Category: British politics

Israeli election minus three days; UK local elections minus seven weeks

A right coalition under Netanyahu looking likely in Israel, while UK Labour’s polling is poor, and support for Scottish independence drops.

Live Israeli election commentary

6:40pm With 87% in, Netanyahu’s right bloc has declined to a combined 59 of the 120 seats, two short of a majority. A key reason is that the United Arab List, which was below the 3.25% threshold previously, is now back up to 4.0%. Also, Tel Aviv, a bastion of the left in Israel, reports late.

2:55pm With about half the votes counted, OryxMaps has the right-wing parties aligned with Netanyahu getting a total of 65 of the 120 Knesset seats. This is currently biased towards the right.

9:55am An updated exit poll, based on late voters, now gives Netanyahu’s right bloc 60 of the 120 seats, one seat short of a majority. As I said before, it’s still highly possible for Netanyahu to form a government even if his bloc is just short.

7:30am Wednesday The OryxMaps Twitter account has details of three exit polls. While there are differences in individual party support, all three give the most probable right-wing coalition (Likud, Yamina, Shas, UTJ and Religious Zionists) 61 of the 120 seats, enough for a majority.

Counting is slow in Israel, with most votes not counted until the afternoon our time. It will take a few more days to get final results.

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.

The Israeli election will be held on Tuesday, with polls closing at 7am Wednesday AEDT. This election will be held just over a year after the last election. Owing to failure to form a governing coalition, there were three elections in a year from 2019-20.

After the March 2020 election, a grand coalition was formed between Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’ Blue & White, with Gantz recanting on his promise to not form a government with Netanyahu owing to COVID. Before entering negotiations with Netanyahu, Gantz had received support from 61 of the 120 Knesset members; he threw away what is likely to be the best chance to defeat Netanyahu.

Under the agreement, Netanyahu and Gantz would rotate the premiership, with Netanyahu having the first 18 months. The agreement broke down at the end of 2020, when Gantz realized (surprise! surprise!) that Netanyahu had no intention of giving up being PM. The Knesset was dissolved in late December.

The 120 Knesset members are elected by national proportional representation with a 3.25% threshold. Blue & White won 33 seats at the 2020 election, but are now only polling just above this threshold.

Likud is easily the largest party in the polls with about 31 seats, well ahead of Yesh Atid with 18. Religious parties (UTJ, Shas and Religious Zionist) are likely to win 20 combined seats. The right-wing Yamina is on about nine seats. Likud plus these four parties is about 60 of the 120 seats, very close to a majority.

Even if these five parties fall short of a majority, Netanyahu may be able to form a government with the assistance of former leadership rival Gideon Saar’s New Hope. New Hope has several former Likud members, and polls give it about eight seats.

It isn’t just the opposition’s disarray that is helping Netanyahu, but also Israel’s successful vaccination program; it is the world’s leader on vaccine doses administered per capita. From a peak of 101 COVID deaths on January 20, Isreal’s daily COVID death rate has fallen into single figures.

Bad polling for UK Labour ahead of local elections

Local elections will be held throughout England on May 6, and also include elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. Owing to COVID cancellation of 2020’s elections, there will be far more seats than usual at stake.

Last April, Keir Starmer easily won the Labour leadership. Like most incumbents, the Conservatives had a polling surge in their favour as a result of COVID. But with deaths increasing to a peak of more than 1,500 on several days in January, Labour was in a near-tie with the Conservatives in late 2020.

The UK’s vaccination drive, with 42 doses per 100 people, has been far better than the European Union (13 per 100). As in Israel, UK deaths have fallen dramatically from their January peak. As a result, the Conservatives have opened about a six-point lead over Labour.

A bad performance for Labour in the local elections probably means little for the next general election, not due until 2024. But Starmer could be ousted. It takes 20% of Labour’s MPs to nominate a challenger. Much of Labour’s left-wing membership voted for Starmer in the expectation he would perform much better than Jeremy Corbyn at the disastrous 2019 election. If Labour can’t poll better, Starmer could be replaced by a left-winger.

As with UK Labour’s support, support for Scottish independence has recently fallen. A ComRes poll in January gave Yes to independence a 13-point lead, but in March they had No up by two points, with other pollsters similar. There has been a recent dip for the SNP that could cost them a majority in the Scottish election; there is a far more proportional system for Welsh and Scottish elections than UK general elections.

German and Dutch elections

In Germany, there has been a slump in support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU that gives the three left-wing parties a realistic chance of forming government at the September election. The left nearly won outright majorities at two recent state elections. However, Wednesday’s Dutch election was dismal for the left. I covered these elections on my personal website on Friday.

Biden increases lead over Trump

Trump’s ratings fall back as the US is engulfed by protests over George Floyd’s murder. The UK Conservatives also slide. Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.

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.

In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate, Donald Trump’s ratings with all polls are 42.7% approve, 53.6% disapprove (net -10.9%). With polls of registered or likely voters, Trump’s ratings are 42.7% approve, 53.8% disapprove (net -11.1%). Since my article three weeks ago, Trump has lost about three points on net approval. His disapproval rating is at its highest since the early stages of the Ukraine scandal last November.

In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Joe Biden’s lead over Trump has widened to 7.8%, up from 4.5% three weeks ago. That is Biden’s biggest lead since December 2019.

In the key states that will decide the Electoral College and hence the presidency, it is less clear. National and state polls by Change Research gave Biden a seven-point lead nationally, but just a three-point lead in Florida, a two-point lead in Michigan and a one-point lead in North Carolina. In Wisconsin, Trump and Biden were tied, while Trump led by one in Arizona and four in Pennsylvania.

This relatively rosy state polling picture for Trump is contradicted by three Fox News polls. In these polls, Biden leads by nine points in Wisconsin, four points in Arizona and two points in Ohio. Trump won Ohio by eight points in 2016, and it was not thought to be in play.

Ironically, Change Research is a Democrat-associated pollster, while Fox News is very pro-Trump. Fieldwork for all these state polls was collected since May 29, when the George Floyd protests began. A Texas poll from Quinnipiac University had Trump leading by just one point. Trump won Texas by nine points in 2016.

US daily coronavirus cases and deaths are down from their peak, and stock markets anticipate a strong economic recovery. But it is likely that a greater amount of economic activity will allow the virus to resurge. A strong recovery from coronavirus would assist Trump, but unemployment is a lagging indicator that recovers more slowly than the overall economy. The May US jobs report will be released Friday night in Australia.

Concerning the protests over the murder of George Floyd, in an Ipsos poll for Reuters conducted Monday and Tuesday, 64% said they sympathised with the protesters, while 27% did not. 55% disapproved of Trump’s handling of the protests, while just 33% approved. That’s well below Trump’s overall approval of 39% in that poll.

UK Conservatives slump after Dominic Cummings scandal

In late May, it was revealed that PM Boris Johnson’s advisor, Dominic Cummings, had breached quarantine rules during the coronavirus lockdown in March. However, Cummings did not resign and Johnson refused to sack him.

An Opinium poll for The Observer gave the Conservatives just a 43-39 lead over Labour, down from a 12-point lead the previous week. It is the lowest Conservative lead in that poll since Johnson became PM. Johnson’s net approval was down from +6 to -5. 68% thought Cummings should resign, and 66% thought Johnson should sack him if he did not resign.

However, a YouGov poll for The Times gave the Conservatives a ten-point lead, up from six points previously, implying that public anger may be short-lived. In general, the poll trend over the last two months has been towards Labour, as the UK’s coronavirus death toll has risen to be the second highest behind the US.

Another NZ poll has Labour in the high 50s

A Roy Morgan New Zealand poll gave Labour a 56.5% to 26.5% lead over National, concurring with two polls published in May. The poll was taken April 27 to May 24, so it does not account for the May 22 change in National leadership. New Zealand has just one active coronavirus case remaining, and has recorded no new cases since May 22. It increasingly appears they have succeeded in eliminating coronavirus.

US Iowa Democratic caucus minus six days

Polls show Bernie Sanders with a narrow lead over Joe Biden in Iowa. Also: the upcoming Irish election and yet more on Brexit. Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.

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.

Six days before the US February 3 Iowa Democratic caucus, the RealClearPolitics poll average has Bernie Sanders narrowly leading with 25.0%, followed by Joe Biden on 22.0%, Pete Buttigieg 17.0% and Elizabeth Warren 13.5%.  Nationally, it’s 28.4% Biden, 23.0% Sanders, 14.9% Warren, 8.0% Michael Bloomberg and 6.9% Buttigieg.  In the last two weeks, Biden and particularly Sanders have gained, mostly at Warren’s expense.

Iowa is important because it helps to winnow the field of candidates, and candidates who exceed expectations often get a surge in their national voting intentions.  Three more contests are scheduled in February: New Hampshire (February 11), Nevada (February 22) and South Carolina (February 29).

The early states are important mainly to demonstrate strength; on “Super Tuesday” March 3, 36% of all pledged delegates will be awarded, and this could be decisive.  Delegates are allocated proportional to vote share in each state and Congressional District (CD), but with a high threshold of 15%.  That threshold applies to CDs, so any candidate who fails to break 15% in a CD gets zero delegates from that CD.

Biden has polled strongly with black voters, but not so well with whites.  Iowa is a virtually all-white state.  If, as some polls suggest, Biden nevertheless won Iowa, he would likely be the Democratic nominee to face Donald Trump in November.  If he fails to win Iowa, Biden is still well-placed when the contest turns to more diverse states.

You can see my Conversation articles for more on the US elections.  The strong US economy is Trump’s best asset.

Is Brexit over on January 31?  No

After the Conservative landslide at the December 12 election, Boris Johnson easily passed his Brexit deal through the Commons, and Britain will Leave the European Union on January 31.

However, there will be no major changes until at least December 31, when the transition period expires.  The transition period could be extended, but Johnson has ruled it out by legislation.  The transition period is time to negotiate a UK/EU trade deal, and pass it through parliament.

While the Conservatives hold 365 of the 650 Commons seats, 118 Conservative MPs rejected Theresa May’s deal when first put to a vote in January last year, and 75 in March.  Johnson would easily lose Commons divisions if those defections were repeated.

If Johnson agrees a soft trade deal with the EU, he is likely to anger hard Leave Conservative MPs.  If no deal were agreed, there would be a “no deal” Brexit on December 31.  With Brexit assured, there would be little incentive for hard Leavers to hold their noses and vote for a soft Brexit.

Also in Britain, there is a Labour leadership contest.  This will be decided by a preferential postal vote among Labour members, with the result announced in early April.  The main contenders appear to be the pro-Remain Keir Starmer and the pro-Corbyn Rebecca Long-Bailey.  A mid-January YouGov poll of Labour members gave Starmer a 63-37 lead over Long-Bailey, from first preferences of Starmer 46%, Long-Bailey 32%.

A Starmer victory is unlikely to help Labour in Leave-voting regions.  According to a YouGov post-election poll, the Conservatives won lower-income voters by a greater margin than higher-income voters.  They won those with the lowest education level by 58-25.

Irish election: February 8

The Irish election will be held on a Saturday.  Previous Irish elections have been held on weekdays, so this Saturday election may boost turnout.  The 160 lower house seats are elected in 39 electorates that each have three to five members.  Ireland uses Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system, so a quota for election is 25% in three-member electorates, 20% with four, and 16.7% with five.

Irish politics has been dominated by two conservative parties: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.  Currently there is a minority Fine Gael government.  Polls suggest Fianna Fáil will narrowly win the most seats, but there will be a large increase for the far-left Sinn Féin and the Greens.

Spain’s Socialists win confidence vote after election

I wrote for my personal website on January 8 that the left-wing Spanish government won its investiture vote by just two votes, 167 to 165.  Also covered: the left won the Croatian presidential election, a conservative/green government was formed in Austria, and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu easily won a primary for leadership of his Likud party.

British election live

Live commentary on counting for the British general election.

10:05am Wednesday December 18: A post-election YouGov poll of over 40,000 respondents has the startling finding that low-income people voted Tory by greater margins than high-income people.  The Tories won the middle class (ABC1) by 43-33 and the working class (C2DE) by 48-33 (44-40 and 44-42 respectively in 2017).  The Tories won those with the lowest educational attainment by 58-25 (55-33 in 2017).  Labour won those with the highest educational attainment 43-29 (49-32 in 2017).

3:25pm Saturday: Conversation article up.  I believe a major cause for the bad Labour loss was its Brexit policy, but another important difference from 2017 was real wage growth: -0.5% before the 2017 election vs +1.7% in the latest available data.  People are only willing to vote for left-wing policies if they are not doing well financially.  There’s also US politics stuff in that article.

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.

7:50am Saturday: The Conservatives HELD St Ives overnight with an increased majority over the Lib Dems.  Final seat numbers are 365 Tories (up 47), 203 Labour (down 59), 48 SNP (up 13) and 11 Lib Dems (down one).  I will have a write-up for The Conversation later today.

7:10pm Most polls had the Tory lead over Labour at nine to 12 points; the final result will be 11.5 points, so most polls were about right.  Survation, Ipsos, Opinium and Kantar had the Tory lead at either 11 or 12 points, and are the best pollsters.  The worst were ComRes (just a five point lead) and ICM (six points).

7:03pm How the Britain Elects Poll Tracker compares to the actual results excluding Northern Ireland.  William Bowe has said the two majors were too high in the polls, but most UK polls exclude Northern Ireland.

6:13pm: In Northern Ireland, the DUP won eight of the 18 seats (down two), Sinn Fein seven (no change), the Social Democratic Labour Party two and the Alliance Party one.  Vote shares were 30.6% DUP, 22.8% Sinn Fein, 16.8% Alliance and 14.9% SDLP.  So the Alliance got only one seat on 17% vote.

5:57pm: Final Scotland results: SNP 48 of 59 seats (up 13), Tories six (down seven), Lib Dems four (no change), Labour one (down six).  Vote shares: SNP 45.0% (up 8.1%), Tories 25.1% (down 3.5%), Labour 18.6% (down 8.5%) and Lib Dems 9.5% (up 2.8%).

4:52pm: With 13 seats to go, the Tories have 355 seats, Labour 202, the SNP 48 and the Lib Dems ten.

4:33pm: Another ex-Tory gets pummelled

Continue reading “British election live”

UK election minus three days

The lower-educated appear likely to sink Labour in Thursday’s UK election. Also featured: a guide to how the results will come in on Friday (our time).

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.

Seven UK national polls were released last week, with the Conservatives leading by eight to 11 points in five and by 14% to 15% in Survation and Opinium. There was little change since last week in most polls, but the Conservative lead was up five points in Survation.

Donald Trump was in the UK from December 2-4, and there was a head-to-head debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on December 6. Polls listed above were taken after the Trump visit, and Johnson won the leaders’ debate by 52-48 in a YouGov “insta poll”.

In the latest YouGov poll, the Conservatives hold leads of 39-34 with the ABC1 social grade (upper to middle class), but by 48-31 with C2DE (working class). Sky’s Lewis Goodall has qualitative research into Labour’s problems with lower-educated voters. Facebook ads have damaged Corbyn’s popularity with these voters. The Conservative message that Labour has blocked Brexit is cutting through.

While Corbyn has a problem with the lower educated, he’s far from unique. Centre-left parties had unexpectedly dismal results in the UK (2015), US (2016) and Australia (2019), owing to swings towards conservative parties among the lower educated.

There are probably two ways for the global left to start winning elections consistently again. One is via a deep economic recession. The other way is via demographic change. Since 1940, educational attainment among those aged 25-29 in the US has surged. As the population becomes better-educated, the left is likely to do better – but not for a long time.

A hope for UK Labour is that Johnson’s ratings in an Ipsos poll slumped 22 net points to -20 since November, while Corbyn was up 16 to -44. Something could go wrong for the Conservatives with Johnson that unpopular. In YouGov, Johnson’s net approval was down nine points since last fortnight to -13, Corbyn down five to -47 and the Liberal Democrats’ Jo Swinson down 18 to -36.

As I wrote previously, there are three ways Labour could defy the polls. A fourth can be added: late deciders. While the Conservatives lead by 43-33 in YouGov, they only lead by 33-26 including “won’t vote” (8%), “don’t know” (13%) and “refused” (3%). If late deciders break to Labour, it will be closer than current polls suggest.

At the UK’s May European elections, pollsters tended to overstate support for the Brexit party, Conservatives and Labour, and understate support for the Lib Dems and Greens. The Brexit party was the clear choice for Leavers at that election. In general, the performance of UK pollsters has been poor.

A guide to election results day (Friday)

UK polls are open from 7am to 10pm Thursday local time. Unlike Australia, where small booths report quickly, the UK has no counting by booth. Instead, votes from all booths within a seat are transported to a central counting centre, and counted there. Postal votes must arrive by election day. Barring a recount, seats are declared once the vote count finishes. It takes far longer to get a good idea of the result than in Australia.

To follow their elections, the British need to pull an all-nighter. In Australia it’s easier, with polls closing at 9am Friday Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT). Here is my guide to the events in Australia; all times are Friday AEDT.

9am: Polls close and The Exit Poll is released (intentional capitalisation). In the last three elections, The Exit Poll has given seat results which greatly disagreed with pre-election polls and expectations. In all three cases, The Exit Poll was far closer to the mark than pre-election polls. Only seat counts are given, not vote shares.

11am: According to this article about the 2017 election, only three of 650 declarations are expected by this time.

1pm-3pm: These two hours should be the heaviest for declarations.  Initial results will be biased to Labour as the Conservative heartland regional seats take longer to gather their votes. The key is to watch the changes in vote share, and whether seats are being gained or lost.

6pm: Only a few seats will not be declared by this time. Very close seats can take longer to declare owing to recounts. If there’s snow on the roads, results will be delayed.

From the editor

Below is an update of the poll tracker I published on Friday, with nine new polls added. It maintains a trend of steady improvement for Labour at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, while the Conservatives hold steady. The latest trend result is Conservatives 42.7% (up 0.3% on 2017), Labour 33.7% (down 6.3%), Liberal Democrats 12.3% (up 4.9%) and Brexit Party 3.4%.

British election polling in five charts

A quick and dirty guide to what pollsters seem to be telling us a week out from an unpredictable British election.

With a week to go until Britain’s election, polls continue to credit the Conservatives with a lead over Labour which, although substantial, is not so great that they can lock in a parliamentary majority. Furthermore, the trend of polling is somewhat in favour of Labour, with the Conservatives apparently having sucked dry the short-lived insurgency of the Brexit Party, while Labour continues to pick off support from the floundering Liberal Democrats. This is illustrated clearly enough in the poll trend chart below, which combines the work of nine polling series.

While all the pollsters have the Conservatives well ahead, the size of the lead covers a wide range, from as little as 6% by the reckoning of the most recent poll from BMG to as much as 15% from Opinium. Given the assurance that the Scottish National Party will dominate north of the border, the former end would certainly be weak enough to leave the Conservatives short of the formidable hurdle that either major party must clear if they are to win enough seats in England to score a majority. The next chart shows local area regression trends for each pollster’s reckoning of the Conservative lead (a little more on the methodology is explained later in the post).

Labour optimists are hanging on to the notion of a pro-Labour “youthquake” that will up-end the pollsters’ turnout models. The importance of the age distribution of the voting population is forcefully illustrated by the chart below, which shows voting intention by age cohort (off very small sub-samples) from a recent poll by ICM Research.

Pollsters are varying quite substantially as to age distribution, as illustrated in the next chart, which has been derived from the weighting data provided as standard from pollsters in the UK (in Australia we can only imagine such things). Kantar looms as an outlier in its expectation that fully 49% of voters will be 55 and over, compared with just 19% for the 18-to-34 cohort. The other pollsters range from 25% to 29% for 18-to-34 and 37% to 43% for 55-plus. None of this has any obvious bearing on the pollsters’ leanings, perhaps with the exception of ICM, whose young age profile has been reflected by relatively modest Conservative leads.

Then there’s their modelling of the population by vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which I’m slightly puzzled by in that there is dramatic variation in the size of the various pollster’s “did not vote” cohort (which appears not to be related to their age distributions). In the cases of YouGov, ComRes, Survation and Deltapoll, I had to infer this total from what was left over after “leave” and ”remain” were removed from the total, which may be causing me to miss subtlety. Whatever the case, let the peculiarity of Kantar again be noted in that it proposes a majority “remain” population, despite having a age distribution that skews old. Conversely, Opinium’s weighting to “leave” may explain its apparent lean to the Conservatives.

Now for a quick introduction to the British polling fraternity. First up, the following table shows bias adjustments that have been used to standardise the poll trend measures at the top of this post. These were achieved my comparing their results to a straightforward trend measure of all the polls entered into the model (142 polls from nine pollsters). The results are actually fairly modest as these things go, contrary to the impression given by the range of results in the “Conservative lead trend by pollster”.

All these polls are of the online panel variety, with two exceptions: Survation, a phone poll, and Ipsos MORI, which despite being a big name has only published one poll since the campaign began. Survation is also unique in that it includes Northern Ireland in its polling, whereas the others stick to England, Scotland and Wales.

The pollsters are variable in how they structure their voting intention responses, particularly in relation to the Brexit Party, which is not running in most Conservative-held seats. Before that they had to struggle with which minor parties to include among the initial list of responses and which as a follow-up for those who chose “other party”. It is routine for the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru to be included as topline response options in Scotland and Wales respectively.