Will Boris Johnson be ousted as UK Prime Minister soon?

Speculation last week that Johnson would face a full Conservative confidence vote has so far come to nought. Also: US redistricting, French, Portuguese and Chile elections.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

For a UK Conservative leader to be ousted, the first step is for 15% of the party’s MPs to send letters expressing no confidence to the chair of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady. As there are currently 359 Conservatives in the House of Commons, 54 letters expressing no confidence in Boris Johnson are required.

If this first threshold is met, there is a secret ballot of all Conservative MPs. If the leader wins this confidence vote, they cannot be challenged for another year, although this rule could be amended. If the leader loses, they would be expected to be a caretaker PM until the next leader is elected.

Last week there was speculation that an announcement that Brady had received the 54 letters was imminent, but it did not occur. Johnson’s danger is due to the parties that were held while the UK was in COVID lockdown at Downing Street. This caused a slump for the Conservatives in the polls in December. The Conservatives regained some ground in early January, only for even more party revelations to crash their vote again. Some Conservatives may be waiting for Sue Gray’s report into the parties, expected next week, before moving against Johnson.

It was bad timing for Johnson that these party revelations came when the UK was suffering another COVID wave due to Omicron. This made people’s memories of past lockdowns more vivid, and so the parties resonated more than they would otherwise. In good news for Johnson, the Omicron wave is subsiding, with cases way down from their peak and hospitalisations also starting to fall.

I am dubious that ousting Johnson would be in the Conservatives’ electoral interests. While Johnson is very unpopular now, voters tend to move past non-recurring issues. The parties occurred in the last two years, and are unlikely to cause voters additional pain in the future. As the UK COVID situation improves, voters are likely to move past the parties.

Another argument against removing Johnson is that he “got Brexit done”. At the 2019 election, non-uni whites swung strongly to the Conservatives over Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done” – see my Conversation article last May. Will these voters remain Conservative under another Conservative PM?

Democrats gain in US redistricting, but Biden’s ratings remain poor

A US Census is held every ten years, with the boundaries of Congressional Districts set for ten years by that Census. Most states have completed redistricting of their CDs from the 2020 Census. The FiveThirtyEight tracker says that there are 129 Democratic-leaning seats, 124 Republican-leaning seats and 21 highly competitive seats in the new maps so far. The changes from the old maps are Democrats up seven, Republicans up one and competitive down six.

While some states use nonpartisan commissions to draw their maps, in most states redistricting is up to politicians. If one party holds the governor and both chambers of the legislature in a state, that party can gerrymander. Republican-controlled Florida (28 CDs) and Democratic New York (26) are the two biggest states still to complete redistricting. A Republican gerrymander in Ohio was rejected by the state courts, and this could also occur in North Carolina.

Biden’s ratings in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate are currently 53.5% disapprove, 41.9% approve (net -11.6). They have worsened recently owing to the recent COVID surge. There has been no recent progress with the Democratic legislative agenda. Inflation over the full 2021 year was 7.0%, the highest since 1982. A recent CBS YouGov poll indicates voters think Biden is not focussed enough on combatting inflation.

French, Portuguese and Chile developments

The first round of the French presidential election is on April 10, with a runoff between the top two on April 24. Conservative Valérie Pécresse has slipped behind the far-right Marine Le Pen in the race for second with incumbent Emmanuel Macron well ahead in first. Macron easily beats Le Pen, but it’s closer against Pécresse.

A Portuguese election will be held on January 30, with 230 seats elected by proportional representation. Polls indicate a close contest between the overall left and overall right. Portugal currently has a left government.

At the December 19 Chilean presidential runoff election, left-wing Boric defeated the far-right Kast by 55.9-44.1.

54 comments on “Will Boris Johnson be ousted as UK Prime Minister soon?”

Comments Page 1 of 2
1 2
  1. Gray’s report if it stops at “bad judgement” or similar probably enough to save Boris? If it says that the party he attended was a clear breach of rules then he could conceivably resign

    If he stays on, then the next saga will be the whip intimidation of backbenchers – such entrenched rotten smell across multiple issues will be hard to shake off?

    It seems inconceivable that the Tories avoid a bloodbath at the local elections in May. That plus a sustained Labor lead in the polls should be enough to force the no confidence vote one would think.

    He does have a past of getting away with murder, but it looks like public opinion is hardening at a rapid rate to the point that he is a locked in liability and has to go. Makes more sense to wait until those local govt elections than put that beating on the next person?

    As for Biden, he needs a miracle shift in sentiment to save the House. Some combination of Omicron subsiding + economic rebound + Jan6 commission actually finding a silver bullet + Roe v Wade overrule + trying thru reconciliation to do individual measures in BBB that will be hard to vote against (prescription drugs, maternity leave) and create some distinct lack-of-virtue signalling for the repubs. But its a 10-20% chance dems keep the house. Then he is dead man walking, might not bother running in ’24, and we in for some armageddon as Trump reemerges to smash Harris

  2. Democrats lost the house in 2010 under Obama (and it was the largest loss of seats since the 1940s) and then Obama was comfortably re-elected in 2012. Funnily enough, it was largely a backlash to the Affordable Care Act, but then when the Trump administration tried to repeal the ACA six years later they faced a backlash in the 2018 midterms.

    Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not convinced Trump is actually a particularly strong candidate for 2024. The best things he had going for him in 2016 were (a) few people thought he was actually going to win so they didn’t really bother attacking him the way frontrunners usually get attacked and (b) his lack of political experience meant he had little political baggage. Neither of those things will be true in 2024 (although the US electoral system will still be undemocratically skewed to Republicans, so he still won’t need to actually win a majority of votes).

    I agree that Dems would enormously benefit from passing popular legislation like prescription drug pricing. The problem is that conservative Dem senators like Kyrsten Sinema probably won’t vote for it (which I’m guessing has something to do with Big Pharma throwing huge amounts of money at her).

  3. I suspect the only real reason Johnson hasn’t been knocked off yet is that none of the ‘credible’ candidates for his replacement, or at least what passes for credible in that party, can’t be placed at any number of illegal gatherings the Conservatives regularly held throughout lockdown. If there’s no challenge in the next, say, fortnight or so, then Johnson’s probably safe at least until May. What happens then basically depends on whether the media are bored of not pretending he isn’t a POS for a change. If the Conservatives do badly then that will be the final straw. His rivals will have an excuse to get rid of him that’s unrelated (at least directly) to the Christmas parties and that will be that.

    Both the Red and Blue Tory leaders now owe the entirety of their political fortunes to the good graces of the media. Johnson basically always did. Labour used to have the benefit of the mass membership and grassroots campaign machine to at least somewhat resist the unrelenting media bias against Corbyn, but Starmer, and the right-wing Labour To Win faction – who now have a complete stranglehold on every facet of the Labour Party – have decimated that apparatus in supplication to the newspapers. Expect dismal turnout for the locals, whoever wins.

    The Democrats are fucked. They couldn’t pass BBB. They couldn’t pass voting reform. They can’t pass anything of substance whatsoever. Can’t even pretend to fix any of the myriad problems they promised to fix or make any serious material difference to the lives of ordinary people who are suffering under the pandemic, crushing inflation and every other rotting neoliberal ulcer the Democrats have watched fester for years. Biden is easily the weakest, most hopelessly ineffectual president since at least Jimmy Carter and there are no obvious candidates for his replacement in 2024. As for 2022, the only question is whether the number of Democratic Senators left is in the 40s or 30s.

  4. FL – you make some good points there, but you are spouting crazy talk about the US Senate. It’s next to impossible for the Dems Senate numbers to end up in the 30s. As you are no doubt aware, only a third of the Senate is up at any given time, and so only 34 are up in November. Of these, 20 are Republican held, and only 14 are Democratic held, and of these 14, only four are in any danger, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire (and my reading is that only Nevada is anything close to a likely loss). At the same time, GOP is defending 4 at-risk seats themselves namely Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin, with the latter three the biggest chance of going Blue. So the likely outcome in the Senate may well be something of a wash, with the Dems picking up a couple and losing one or two, but otherwise keeping control of the upper chamber. It’s a different story in 2024, however, as the map then heavily favours the GOP, but this year’s Senate terrain is reasonably easy for the Blue team.

  5. Dems had a 10 point swing against them in Virginia and NJ last year compared to 2020, and I don’t believe the federal mid-terms are going to be much better for them. They should lose Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire and Oregon *easily*, and it could get worse from there. The Republicans won’t lose a thing. But for the specter of a Republican tear down of abortion laws, what the hell have the Dems got to run on? It’ll be a bloodbath.

  6. “At the December 19 Chilean presidential runoff election, left-wing Boric defeated the far-right Kast by 55.9-44.1.”….

    This Progressive victory in Chile is far more important than many may believe. For those who don’t know, Chile was the place of one of the most purist experiments in social and economic Neoliberalism that started in the late 1970s under the protection of the Fascist Pinochet regime. Friedrich Hayek, one of the fathers of Neoliberalism, visited the country several times during the dictatorship endorsing the Fascist regime (try to fit that with the Neoliberal rhetoric that they are for “democracy”, “liberty”… blah, blah). Pinochet reformed the constitution to make it more consistent with his concept of “Protected Democracy” (= a system where you vote but the Neoliberal structure can’t be challenged…). Since the fall of the Fascist regime many progressive presidents have been elected but, so far, nobody has been able to replace the Fascist-Neoliberal constitution. The process of replacement, however, has started and the vote for the Progressive Gabriel Boric is a strong endorsement of change.

    Upon becoming President, Boric declared:

    “Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!”

  7. I would generally have suggested that the Tories hold their horses for a few months and see if BoJo could turn things around a bit in that time but then I was reminded about the local government elections. However, the 2022 local government elections are the ones to replace the 2018 class where the Tories did poorly (although their overall figures were not that bad as they won back a heap of seats from UKIP).
    At least the process in the Conservative Party is faster than the Labour party and a leader could be replaced in a fortnight as opposed to 2 months.


  8. …Another argument against removing Johnson is that he “got Brexit done”. At the 2019 election, non-uni whites swung strongly to the Conservatives over Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done” – see my Conversation article last May. Will these voters remain Conservative under another Conservative PM?
    …’
    ==================================
    Getting Brexit done is now offset to some extent by:

    1. Getting Brexit done versus getting Brexit done badly.
    2. Understanding the lies involved in selling Brexit.
    3. The real world lived experience of the consequences of Brexit.

  9. “Furtive Lawngnomesays:
    Monday, January 24, 2022 at 12:15 am

    ….It’ll be a bloodbath”

    Meaning that the majority of Americans already want Trumpism back?….. A majority Republican Congress would mean 2 years of stasis… How good that would be for the voters?

  10. The real issue with Boris is wider than the COVID parties, and goes to his general drift and detachment from the drudgery of day to day government, ie knowing what’s going on; and taking a moral lead. He could get away with it as mayor of london but those character flaws show up as pm. The dilemma for the tories is who to replace him with. It’s hard to see anyone else complete the journey away from small state conservativism quite as easily as Boris.

  11. Johnson won’t go easily, that’s for sure… But he will be eventually booted out if the polls keep going down and downer for the Tories.

    But perhaps counselor Abbott may suggest to the British Tories to use the “miracle” approach, that worked oh-so-well for Scomocchio and the Coalition in 2019…. The problem is that the next Australian federal Coalition will happen before the general election in the UK, and so the “miracle” strategy will be proven to be a failure eventually.

  12. Alpo says:
    Monday, January 24, 2022 at 7:47 am

    “the next Australian federal Coalition”

    It should say:

    “the next Australian federal election”

  13. Re Boewar at 7.37 pm

    Yes, everybody knows that, in reality, Brexit was done badly. There are many illustrations, such as:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/06/fury-at-gove-as-exports-to-eu-slashed-by-68-since-brexit

    And the UK government’s mismanagement of Covid has been worse than its mishandling of Brexit.

    The official Covid death numbers in the UK (currently 153,862) are significantly understated. A note in the British Medical Journal in May 2021 said demographers estimated over 200, 000 UK deaths.

    See: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1188

    While a UK geriatrician suggests the UK figures understate the actual Covid deaths in the UK by 20%.

    See: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352

    Everybody knows Johnson’s scandals are not a non-recurring issue. It is a surprise he has lasted this long. The dive in the Tory vote is now so steep graphically that a peleton could crash going down it.

    The Lie Detector French President looks home and hosed, partly due to the low Socialist Party vote.

  14. The 1922 Committee gets its name from the reformation of the Conservative and Unionist Party in 1922. At the time, David Lloyd George was the Prime Minister. He was a Liberal before the war who brought in rather radical things like the old age pension. He had become PM in 1916 and was widely seen as been the politician who won the war.
    At the 1918 election, held just after the armistice, the wartime coalition won by a massive margin but was made up largely of Conservatives after the majority of the Liberals had decided to run separately. By 1922, things for the wartime coalition were not going very well but the leadership of party were quite happy. But the conservative backbenchers were not; hence they set up a backbench committee, naming it after the year of its formation, it told the leadership that they were going to leave the coalition and move to the opposition.
    As a result, the Conservative party is beholden to a committee of the backbenchers in a similar way that the Labour party there is beholden to the party structure.

    Compare that to the mess situation the Liberals in Australia have found themselves in the last three times they needed to replace a sitting PM (I count the inability to move Howard on in 2007 as a case).

  15. Good to see you back and posting new posts in 2022, Adrian. I hope your holidays were good.

    After looking into it, I don’t think it’s a good idea to move on Johnson right now. At the moment, things look dire but, as pointed out in the OP, this is something that could just outrage voters for a little while before they move on. At this point, it’s still a storm he can weather. Really, it only sticks if things start just generally going badly and people start being strongly disappointed with the direction of the country, then they take offences like Johnson’s to be symbolic of the problems they’re facing.

    Also, I don’t think a new PM will help them out. Yeah, I know Morrison in 2019 blah blah but I honestly think removing Johnson would be absolutely damaging to the government as he seems like the modern tory goldilocks candidate: Not too liberal (Cameron), not too dry (May) – just right. At this point, the only sense I could see is if it’s obvious they were heading to a crashing defeat and they put someone safe and boring in like Rishi Sunak, to “save the furniture.”

    Also worth pointing out that incumbent governments (and their PMs) don’t necessarily need to demonstrate to voters that they’re good, just that the other side would be worse and, despite their current lead, Starmer isn’t exactly a vote magnet. So, it’s possible if he weathers the worst of it, he could just focus on making the other side look like a worse option when it comes to an election.

    But who knows? Anything’s possible in politics, especially as the actors involved don’t always follow the most expected course of action. For all I know, Johnson’s resignation address is being typed up as we speak right now.

  16. I’m not sure the Tory membership would elect a black Hindu as leader and PM.
    These members are mainly old, white and very conservative with a considerable dash of racism thrown into the mix.

  17. The Dems losing the Oregon and Colorado seats is borderline hysterical. Given current polling I even think NH may be a bridge too far.

    Things are bad currently for the Dems. Biden is seen as ineffective, which is partly fair, but also incredibly unfair (but that’s politics). He’s also dealing with the consequences of the large scale intervention into the economy as a result of COVID (see inflation).

    Tell me a) what Biden could have done b) tell me how?

    At this stage – I expect the GOP to pick up 20-30 House seats. But picking the Senate is a fools errand at this point .

  18. The point about racism is quite correct. Apparently the ex- junior Tory Minister for Transport, Nusrat Ghani, was dumped from Cabinet because of her Islamic faith. Quite disgraceful actually.

  19. Gerry, I take your point (and don’t disagree with it) and was definitely just throwing his name out there randomly.

    That said, there are some white people who suddenly find themselves to be more “woke” about this stuff when they know they’re throwing someone black/POC under a bus or at least expecting them to clean a huge mess (See: some of the Obama-Trump voters)

  20. Johnson, like Trump, is an A-grade bullshit artist, a snake oil salesman with no guiding principle apart from looking after number one. Like Trump he has no expertise in guiding a big organisation like a national government, and sooner or later such chancers inevitably come unstuck. In Trump’s case, he was protected to some extent by the nature of the US Presidential system – it’s pretty hard to get rid of a bad President apart from waiting until the term is up. Johnson, by contrast, is a creature of a Westminster parliamentary system, which is far more able to jettison dud leaders. In that way, Johnson probably has more in common with Tony Abbott, another populist conservative who really should have had a lot more political capital (by virtue of a big election win) than he ended up having, frittering away his capital on nothing much. So it is with Johnson, and it would not at all surprise me to see the Conservatives knife him sooner rather than later. I actually don’t think the council elections in May are an especially relevant consideration. One, they are still three months away, and that’s a long time for Johnson to withstand the momentum that clearly building against him. He’s already a wounded leader, what with a significant chunk of his backbench now souring on him, and it’s generally the case in politics (and particularly in British politics) that once the political class smell blood, it’s only a matter of time until the deed is done.

  21. The point about racism is quite correct. Apparently the ex- junior Tory Minister for Transport, Nusrat Ghani, was dumped from Cabinet because of her Islamic faith. Quite disgraceful actually.

    Its not racist, you can call it bigoted or something along those lines but its not racist because Islam is not a race

  22. Sunak would be savaged by some of the media because he lives next door to the Oaf and must, therefore, have known about some of the piss ups ( work meetings)occurring nearby.

  23. The only reason that Johnson has not been replaced is that there is plenty of more pain for the government arriving. Inflation is up, shortages are a problem and Covid still not conquered. Any rival would want Bozo to continue to take the heat for these issues and only move when he/she can get some clean air.

  24. Tories are recovering in the polls, with the first one taken in a week having Labour’s lead down from 13 to 7, validating my point about voters moving past issues. The latest revelations about the Boris birthday bash are unlikely to wreck the Tories all over again – it’s becoming less shocking.

    https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1485659356318232579

    Westminster voting intention:

    LAB: 41% (-2)
    CON: 34% (+4)
    LDEM: 11% (+2)
    GRN: 5% (-2)
    REFUK: 3% (-1)

    via @RedfieldWilton 24 Jan
    Chgs. w/ 17 Jan

    Could someone please show me how to get tweets into comments using just the url?

  25. Some favourable news for Dems in US redistricting: Alabama’s Republican gerrymander has been struck out by the courts, though this is likely to be appealed to SCOTUS. Blacks are 27% of AL’s pop, but only elect one of seven AL Congresspeople. If this ruling holds up, would mean Dems would probably win 2 of 7 AL CDs and there would probably be similar consequences for other southern states with sizeable black populations.

    What’s amazing is that 2 of 3 judges were Trump appointees.

    https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1485793950267019265

  26. If you agree that Johnson “got Brexit done”, you’d probably agree that Johnson is now working to “get Brexit redone”. Either way, it keeps the them versus us dynamic going, which worked for him in the past.

    This article is a few weeks old now (Dec 18), but I think still relevant, and gives a run down of the situation.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/17/northern-ireland-what-are-the-eu-and-uk-proposing-and-will-deal-be-done

  27. Re Adrian B at 3.01 pm

    What does “less shocking” mean? The events weren’t as bad as previous scandals, or they were as bad (in that they were clearly in breach of widely understood Covid rules) but less people were shocked because their expectations of Johnson are now so low, so that most people are unable to be shocked any more by him? If it’s the latter, that surely means it’s now not a matter of if he goes, but when.

    Recall ch. 1 of The Hobbit, when the first exchange was: ‘”Good morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. “What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” “All of them at once,” said Bilbo. …’

    Johnson’s backers want him to continue to get away with everything at once, but it now won’t wash.

    Clem’s point above has validity but an old answer to that is “Events …” They will keep cropping up.

    See this report on the Guardian blog (10.02 Tue UK time):

    “According to the Guido Fawkes blog, Dame Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, will tell the London assembly’s police and crime committee that the Met will now investigate partying at No 10 when she gives evidence this morning [UK time].”

    Dick spelt out 4 conditions for an investigation: 1) evidence exists; 2) the perpetrators knew they were committing an offence; 3) their behaviour risked undermining the law; and 4) no reasonable defence.

    The Gray report is an internal not an independent investigation. If the police investigate the partying, their report may have less of a Yes Minister theme to it.

  28. Gray’s report could be out today – that plus combo of Met exploration might be enough for the 54 letters to go in. I thought they might use the ‘inappropriate to weigh in on ongoing police matter’ to delay releasing the report.. but sounds like the Met forced their hand on it anyway by encouraging her to do so

    Sunak + racism… tories more motivated by ideology, and he’s right up their alley. Simple institutional islamophobia seems a little easy to leap to when Zahawi and Javid are in cabinet? I dont know if Labor should be trying to make too much hay on this topic after their anti-semitism shocker… but they have a big problem if they lose their traditionally reliable muslim vote base so prob have to go hard?

    Brexit such a shocker, in part given some cover by covid. Starmer so scared of the 2019 mauling that isnt particularly offering much on this front. Trying to get a genuine sense for what is a decent outcome given there is no going back but the ERG version of Brexit is so bad. I think a huge regret has to be voting down Theresa May’s deal by the centre/left… thought they could reverse Brexit and got the most disasterous scenario instead. Just a series of strategic missteps – not knowing how the game theory was going to play out, to be fair… reminiscent of the whole ETS screwup here (though not arguing equivalency)

    Some really silly US analysis with the senate above. Dems could lose Georgia, NH, AZ and Nevada but have chances to gain Pennsylvania, NC and Wisconsin. House-wise, the redistricting isnt really a massive Republican advantage as feared but the polling is the problem. At this stage, losing the House looks highly probable and the senate a reasonable probability… and this is where the nightmare scenario starts to loom large in my mind: Biden is finished at that point and at 83 or whatever easily might just chuck it in for ’24. Dems revert to Harris who is simply not popular and not respected. And Trump’s hold on the repub base very strongly suggests he can win the nomination regardless of any actual truth or facts – who is going to beat him amongst their voting base? Tim Scott would be unbeatable in a general election i suspect, but beating Trump for the nom much more challenging. De Santis or some other numbnut could fracture the right a bit allowing a more centrist to come up the middle, but its a long shot (this was supposedly Kasich in 2016, got nowhere with this base)

    and Trump v Harris would be his wet dream… i would for sure favour him to win that. Not a centrist competent unpolarising democrat so much, but who is that candidate? In theory Buttigieg but sadly i just dont think the US swing states are ready yet, i hope in next 20 years. Who else do they have with any profile? Warren/Bernie or their successors will get crushed i have little doubt. A Deval Patrick or Gina Raimundo would be very suitable candidates, but just dont have the following.

    Very worried!

  29. All the seats I mentioned as easy losses have lower Democratic partisan leans than Virginia, but if you guys are really that bullish on the Dems’ chances then just explain: what the hell will they run on in 2022? What’s going to improve for them? Odds are they get even less done this year than last. Why would occasional/swing voters bother to turn out for a party that perennially breaks its meanest promises and is incapable of doing a single thing to change ordinary peoples’ lives for the better? Are we hoping for a war bump from Ukraine?

    Partisan swings against the president’s party in his first term are very normal, usually between 6-9 points, according to 538, although they can be a lot worse- the swing against Obama in 2010 was something like 17 points on the generic House ballot. And you’re talking about them picking up Pennsylvania, NC and Wisconsin, two of those states Biden barely won in 2020 and one of which he didn’t. Again, how?

  30. Penn the frontrunner to replace Pat Toomey (a relative moderate) might be Dr Oz… a reasonable Dem candidate could well win there

    Wisc Ron Johnson is pretty vile, a decent dem candidate could win

    NC senate wise they would have won in 2020 but for a disastrous candidate

    Note in 2018 with all-time dem midterm turnout and retaking the House in an anti-Trump landslide, the Repubs nonetheless picked up 2 senate seats. Very much will be driven by the candidates in play, though a massive anti-Dem (or enthusiasm gap) sentiment will definitely make it challenging. Presidential water much less of an issue in senate races than the House. Not saying a nil issue, but far from totally determinative either.

  31. Every Republican is vile. Most Democrats are ‘reasonable’, insofar as they’re usually not quite as awful, including Toomey, who’s really a very average Democrat who ran on a platform of very standard centrist mediocrity. It doesn’t matter because Democrats have zero credibility to deliver on material interests, and Republicans only have to dish out red meat and stomp on the necks of the downtrodden.

    I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Most people around here didn’t want to believe that Virginia could be lost a couple months ago either.

  32. “ Who else do they have with any profile? Warren/Bernie or their successors will get crushed i have little doubt. A Deval Patrick or Gina Raimundo would be very suitable candidates, but just dont have the following.”

    Sherrod Brown? With Amy Klobuchar as his running mate?

  33. Breyer has announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, he’s from the liberal wing so, while he will be replaced from another from that wing, it won’t change the balance of the court overall. Nevertheless, it will be still good to replace someone in their 80s with someone considerably younger.

    Anyway, I look forward to the really dumb takes about this online. Because we can’t discuss developments about US politics without the absolutely most ridiculous opinions from the most uninformed people who’ve decided they’re experts on the topic.

  34. Aaaand another comment eaten by the website. It was about Breyer but I am not interested in retyping it. The short is he is from the liberal wing and will be replaced by someone else from that wing so it won’t change the balance but at least it won’t be an 80-something year old who might die in a Republican administration.

  35. I think Furtive Lawngnome is right in this discussion. In 2018, three Senate seats that the Reps gained – North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri – had voted for Trump by double digit margins in 2016. Reps also gained Florida by under 0.1% in 2018, which showed that FL is becoming more right-wing.

    Expecting the Dems to gain Senate seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which all voted to the right of the national popular vote in 2020, does not make sense. Dems could easily lose all of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire.

    Unless Biden’s ratings improve A LOT between now and November, Dems are going to be thumped in both the House and Senate. And Dems will be very exposed in 2024 Senate races. The rural bias in the Senate (two senators per state) helps Reps.

  36. It’s true to say that the 2022 environment looks pretty grim for the Democrats, but I think we should be wary about making too firm a prediction about what might happen in November – those elections are still ten months away, and there’s still time for a) the Dems to turn things around, b) the GOP to fuck up their chances, and c) the general situation to change to one more sympathetic to the Blue team. While AB’s reading is probably reasonably astute based on the current situation, it is worth noting that AB has some form of talking down the Democratic situation and talking up the Republican one.

    As for the Senate, I still think Furtive Lawngnome’s predictions are a bit on the gloomy side. Yes, the Dems could well lose Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, but polling doesn’t really back that up, at least not yet, and incumbency is generally a strong force in Senate elections. In Arizona, Mark Kelly is by all account a pretty popular incumbent, and the GOP seem to be struggling to find a decent candidate to run against him. If Doug Ducey throws his hat in, I’d be less confident, but right now that looks more like a Dem hold and than GOP gain. Raphael Warnock in Georgia may also benefit from the candidate match up, with Hershel Walker firming as the Republican favourite. Walker strikes me as a weak general election candidate, one with many skeletons, and no experience, while Warnock should bring out the Black church vote in numbers. I’d rate this one as a line ball, but again, incumbency always helps. New Hampshire is another state where the GOP has struggled to get a strong candidate, and with Chris Sununu backing out, it’s hard to see who that will be. Nevada is a genuine risk to lose, but again, candidate and turn-out may yet be key. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is shaping up to be a battle between one of two very strong Democratic candidates (John Fetterman or Conor Lamb) and a second rate GOP candidate, in an open seat (so no incumbency factor). Wisconsin and North Carolina will also hinge on candidates and the broader political environment.

    I’d still say that the likely Senate outcome in November will be something of a wash, with another 50/50 Senate or 51/49 either way. 2024 is another matter, and AB is quite correct to note that the map does not favour the Blue team that year (they’ll be defending Senate seats in Red/ Purple states like Montana, Nevada and West Virginia, as well as Sinema’s Arizona seat), though it will of course be a presidential year, which might help.

  37. i agree Biden needs an 8 point uplift to feel anywhere close to good on the senate – in general things are not looking good at all, no doubt.

    just saying its not all and only about Biden in these races which creates opportunities, unlike the House for the most part

    winning Wisconsin and Nth Carolina are possible i’m not suggesting probable at all. Pennsylvania i’d distinguish a bit just on the uncertainty around the repub nominee and the chance it is a total chucklehead even by their standards!

    a lose house but hang on to senate outcome is tenable

    if sentiments and performance stay exactly the same as today, then its not very likely i grant

    turnout boosterism on an anti-democracy (Jan 6, voting rights), Roe v Wade overturn, beware the Trump return sounds like where they have to go hard if no covid/economy relief forthcoming?

    strength against Putin on Ukraine (even if unnecessary on the ground) might also be where he needs to go for political show as well

  38. Stuart,

    please dont say that even in jest! Hilary ’24 is a sure fire recipe for any Repub win, let alone Trump. Dems cannot surely be that stupid.

    Unfortunately, i think Harris of similar electability value

  39. The way things are looking, I would be very surprised if Biden even stands in 2024. Even if his approval ratings were soaring come the primaries, an 82-year-old Presidential candidate still strikes me a dicey proposition (admittedly I thought the same about a 78-year-old candidate in 2020), but now… retiring after a single term seems a far more dignified way to go out than the likely alternatives facing him. No doubt, many of the troubles his administration are facing right now arn’t really his fault, but right now it just doesn’t seem like he’s capable of turning the narrative around and restoring the public’s trust in his competence.

    As for who the Democrats could run in his stead, well, I don’t really follow the day-to-day of American politics closely enough to answer that one. I actually don’t think Kamala Harris is anywhere near as poor a candidate as many are now saying, despite some obvious missteps on her part, but if Biden doesn’t run, I would hope the Democrats don’t shy away from from a big, open contest. None of this “it’s his / her turn” nonsense.

Comments Page 1 of 2
1 2

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *