Category Archives: Elections

Meet the Box-Setts: the Demographic that Will Decide Britain’s Future

Originally posted at Slugger O’Toole… David Box gives his partner Seema Sett the dorky, Mr Bean-ish look, with the back of his tongue poking out of his gob that he knows always makes her smile when she’s had a rough … Continue reading

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First Past the Post is now harming unionism because it is concentrated around Belfast

This article appeared in the News Letter of 9 September 2016 With Northern Ireland’s healthy population growth in recent years, the province is set to lose only one of its existing 18 seats. Additionally, some large differences in electorate size … Continue reading

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A Good Week for Democracy Globally

This was originally posted to Slugger O’Toole… There was something discomfiting about the funeral of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore’s achievements under his rule were extraordinary, but the story presented on his death was a sanitised fable. World leaders queued up … Continue reading

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UKIP’s voters – older, more male and more working class. But especially older.

Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole… YouGov have produced a wonderful composite of all their February 2013 polling to try and give a realistic picture of which bits of the electorate are behind UKIP’s polling surge into double figures , a trend … Continue reading

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Eastleigh: Bad for Tories, Better for LDs, Best for UKIP

Cross-posted to Slugger O’Toole… So the LibDems held on to Eastleigh by a narrow majority of 1,771 or just 4.3%, with UKIP surging into second place. Alex Massie in the Speccie warns against overanalysing by-elections, while Martin Kettle argued last … Continue reading

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Italy’s Five Star Movement – is this what The End of History looks like?

Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole and Lucid Talk… In 1992, Francis Fukayama predicted in The End of History that the end of the Cold War would impend not only an era of triumphant liberal-democratic capitalism, but one where political evolution had … Continue reading

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A UKIP breakthrough in 2015?

Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole… UKIP has been consistently polling in the high single digits and low double digits across Great Britain for well over a year now. This is the most significant and sustained burst of polling for a fourth … Continue reading

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US Election Braindump

Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole… I am too tired and too discombobulated from number crunching to post a coherent, concise article, but there is much of interest in yesterday’s American election results. This was a decisive election for the world’s most … Continue reading

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Know Your Battleground States 9/9: Florida

Florida, the United States’ incredibly flat protrusion into the sub-tropics, is an enormous and rapidly changing state, perhaps about to overtake New York as the third most populous state in the Union, and by far the biggest of the battleground … Continue reading

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The youth vote: Cynicism of the first post-Troubles generation of voters

This article appeared in the Belfast Telegraph of 16 June 2012 Northern Ireland’s youngest adults have no memories of the worst of The Troubles. From September, new voters coming onto the electoral register will be people who were not even … Continue reading

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