Live Commentary
12:13pm Friday With nearly all votes now counted, the Dem’s lead has expanded slightly to 68.9-29.4, a 39.5-point margin.
4:09pm With all election day precincts reported, the Dem wins by 68.6-29.8 with 87% in. The remaining votes will nearly all be late mail that will be counted in the next few days. The current margin of 39 points is 17 points better for the Dems than Harris’ 2024 margin in this seat.
3:06pm Four counties have finished with their election day precincts, but there are no election day votes yet from Pima. The Dem leads by 70.2-28.1 with 82% in.
1:24pm Santa Cruz now in, and the Dem wins by 70.7-27.5 with 80% in. So far the Dem’s 43-point margin is 21 points greater than Harris’ margin in this district in the 2024 election, but that margin is likely to drop on later counting.
1:15pm There are still no results from Santa Cruz county. Democrats do relatively well in Arizona with the first results (mail votes). The remaining votes will probably skew Republican, reducing the Dem’s margin. Election day votes should report by later today AEST.
1:09pm With 75% in, the Dem has won Arizona 7 by 71-28. This includes early votes from five of the six counties that make up this district, including the most populous county of Pima.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
Polls close at 12 noon AEST today for a federal special election in Arizona’s Democratic-held seventh district, with first results expected by 1pm. This seat became vacant after the incumbent died in mid-March, a six-month gap.
At the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump in Arizona 7 by 60.3-38.2, so it should be an easy Democrat hold. At 40 state and federal special elections so far this year, Democrats have improved by an average 15.1 points from the 2024 presidential margin in those districts. This reflects a greater tendency for Democrats to vote in low-turnout specials more than a shift in overall electorate preferences.
Republicans hold the US House of Representatives by 219-213, but a win for Democrats today would make it 219-214. A special election to replace a Democrat who died in early March will occur in Texas on November 4, an eight-month gap. A special to replace a Republican who resigned in late July will be held in Tennessee in early December, a 4.5-month gap.
Trump’s net approval in Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls has dropped a point in the last few days to -8.5 after a long period of stability, possibly driven by concerns over inflation and tariffs. Update Wednesday: Trump’s net approval now down to -9.4.
Other US elections on November 4
Most US state elections are held concurrently with federal elections in November of even-numbered years, but some states hold elections this November. In Virginia and New Jersey, there will be gubernatorial elections. In both these states, the incumbent governors (a Democrat in New Jersey and a Republican in Virginia) are term-limited and cannot run for re-election.
Non-partisan polls in NJ have the Democrat leading the Republican by high single digit margins. In Virginia, the Democrat leads by low double-digit margins. At the 2024 presidential election, Harris won NJ by 5.9 points and Virginia by 5.8 points, while Trump won the overall popular vote by 1.5 points.
There will also be legislative elections for the lower house in both NJ and Virginia. Democrats currently hold a 52-28 majority over Republicans in the NJ lower house and a 51-49 majority in the Virginia lower house. Democrats hold a 25-15 upper house majority in NJ and a 21-19 majority in Virginia, which are not up for election.
The New York City mayoral general election will also occur, after socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic nomination in June by 56.4-43.6 after preferences. The general election uses first past the post, and Mamdani is assisted by the three other major candidates being to his right.
The Decision Desk poll aggregate gives Mamdani 43.0%, Cuomo 25.6%, Republican Curtis Sliwa 14.5% and current mayor Eric Adams 8.8%. In a recent Emerson poll, Mamdani led Cuomo by 43-28 in the full field, but only by 47-40 head to head.
I previously covered the California referendum for Democrats to retaliate for Texas Republican gerrymandering. A recent Emerson College poll gave “yes” to retaliatory gerrymandering a 51-34 lead.
UK deputy Labour leadership election and Labour’s dismal polls
Angela Rayner was UK Labour’s deputy leader and housing minister until she resigned on September 5 owing to underpayment of stamp duty tax. Candidates for deputy leader were required to win at least 80 MP nominations (20% of all Labour MPs). Two candidates cleared this hurdle by the September 11 deadline: education minister Bridget Phillipson and former leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell.
Labour party members will choose between these two from October 8-23 with the result announced on October 25. Phillipson is regarded as PM Keir Starmer’s choice. A Survation poll of Labour members gave Powell a 47-30 lead.
In the Election Maps UK national poll aggregate, the far-right Reform has 30.9%, Labour 20.6%, the Conservatives 17.7%, the Liberal Democrats 13.8% and the Greens 9.0%. Reform has been well ahead since the May local elections.
With the UK’s FPTP system, Reform would win 352 of the 650 House of Commons seats on these voting intentions, above the 326 needed for a majority. Labour would win just 107, the Lib Dems 74 and the Conservatives 31. Starmer’s net approval is -33.6%, far worse than Reform leader Nigel Farage’s -13.6%.
I think it will be instructive to see if Trump’s rally, er Charlie Kirk’s funeral lollapalooza, in Arizona last Sunday will have any effect on this election in Arizona today.. I’ll be interested to see if it has clawed any votes off the Democrats and onto the Republicans as a result.
Both the Labour Party and Conservative Party are finished in the UK. The Fiscal position is dire with the UK Budget scheduled to be handed down in Parliament by Rachel Reeves next month. Reeves will attempt to close an estimated 38 billion pound black hole in the UK Budget via large tax increases and is blocked from any meaningful expenditure cuts by Labour’s backbench. This will pulversise the Labour Party’s already dismal vote.
Another point to consider is the Welsh and Scottish Parliamentary elections and English Local Council elections are due this coming May (including those local councils which deferred their elections 4 months ago). Polling indicates Reform UK will win both the Welsh Parliamentary elections and the English Local Council elections and (at the very least) become the Official Opposition to the Scottish Nationalist Party.
In all 3 sets of elections the Labour Party and Conservative Party effectively cease to exist. The strong rumour in London is Starmer will not survive after the May debacle (according to ‘off-the-record’ Labour Party MPs) and an early UK General election is openly being discussed as a reality in the first half of 2027.
Rob, if that rumour is true, it begs the question: why would UK Labour throw away 2 years in Government (ie, early May 2027 to August 2029) by going to an early general election? They have a large enough majority in the Commons to keep Government until the next general election is due. Do those sources think they have a better chance of keeping seats by going early, than by waiting for the economic tide to turn in 2028/29? Sounds a bit like ‘bedwetting’ to me, but I’m not on the ground there. It just sounds way premature for UK Labour’s best and brightest to be second guessing the political climate of the years 2027-2029, from here in Sept 2025.
Thanks for the intro AB, especially the U.K. stuff.
That link you provided showed that of all the leaders in the U.K., Ed Davey frrom the Lib Dems came out on top. I don’t know much about the LibDems (they come across a bit similar to the Australian Democrats from yesteryear)
Here’s a report from YouGov overnight, which tries to explain why the LibDems aren’t polling higher.
Link: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53039-why-wont-people-vote-liberal-democrat
ok, well onto the U.S. special election. I’m tipping about a 6-8% swing to the Dems on primary.
c@t – I saw that link of yours from last night after I logged off – The Lincoln Project.
Bookmarked – thks
Rob,
Yes, the Welsh polling is dismal. I dropped some details on the open thread last night.
It has Labour at 14% and the Tories lower.
The Tories never polled well in Wales but the Labour vote has fallen by about 25 points since the last Welsh election. Plaid Cymru has just overtaken reform leading 30-29.
Per “talk about an early election”.
Where are you getting this from? I’d like to know as well.
I couldn’t possibly imagine that Starmer will call an election with polling as dismal as what he is seeing now.
Considering the one thing that the Starmer Government have in their favour is time, it seems odd they’d cut themselves at the knees with an early election like that seems illogical and unlikely. That said, this government has made some bizarre left field decisions at points, so who knows? But I wouldn’t bet the house on the UK going back to the polls any time soon.
The only politically logical way there’s an early election is if there’s one to thwart a leadership spill, although that’d be pretty drastic for someone like Starmer to do.
Nonetheless it can happen. I reckon that’s one of the reasons why Rishi Sunak went early in 2024 even when the Tories were tanking in the polls.
Adrian,
Is there a high amount of postals (Mail-in’s), & is that likely to drag the count out somewhat?
I’m looking at this site. It’s saying only 27% of postal’s have come in.
https://azsos.gov/news/984
It looks to me like about 75% of registered voters applied for a postal.
Sunak went early because he thought the seat losses would have been worse by going later not to avoid another Tory Leadership election (which no one including most Tories really wanted)
Though “early” is relative as he’d said the election would be in 2024 (the latest it had to be held by was late January 2025) and people were thinking October at the latest.
The drubbing the Tories got in the May local elections was the deciding factor and he called the election later in May.
So just on the very first votes, the Dems are up 7 on last years result, with the Repubs down by about 9.
Following the pattern of other elections held this year.
Nadia88
Another election result in Georgia, which AB I not covering.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/23/2345125/-The-incredible-shrinking-margin-A-GOP-victory-in-Georgia-is-shockingly-good-news-for-Democrats?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
It is a State Senate seat in deep red area, where Democrats lost by 40% in 2024.
Now
in Georgia Senate District 21, (with 95+% of the vote in) Democratic candidate Debra Shigley is losing the seat by 27%.
Agree that an early UK election is just talk and highly unlikely to come about. Labour has a 150+ seat majority in the Commons, and it beggars belief that they would throw that away just because their polling is so dire. The only way that there will be an election before the Spring of 2028 at the earliest is if Labour factures in parliament so badly that Starmer (or whoever the PM is at the time) loses a no-confidence motion in the House. Given how amateurish British Labour often is, you can’t entirely rule this out, but you’d think the size of their majority (and a general fear of a Farage-led Reform government) will mean this won’t happen. The next election is not due until 2029, and so the chances of a general election before then are very low, though they might go a year early (a common tactic by British governments) if the economy – and by implication Labour’s political prospects – improve markedly. A more likely change is that Starmer himself will either resign or get rolled, but I can’t see that happening before, say, the second half of 2027.
UK Labour and Starmer appear to be an a truly dire position right now*, so much so that its hard to imagine they would have a lot to lose by waiting out their full term and hoping things improve. Who knows, if they roll Starmer (and I think that his days probably are numbered if things continue they way they are) and his replacement gets a genuine honeymoon, I could see them potentially rolling the dice on a early election. But without a legitimate excuse for going to the polls years before they need to, such a move has a good chance of being seen as the rank oppurtunism it is, with whatever gains Starmer’s hypothetical replacement made quickly evaporating.
Better to just keep on at it while they still have their huge majority and focus of regaining public support through good governance, policy, and politics. Though given how Starmer’s term has gone so far, I’m not sure how confident I am that his administration is capable of that.
An utter shitshow all around, sadly.
(* The comparisons some have recently made to the turnaround in the Albanese’s government fortunes last term don’t really work, as even during their lowest points the polling was indicating, at best, a slim Coalition victory. The Starmer government has way more ground to make up to have any hope of being reelected.)
Asha @ #14 Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 – 5:23 pm
I’m in agreement with that. This might actually be more accurate for the Canadian government. All the negatives of the Liberal government there was able to be attributed to Justin Trudeau, and once he resigned, their recovery in the polls was incredible.
Starmer might hang on for another year or two, but he’s so despised right now that there’s probably no chance of recovery. So then it’ll come to his replacement to try and pull off a Mark Carney and thwart Nigel Farage.
As for the chance of Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to flank Labour from the left, what a clown car joke that was. Basic political discipline was destroyed within months thanks to Zahra Sultana.
All Corbyn is is some cold war relic who just wanted Britain to join the Warsaw Pact and held people like Erich Honecker of East Germany as idols.
Arange says:
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 5:58 pm
nadia88 says:
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 1:37 pm
“I know it’s another 13 months and 2 weeks, but he’s on track for a significant wipeout at the mid terms.
He’s gonna lose the House, and possibly the Senate too.
Same result coming through every special election. About an 8% swing on primaries to the Dems.”
Any idea what the turnout drop was?
==========================
nadia88 says:
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 6:24 pm
Arange at 5.58pm
Registered voters = 440552
Ballots counted today = 89589
Turnout, so far = 20.34%
I’m going by this.
Link: https://results.arizona.vote/#/featured/72/0
Turnout (11 months ago) was 271011 (for Arizona 7), going by this link…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona%27s_7th_congressional_district#2024
AB has said 87% of available votes are in.
Looks like we have 89589 counted, which accounts for 87% of the final vote.
So final expected vote should come in around 102976.
Turnout (11 months ago) was 271011
So, (271011-102976)divided by 271011 = 62%
To answer your initial Q . 100 minus 62 = 38.
So, I’ll go with a rough 38% collapse in turnout
Gosh, I bet I’ll be fact checked to hell over that figure too!
Arange, yeah Kirsdarke has provided a figure around 61.5, or 61.5% of voters last time bothered to vote today.
I calculated 62% (which is similar to K).
So I’m figuring the drop off was around the 38% mark.
As to the political affiliation of the voters who chose not to vote today, I’d say Republican voters chose to “sit it out”.
They did the same thing in the 2018 mid terms.
Why – I don’t know
Arange or Kirsdarke,
Back onto U.K. politics. What’s your “gut feel” on the collapse of the Starmer figures.
Labour is sitting at roughly 20%, and the gov’t net sat is at minus 58.
Is it:
1. Immigration (Channel crossings)
2. Starmer losing members (I think it’s 13 in 15 months incl his Deputy), or
3. A Perception that Starmer is personally obsessed with Europe and is embarrassed that the country he leads voted for Brexit. ie: He’s not in tune with the country he leads. He’d prefer “more Brussels”.
Brits are pretty savvy – I think they’ve sussed No.3 out. ie: He’s for them!
My gut is No.3, with a smathering of No.1.
Your opinion pls
nadia88says:
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 6:42 pm
Arange, yeah Kirsdarke has provided a figure around 61.5, or 61.5% of voters last time bothered to vote today.
I calculated 62% (which is similar to K).
So I’m figuring the drop off was around the 38% mark.
As to the political affiliation of the voters who chose not to vote today, I’d say Republican voters chose to “sit it out”.
They did the same thing in the 2018 mid terms.
Why – I don’t know
================================================
Maybe not Republican voters so much as MAGAs.
Trump does not stand in the mid-terms so no need to bother voting?
nadia88 @ #19 Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 – 6:55 pm
I think it’s mostly the fact that Keir Starmer is at heart just a technocrat that doesn’t have any idea how to navigate modern politics as they are.
He’s used to rules, and in this new world of Trump and Farage, where old rules no longer apply, he really has no idea how to combat them, so all he’s got from here is to call upon his consultant corps and focus groups to figure out what to do from here, and it just doesn’t work.
They tell him he needs to be more tougher on immigrants to win over more Reform and Conservative voters, but they just ignore the fact of why the Labour vote has fallen from 34% to 20% in the first place in that he just is not delivering what his voters in 2024 wanted.
nadia88says:
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 6:55 pm
“Arange or Kirsdarke,
Back onto U.K. politics. What’s your “gut feel” on the collapse of the Starmer figures.
Labour is sitting at roughly 20%, and the gov’t net sat is at minus 58.
Is it:
1. Immigration (Channel crossings)
2. Starmer losing members (I think it’s 13 in 15 months incl his Deputy), or
3. A Perception that Starmer is personally obsessed with Europe and is embarrassed that the country he leads voted for Brexit. ie: He’s not in tune with the country he leads. He’d prefer “more Brussels”.
Brits are pretty savvy – I think they’ve sussed No.3 out. ie: He’s for them!
My gut is No.3, with a smathering of No.1.
Your opinion pls”
My opinion would be whatever’s causing REF to surge+whatever is causing Starmer to not be personally appealing to voters outside his own party, and to that I would probably answer with 1 and 3, but particularly 1.
Fair enough. Looks like Starmer is dealing with what Gillard was dealing with in 2010-2013.
ie: Boats turning up left right and centre
Voters don’t like uncontrolled immigration. In fact they hate it.
He’s going to have to pull his socks up and start running the country.
More London, less Brussels.
He’s in a lot of strife. 14% in “Labour Wales”.
Kirsdarke –
I think you’ve identified Starmer’s problem. He was quite a capable bureaucrat, and that sort of basic technocratic competence probably seemed quite appealing, first to Labour members, and then to GE voters, given the rolling shit show that was the previous Conservative government. But the trouble with competent technocrats is that they often aren’t very good at politics. Starmer has only been in parliament since 2015, and it shows: he’s really flat footed in response to political problems, and doesn’t really know how to sell himself or his government. Compare that to someone like Blair, who had been in parliament for nearly 15 years before he became PM (in a much more stable political environment) and was pretty active even before that. Likewise Albo (26 years in politics before becoming PM) is much better placed to deal with things that come up because he has that deep background in politics. Career pollies often get a bad rap, but in practice they are normally much better at the craft than the outsiders.
On top of everything already stated, I also think one of the Starmer Government’s big problems is there is no coherency to their agenda. At times, it just feels like they’re throwing random things at the wall to see what sticks. Like you will see them do something like lower the voting age but then implement a ridiculous online age verification system to vex those same people (yes, I know the previous government legislated it but they’re enacting it and have not signalled any intent to reverse course.) They cite the far right as an existential threat that needs to be quelled but then try and pander to them. Their economic agenda (if you can call it that) is all over the place. There’s just no focus. It seems like they have the disease that can afflict many a centrist where winning is all that matters and they become obsessed with not offending anyone, that they end up being hollow, directionless and, ultimately, end up pleasing nobody. And no, I am not saying the answer is moving hard to the left or anything like that. It’s not about the political spectrum. It’s about having a clear purpose and goal you can communicate to the electorate, instead of just “We’re the ones in now. Hey, at least we’re not the other side.”
WT – yes, a lot of truth to what you say. But don’t underestimate the unmitigated shit show that Labour inherited. Their economy and their civil society is in the toilet – 14 years of austerity and mismanagement, followed by Brexit and the pandemic will do that – and there are no quick fixes or easy answers. FWIW, I think Labour is probably doing their best in an impossible situation. The trouble is that their best doesn’t seem to be meeting the moment.
“It’s about having a clear purpose and goal you can communicate to the electorate, instead of just, we’re the ones in now. Hey, at least we’re not the other side.”
===================
Just about sums his gov’t up Wat.
Today’s latest yougov poll for UK politics:
Reform 28
Labour 25
Tories 20
So an improvement for Labour compared to the previous poll they did.
Do you have a source for that D.S.
The latest YouGov I can see suggests this, dated 22-Sep
* RFM 29
* LAB 20
* TORY 16
Link: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/voting-intention
Edit: I’ve just found your poll. It’s from “More in Common”, not YouGov.
Yes Labour up 3, Rfm down 3, Tory’s up 2
Link: https://www.markpack.org.uk/155623/voting-intention-opinion-poll-scorecard/
My suggestion is pollbludger should also follow the trends occurring in both Germany and France. The polls in both nations are displaying the same trends as in the UK with the Populist Right parties (AFD in Germany and Le Pen’s National Rally) now both favoured to be the largest parties in both nations’s Parliaments.
In France (which currently does not have a govt after the no confidence motion passed in the legislature) National Rally is consistently polling a primary vote of 33%-34% in the polls (an increase of 4.5-5.5% since the 2024 election) with a lead of between 10%-14% over its leftist rivals. The left and centre parties have fallen in primary vote share since the 2024 election with their combined primary vote decreasing by approx 11.5% (with the traditional centre right party LR The Republicans almost doubling their primary vote from 6.57% at the 2024 election to 12% now). The likely outcome is the next French Legislative elections will see National Rally become the largest party with a large majority (and the next French Govt) utilising the first and second round polling system in France. The next French Presidential elections are due in 2027 with polling indicating Macron will be defeated in a landslide now that his Leftist coalition allies oppose him. The likely result is a National Rally candidate winning the Presidential election.
In Germany, the latest 3 polls indicate continued growing support for AFD which is now the most popular party in Germany. AFD is polling a primary vote of 26%-27% (up 5.2%-6.2% since the election in February this year) ahead of the governing CDU/CSU Union on a primary vote of 24.5%-25% (down 3.5%-4.0% since the February election) with the Left wing SPD on a primary vote of 13%-15% ( down 1.4%-3.4% since the February election), the left wing Greens on 11% (down 0.6% since the Feb election) and the Left Linke party on 11.0%-11.5% (up 3.2%-3.7% since the Feb election).
The trend indicates the UK, France and Germany are moving together to the populist right (as has already happened in both the USA and Italy and is also now starting to occur in Canada). The trend to the populist right appears also to be occurring in Australia with the strong growth since the May election in primary vote support for One Nation, a primary vote drift away from the leftist Greens, a large primary vote move away from the LNP and no change in the primary vote of the Labor Party (which at a low approx 35% is not a strong level to enter a federal election as the Govt). I believe it is naive to believe Australia will not display a continuing shift to the populist right all the way to the 2028 Fed election. The next 12-30 months may very well see seismic shifts in Australian voting patterns.
Rob, Macron won’t be running for another term as French president in 2027 as he’s term limited. Before the 2024 parliamentary elections, many polls suggested National Rally would win a majority, but they underperformed.
Adrian, I think you misunderstand what happened in France in 2024. The leftist Coalition party allied with Macron’s centre party to withdraw from second round polling in seats so that they would not compete against each other against National Rally. That strategy was successful in reducing the gains of National Rally at the 2024 election. It is worth noting this did not stop National Rally increasing its number of seats in the Legislature by 53 seats to 142 seats. If this non-compete agreement in seats had not occurred then the likelihood is that National Rally would have won a majority.
However that strategy will not succeed this time because of the increase in the primary vote support for National Rally (and the other right party The Republicans) at the expense of a double-digit decline in the primary vote support of both the left and centre groups.
The expectation amongst the French is that an early election for the legislature will be called as Macron will not gain the support of the right and left for any Govt he attempts to install. Both the right and the left (who jointly control a majority on the floor of the legislature) are calling for an early election for both the legislature and the President. At that election, polling indicates the centre parties would effectively cease to exist and the Populist Right National Rally will gain a majority in its own right with additional support from smaller right parties. The left coalition parties would see a reduction in their number of seats. Additionally, if an early Presidential election (due in 2027) is called it is likely a National Rally candidate would be elected President.
Rob, only if you’ve got time, I zipped a post at 9.21 am yesterday querying your UK early election scenario. Interested in your opinion/reasoning pls
One item to note re:UK polling. Every Thursday UK time there are local Council byelections. Each of these local Council seat byelections have approx 2,000 people who actually vote bearing in mind voting is voluntary in the UK such that the actual electoral roll for each of those local council seats is much larger than 2,000.
There have been 107 local council byelections held since the 1st May Local Council elections with those byelections held between 8 May and 24 September. Bear in mind the results of the 1st May Local Council Elections were Reform UK 677 seats (up 677), LibDems 370 seats (up 163), Conservatives 319 (down 674), Labour Party 98 seats (down 187), Greens 79 seats (up 44), Others 99 seats (down 23).
The results of the 107 local Council byelections are as follows:-
Reform Uk won 38 seats (net gain of 33),LibDems won 28 seats (net gain of 8), Conservatives won 13 seats (net loss of 11), Labour won 11 seats (net loss of 28 seats), Greens won 9 seats (net gain of 4), Others won 8 seats (net loss of 6 seats).
The actual vote across these 107 byelections are as follows:
Reform UK 27.5% (up 23.7%)
LibDems 18.9% (up 2.2%)
Labour Party 17.2% (down 10.9%)
Conservatives 16.2% (down 8.8%)
Greens 9.3% (down 0.8%)
Others 10.9% (down 5.2%)
Over the next 4 weeks there are an additional 34 local council byelections and it will be interesting to see not only who wins those seats but the change in the vote share of all parties. Since we are dealing with actual votes, it is arguable the local council byelections provide a more accurate indication of the state of voting in the UK than the polls.
Good win for Democrats but the collapse in turnout could be concerning. Don’t know what the trends are for special elections but the fact they won with 100,000 less votes can’t be good.
As for Starmer he is ailing because it’s not clear he stands for anything. Labour voters see him as rolling out the carpet for Reform, and Reform will never ever like him. From what I have seen from Britain the last two decades is the erosion of living conditions and continued privatisation of state services and utilities. There is also the Brexit sized elephant in the room. Immigration was always a whinging point with the right, but what has amplified it is the reliance on non-white immigration in the wake of Brexit. Despite immigration not being drastically different than before, the makeup of those migrants is much more visible to racist idiots, and Keir seems to agree with their ires. I respect that he is in a very tough position but it’s approaching a point where radical changes are needed and he clearly doesn’t have the stomach for it. Moving beans from one scale to another isn’t going to fix the mess they’re in.
Bean @ #35 Thursday, September 25th, 2025 – 4:34 pm
It’s about standard for US Special election turnout. The Virginia 11th district contest a couple of weeks ago only had a turnout of about 20%, down from 51% at the 2024 election.
Ah that makes sense then, I had time to look over a few special elections just then and there is very much a dramatic dropoff with them
The Welsh election next year should be interesting. Current polling has Plaid Cymru and Reform on about 30%, Conservatives way back in the teens and Labor not much better. On those numbers it’d probably end up as PC running the show, with Labour hanging on for the ride; previously it’s never been anything other than Labour, all the way back to devolution in 1999 (sometimes with PC or Lib Dem support), so it could be a watershed like Scotland in 2007.
They’re about to have a new system: instead of the current one (40 FPP seats topped up by parallel PR), it’ll be 16 six-member districts, elected by the d’Hondt method – basically a cousin of what Tasmania and the ACT have. It’s not quite proportional, but there could be a few Lib Dems or Greens elected here and there on top of the main four parties (they’re both polling around 5%). Just like the last Tasmanian election, it’ll be a fun mess.
As for Scotland, if Labour are in a death spiral there’s probably no stopping the SNP from winning yet another term, despite having been in power for 19 years and being on to their fourth leader (including one who only lasted a year). Alba don’t seem to be anything apart from a more anti-trans version of the SNP (Alex Salmond dying probably hasn’t helped them), and Reform’s vote has come mostly off Labour. Looks like another SNP-Green government, unless something strange happens.
Your insistence in referring to Reform as far right shows that you are as ignorant as you are biased.
Right wing certainly. Hard right, largely. Far right, not really. I think terms ‘far left’ or ‘far right’ should be used judiciously, and Reform is not quite there. Nigel Farage keeps it just this side of respectable, distances him from the likes of Tommy Robinson. He’s imaginable as a member of the Tory right wing. Not AFD or national front. I never bought the idea Jeremy Corbyn was far left either.
Here’s hoping the Democrats can carry over results like that with the mid-terms next year and beyond.
Hoping so too. The current strategy appears to be a repeat of Trump 1, lay low and hope he runs things down so bad that the Democrats win by default. Downside is, it’s putting a lot into the idea that the next guy will be unpopular, which is not a guarantee. It also means that the fascism will become even more entrenched. The Democrats need to destroy Trumpsim and fascism if America is to have any hope. It’s a shitty job but that’s the political system they’ve inherited so it’s up to them to do it.
Bean @ #42 Friday, September 26th, 2025 – 4:31 pm
The Democrats following the James Carville advice of “Roll over, play dead, wait until the Republicans become too unpopular, then run another King of Consultants and Lobbyists and change nothing” would probably result in someone worse than Trump coming to power in 2032.
They’d be better off following the Zohran Mamdani strategy of “actually listening to the voters and actively try to govern in their interests”.
Kirsdarkesays:
Friday, September 26, 2025 at 5:01 pm
“They’d be better off following the Zohran Mamdani strategy of “actually listening to the voters and actively try to govern in their interests”.”
Do you consider Andy Beshear to also follow that strategy?
Arange @ #44 Friday, September 26th, 2025 – 10:13 pm
Well, given that he’s a Democrat that won statewide elections in Kentucky twice, then yeah, I’d say he’s got the right juice.
Not dropped in for a while. A few snippets:
“On top of everything already stated, I also think one of the Starmer Government’s big problems is there is no coherency to their agenda.”
This. That began in the first month, when a party – with a leader who had been leader for well over 4 years – didn’t actually appear to have any significant policies when they got into government with a landslide.
Reform Party
Agree, they are not far right. They are barely as conservative as the Conservative party (esp at local level) used to be. They’ve a few crackers seeing it as their way to relevance, but a surprising number of down-to-earth normal cheerful people. Farage himself, if you took away the immigration rhetoric he’s sometimes deployed (even then, many people who disagreed with him then now think he’s been proved right), is a straight down the line conservative. A not especially genius or hard-working one, either, but with a common touch and a good knack for politics – in start contrast to Starmer, a naturally awkward human rights lawyer not renowned for his sense of fun and who has a little bit of a nasty streak in him. He’s also hopeless at thinking on his feet, lucky for him he lives in a stage-managed era.
Reform are closer to the Labour party on some things than they are to the Conservatives, such as blue collar jobs, benefits and a lack of appetite for foreign policy matters.
Kemi Badenoch was given an impossible job, but needed to make waves with some kind of announcement(s) in her first couple of days (much more obvious in hindsight) after a relatively long leadership campaign. Now she can say what she wants, as only the highly politically engaged are listening and there’s not very many swing voters there. A decent person who might make a decent PM, but Reform would have to have one hell of a lot of bad scandals (coupled with Labour’s ongoing unpopularity) for her to ever become PM.
Lib Dem – back to being everything to everyone in their constituencies, lots of virtue signalling to upper middle classes. Will prob continue to work and hand them another swathe of Tory seats, and their day of reckoning for the hypocrisy will probably only come about by the exposure of being in national government again (their brand is a bit different in Scotland, they’re probably more aligned with each other there), just like it did in 2010-2015.
Lib Dems are also masters at simple, retail, local campaigning – fair play to them for that bit, don’t think Lab or Con have ever been good at it in my lifetime except if a savvy local leader or MP happens to exist in a particular seat.