UK election open thread

Nether Portal, that theoretical “most left wing” voter is doing very well if she’s already got a post-grad degree by the age of 24!

@Myles exactly which shows that in America the elite (especially the young elite) are very progressive.

Why is someone with a postgraduate degree “elite” in political terms? What is the criteria for being “elite”?

Agree Nether Portal
Someone who is from Spain is Hispanic as is someone who is a Native Bolivian who is fully indigenous like you said it is just a linguistic category and not Racial. Some people including in the US lump all Hispanic people together in one group many Hispanics identify as white not people of colour. If you have a third generation Cuban American who is White and no longer speaks Spanish should they still be considered Hispanic especially after the 2nd Generation intermarriage is much more common.

@Wilson,

Not sure why you think post graduate degree holders aren’t elites? Now, you could argue that in the past (and even today) most post graduate degree holders were already part of the elite before they got those degrees, but elites they certainly were.
I think what you are seeing now is different as there is a more definite hierarchy based on cognitive ability, and those with post graduate degrees, particularly in the arts and humanities, see themselves at the top of this pyramid, hence why they are seen as elites. This isn’t even including the way the cultural and bureaucracy are know in thrall to this class.

In the US, people from Spain are not considered Hispanic – to be Hispanic you need to come from the Americas. I know this from corporate experience with a US company.

@Redistributed yes but technically the word Hispanic just means someone who speaks Spanish.

@Wilson if someone has a post-grad degree at 24 they are very well-off. I’m 29 this year and the best I’ve done is finished uni.

Hispanic
/hɪˈspanɪk/
adjective
relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Central and South America.
noun
a Spanish-speaking person, especially one of Latin American descent, living in the US.

@NP im 33 all ive got is a 8 hour a week job and a DSP

@ Redistributed /Nether Portal
According to US Census question, if you nominate your ancestry as Spaniard on Question 6 of US census you will be counted as Hispanic. Even if you say your not Hispanic on Question 6 but on the Race Question in Question 7 you tick your Race as White and write out your origin as Spanish you will be deemed Hispanic even if you dont identify with the word Hispanic and already rejected that label in Question 6.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/05/who-is-hispanic/
I find it a silly category it would be like if a Greek Australian, a Scottish Highlander, Maori, Jewish American, Native American, Black Jamaican are all labelled as Anglo in Argentina. There are also Asian Hispanics such as Chinese Argentinian or Japanese Peruvians.

Interestingly Brazilian Americans isn’t classified as Hispanic and Latino despite it associations probably because Portuguese Speaking doesn’t qualify as Hispanic

I can’t speak for other fields, but I can say that those with Masters and even PhDs in STEM are certainly not “elite”. I know many such people, and they are upper-middle-class at best and do not have much influence. They pursued their degrees mostly out of passion and because they aspire to work in research or academia.

@ Marh
Brazillian Americans are classified as Latino as they are Latin American while immigrants from Portugal or not. Brazilians are not Hispanic though. So a German Brazilian who immigrants to the US will be considered White Latino while a German American from the Midwest is White non Latino.

* immigrants from Portugal are not Latino
Hispanic and Latino overlap but are not exactly the same

https://www.vox.com/2016/8/28/12658908/latino-hispanic-race-ethnicity-explained

One who speaks Portuguese is called a Lusophone. Portuguese is mutually intelligible with Spanish, especially in their European forms.

For example:

* English: “I’m playing soccer/football.”
* Portuguese: “Estou jogando futebol.”
* Spanish: “Estoy jugando fútbol.”

* English: “Do you live in Sydney?”
* Portuguese: “Você mora em Sydney?”
* Spanish: “¿Vives en Sídney?”

* English: “The dog is eating a sausage.”
* Portuguese: “O cachorro está comendo uma salsicha.”
* Spanish: “El perro está comiendo una salchicha.”

So a Portuguese person and a Spanish person could understand each other speaking in their own languages, though there are differences in some terminology (looking at the examples above, the Portuguese word for dog is “cachorro”, feminine “cadela”, while in Spanish it’s “perro”, feminine “perra”, note that both of the feminine equivalents are also swear words that mean “bitch” or “slut”).

My anecdotal perception of people in their 20s with post-grad degrees is very similar to Nicholas’, although I haven’t known that many. The few that I have known were academic high performers and passionate about their field of study. They were from middle class or working class families that were not ‘well-connected’, and most (possibly even all?) went to public schools. Those working in private industry were probably on above-median incomes, but no better off than their coworkers with ‘only’ bachelor’s degrees, while those working in academia or public scientific organisations were economically worse off than many people in the same age cohort I know who didn’t go to uni. I definitely wouldn’t consider them elites.

Professionals who do MBAs or similar mid-way through their careers are probably in a different socio-economic group than young academic achievers.

BREAKING: Biden has now dropped out. He has endorsed Harris to replace him.

@Scart beat me to it!

happened just as i got home from sydney

BREAKING: VP KAMALA HARRIS TO BE DEMOCRAT NOMINEE

Vice President Kamala Harris has the support of enough Democratic delegates to become the party’s presidential nominee for the November presidential election.

She has received endorsements from outgoing President Joe Biden and former House Speaker (and current representative for California’s 11th congressional district) Nancy Pelosi, but not from former President Barack Obama.

If she wins (which is unlikely), she will become the first female President, the second African American President and the first President of South Asian descent.

TLDR; summary:
1. Kamala Harris is set to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee
2. Endorsed by Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but not by Obama
3. Republicans still likely to win; Harris tipped to lose to former President Donald Trump

Not related to the US, UK or Canada, but Singapore.

I’ve never met anyone in Singapore who openly actually hated Lee Hsien Loong, one of the two Senior Ministers of Singapore along with Teo Chee Hean (Lee was also Prime Minister until recently when he was succeeded by Lawrence Wong after he resigned) and leader of the leader of the ruling centre-right, liberal conservative People’s Action Party (PAP) who have governed in Singapore since 1959 (the second-longest period of government by one party in any country with universal suffrage). Lee is the oldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore.

Singapore doesn’t rig elections, so how is it that the PAP have been in government so long? Is it the electoral system, the media, or are the opposition just weak? I’ve visited Singapore many times but I still never found an answer.

Here’s a map of Singapore’s constituencies, shaded by the number of times each party has won the most votes in that seat since the 2001 general election and by the party that the most votes in that seat at the 2020 general election: https://jmp.sh/XfAtXc8M

Blue: People’s Action Party (PAP)
Red: Worker’s Party (WP)

Most seats are dark blue because they’ve only ever been won by the PAP, at least since the 2001 general election.

@NP Kamala Harris is not African American shes Jamaican

@ Nether Portal
A couple points,
1. i think the PAP has genuine support among the population. Lee Kuan Yew took Singapore from one the world’s poorest to richest places in a generation. There is a sense of gratitude for the PAP for that reason
2. There is also interracial harmony is it early days Racial conflict in Singapore seemed inevitable. Fun Fact Singapore is the most religiously diverse country in the world with no religious majority. The PAP in a sense has created a sense of identity that crosses the divides.
3. Most Singaporeans live on Public Housing estates built by the HDB. These estates mix peoples of different races and income levels. Some argue that it is a form of social control but the end result is you dont get class or ethnic segregation which you see in LA or Sydney.
4. Having said that Singapore does not have a free media and its electoral boundaries are only released after the election has been called and people argue there is Gerrymandering.

@John thanks for the correction.

@Nimalan thanks for that info. I do agree that the PAP has a large appeal in Singapore but to last 65 years is a very very long time even for a popular government. Will Singapore ever get a new governing party or a coalition government?

@NP: Should also note that the PAP actually started as a centre-left party when Singapore was part of Malaysia, but LKY expelled its leftist faction in Singapore, and moved the party rightwards during the 1960s, which was also during which Singapore was expelled from Malaysia. The PAP’s Malaysian divisions after rebranding to the Democratic Action Party (DAP) (due to Malaysia refusing to let them keep the PAP name) remains centre-left to the present day.

Agree with @Nimalan’s points on why Singapore has remained with the PAP for so long, but the 4th point is a very strong point (though I think gerrymandering has been a far bigger issue next door in Malaysia among other issues), and the judiciary is very government sided. The PAP also have a known history of defamation lawsuits against opposition members which end up bankrupting them, thus disqualifying them from running for parliament, and threatening to putting opposition electorates last for service delivery like housing.

There’s no doubt that LKY brought up Singapore from an impoverished backwater to a successful developed nation on an island that has basically zero natural resources – and that’s why the older generation are incredibly loyal to the PAP. However some would say the cost has been forced social and political cohesion; you may have heard Singapore being called the closest thing to a “benevolent dictatorship”; that’s an exaggeration of course, but there is some amount of truth in why such a term is applied only to Singapore and nowhere else.

@WL Malaysia is less free than Singapore. Singapore legalised homosexuality for example while Malaysia hasn’t.

@NP On social and religious issues, definitely, although both can hardly be called bastions of support for LGBTQ+ individuals and community – Singapore repealed it’s sodomy laws only last year after all.

In other areas though, it’s arguably Malaysia that edges out Singapore in terms of freedom – their judiciary are more independent from government, and while there was previously a lot of pro government media, that has lessened quite a bit after the previous decades long ruling Barisan Nasional government lost power in 2018 – subsequently a number of pro government newspapers indicated an intention to become more neutral; essentially an admission that they were pro government biased. You won’t see that occurring in Singapore anytime soon.

Overall it still makes a lot of sense for many people in Singapore to vote PAP for a wide variety of reasons – they are incredibly pragmatic as a governing party. But the kind of liberal freedom that people in Western liberal democratic nations enjoy in North America, Europe, Australia & NZ is not really something the PAP espouses.

Streamer and co-owner of the self-proclaimed “Twitch alternative” online gaming and chat streaming service Kick Adin Ross has announced that he will interview Donald Trump. He already has interviewed misogynistic pimp and professional asshole Andrew Tate and a fake Kim Jong Un.

Logan Paul (who is also a bit of a dickhead) has already interviewed Trump on his podcast, where Trump revealed he used AI to rewrite a speech “so beautifully”.

Is this Trump vying for votes from millennials and Gen Z(ed)? If so, will it work and will it inspire politicians in other countries (including here in Australia) to do the same?

List of pro-Palestinian representatives in the US House of Representatives:

* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, New York’s 14th)
* Cori Bush (D, Missouri’s 1st)
* Jamaal Bowman (D, New York’s 15th)
* André Carson (D, Indiana’s 7th)
* Summer Lee (D, Pennsylvania’s 12th)
* Thomas Massie (R, Kentucky’s 4th)
* Ilhan Omar (D, Minnesota’s 5th)
* Mark Pocan (D, Wisconsin’s 2nd)
* Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts’ 7th)
* Delila Ramirez (D, Indiana’s 3rd)
* Rashida Tlaib (D, Michigan’s 12th)

I do not endorse any of these candidates. I even more strongly oppose pro-Russian candidates, which can be found in the far-right of the Republican Party.

Republicans who are critical of Israel (such as Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Thomas Massie) are almost always right-wing populist, national conservative, protectionist MAGATs and conspiracy theorists (e.g they think Trump won in 2020) who also simp to leaders like Putin and they are critical of Ukraine too.

@Nether Portal Massie has usually been described as a Libertarian or conservative Libertarian, although I haven’t kept up with him in the past few years so perhaps he has shifted solidly into outright national conservatism.

And regarding the previous comment, a lot of those Dems are members of “the Squad” and are facing tough primary challenges now that progressive wing has died down from its peak around 2018-2020. Bowman has already been primaried and Bush may lose hers as well.

@ Nether Portal
As Laine said many of those who you mentioned that are Pro-Palestine represent majority minority congressional districts are part of the Squad and are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. It seems Bizzare that Massie who represents a rural conservative electorate which is 86% White would be Pro-Palestine.
There are some Democrats like Jake Auchincloss who represents an affluent seat in Boston and a Jewish Millennial who are very Pro-Israel he is also Hawkish on China as well and very Anti-Russia.

@Laine I’m sure AIPAC will campaign against them.

@Nimalan yes it is hard to believe but he is a pro-Russian and pro-Palestinian Republican. He supports Trump and thinks the election was rigged. Like a lot of libertarians he opposed the Iraq War and the US military interventions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Sources for Massie being critical of Israel:

* Massie criticising AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu: https://newrepublic.com/post/184196/maga-republican-roasts-aipac-netanyahu-visit
* Massie voting against a motion declaring that Israel exists: https://www.jns.org/on-israels-right-to-exist-massie-votes-no-tlaib-present/
* Pro-Israel groups spending against Massie and other pro-Palestinian candidates: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/pro-israel-groups-spending-republican-primaries-rcna153036

@Nether Portal is this “fake Kim Jong Un” actually Howard X, who crashed ScoMo and Gladys Liu on the campaign in May 2022, and who ran against Andrews in Mulgrave in November 2022?

@Scart yes it was actually. Obviously it can’t’ve actually been Kim Jong Un, not because he only speaks to people in Korean or with interpreters (he definitely can speak English since he likes Maccas and the NBA (in university he loved basketball) and he went to university in Switzerland so he may even speak some German or French), but because obviously Kim Jong Un wouldn’t do anything like that.

Sportsbet now appears to have Kamala Harris and the Democrats ahead of Donald Trump and the Republicans in terms of who will win the presidential election.

There are no markets for any other races besides the presidential election, with the markets for that being who becomes President, the Democrats’ nominee for President and the party that wins the election. Nothing for the House or the Senate or for gubernatorial elections (well at least not yet).

My take on us election.. Harris only needs to poll slightly better in the rust belt states to win… senate is a toss up.. depends on Ohio and Montana and the presidential election. The lower houses will be a democrat majority as the republicans have stuffed up their present control big time

@Mick Quinlivan a blue wave would be a very unexpected outcome. When it was Biden vs Trump we all thought it would be a red wave.

Note: the US party colours are swapped, apparently because Republican and red begin with R even though in most other countries the conservative party is blue and the social democratic and/or progressive party is red.

Donald Trump has falsely claimed that Kamala Harris and the media are using AI to enlarge the crowd sizes of Kamala Harris’ campaign rallies, such as that of a recent rally in the battleground state of Michigan. The most recent poll, conducted by InsiderAdvantage from 6-8 August 2024, has Harris marginally ahead of Trump in Michigan, with Harris at 49% and Trump at 47%.

On the other hand, Trump supporters have been caught using AI to show Trump with a group of African Americans to encourage black people to vote for Trump.

Here is the latest polling in some key states:

* Arizona: Trump 48% (–1%), Harris 47% (–2%), +1% to Trump
* Florida: Trump 49% (–2%), Harris 42% (–5%), +3% to Trump
* Georgia: Trump 48% (–1%), Harris 48% (–1%), no swing
* Maine: Harris 54% (+1%), Trump 45% (+1%), no swing
* Michigan: Harris 49% (–2%), Trump 47% (–1%), +1% to Trump
* Nevada: Trump 48% (+1%), Harris 45% (–5%), +6% to Trump
* New Hampshire: Harris 50% (–3%), Trump 46% (+2%), +3% to Trump
* Pennsylvania: Harris 49% (–1%), Trump 46% (–2%), +1% to Harris
* Texas: Trump 52% (±0%), Harris 39% (–7%), +7% to Trump
* Virginia: Trump 47% (+3%), Harris 45% (–9%), +12% to Trump
* Wisconsin: Trump 49% (+1%), Harris 48% (–1%), +1% to Trump

Note that the swings are from 2020 (Biden vs Trump) and rounded to the nearest whole number as the polls do not have exact decimal figures.

Coming soon: new dataset.

Title: What if US congressional districts had names?

This will be a work in progress and it will take a while so hopefully everyone appreciates and enjoys it. Questions, comments, feedback and suggestions are welcome.

I wish the US congressional districts did have names. It would be easier to remember and also easy to do long term analysis on changes to voting patterns or demographic change. Currently, boundaries are drawn up and then randomly numbered after each redistricting which happens every 10 years following the census. So Maryland’s 1st congressional district could be at the opposite end of the State next time.

there are basically 6 states that will determine th outcome
Arizona
Nevada
Georgia
Michigan
Wisconsin
Pennsylvania

of the these Nevada is basically inconsequential and wont determine the outcome.

@Nimalan I agree the same with countries like France who also number their constituencies.

-Strange that they place Virginia more likely to vote for Trump than Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and even Georgia even though Virginia has been treading more to Dems in recent presidential elections due to growth around Washington DC. I thought Virginia would not vote for Trump until all the latter four states does unless the poll is wrong. (I know there is a GOP Governor elected in 2021 but means not a lot as Biden lost North Carolina in 2020 yet Dems won gubernatorial election on the same day)
– Is there a large independent vote in Texas?

if trmp wins virgina it will be over before it starts

@John Virginia, a mainly urban state, has turned into a solidly Democrat state on the presidential level, at least in terms of how it’s voted in the past couple of years. Compare this to the mostly rural state next door, West Virginia, which is solidly Republican.

Update on my naming of congressional districts: preliminary names for some districts will come out tomorrow. For the full thing you’ll have to wait.

@Marh:

1. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, while a Republican, is a moderate one and is like a middle faction Liberal. I guess you could say he’s a bit like David Crisafulli. He supports same-sex marriage but opposes certain abortions (after a certain week limit) and is against legalising recreational marijuana. This is very different to Donald Trump who opposes same-sex marriage and all forms of abortion. The Washington Post has described him as being “ famous for being just Trumpy enough to woo MAGA Republicans without alienating more moderate voters”.
2. RFK Jr. (no longer an independent since he recently joined the Natural Law Party) is polling well in Texas. There were two polls conducted this year asking Texas voters whether they would prefer Donald Trump, Joe Biden or RFK. The March one had Trump at 48%, Biden at 36% and RFK was at 15%, with just 1% undecided. The April one had Trump at 46%, Biden at 34% and RFK at 9%, with 11% undecided. In other polls he is also polling above 5%.

@NP, can you point me to where Donald Trump is against SSM and all forms of abortion? I can see that of JD Vance, but Trump strikes me as a big city liberal on social issues, right wing union on trade and very liberal on domestic economics. I can see that internal Republican politics may have meant that is his platform, and I have no doubt he is much happier just leaving it to the states.