread on inheritance tax:

Something that is massively under-discussed in this debate is how the “it’s unfair” argument is completely flipped on its head when you consider it from the perspective of the next generation instead of the person passing on the inheritance. To state the obvious, when someone passes away, the destination of their accumulated wealth has no impact on them.

But it does have a massive impact on the next generation. Both on the children of rich parents who get the money and on the children of less rich parents who don’t.