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About LinkBacksCameron comes across as a pretty good public speakerOriginally Posted by Fr. Hank Tree
- no one could ever say its one of Gordon's strengths ....
Cameron comes across as a pretty good public speaker
- no one could ever say its one of Gordon's strengths ....
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
I have a feeling that Labour will leak votes to the BNP in working class areas. However, few of those areas are marginal enough for the Tories or the Lib Dems to come through as a result.
The risk of the Tories losing votes to UKIP or the Lib Dems to the Greens is overstated (although in the latter case, it may happen in those constituencies where the Greens are perceived as having a chance e.g. Brighton Pavillion and to a lesser extent Norwich North).
My political compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.36
Actually they won't be. In fact they never are.
It is one of the big myths of politics that leaders decide elections. All the academic research shows it to be untrue. Only a very small number in the end of the day are influenced by leadership.
People who say they didn't vote for party X because of a leader are according to research likely not to have voted for the party in any case, and use the issue of the leader as an enabling issue to give them an excuse to rationalise why they didn't vote for that party. But if they didn't have the excuse of the leader, they would come up with other excuses - they don't like the local candidate, they "hate" the other party but like their candidate, they don't like politician Y in that party, anything.
People who are going to vote for Labour will vote for Labour irrespective of their feelings for Brown. Those who weren't going to vote for Labour will use Brown as the excuse. Even swing voters are rarely neutral - when challenged they usually will indicate that they were already leaning towards X and are just deceiving themselves into believing that they are truly open to support parties.
Leaders only matter if that leader is actually on the ballot paper - ie, in presidential races. Other than that, leaders act as 'enablers' or 'justifiers' that people use to rationalise what they actually wanted to do anyway.
Parties do go up and down after leader debates sometimes. But detailed academic studies say that up or down barely lasts 24 hours. By 48 hours any trace of an actual impact on how people do vote, as opposed to how they claim they will vote, is practically all gone.
I remember on the canvas once meeting someone who was voting against FF on the basis of an Ahern performance in a debate. They said they didn't trust him. They reacted that conclusion (unbelievably) on the basis of the colour of his tie. (They thought he chose his tie to play mindgames with them. If they think that, you can be pretty sure they were never going to vote for FF anyway. They just dreamt up an excuse to justify a decision they had taken emotionally but for which they had yet to justify to themselves rationally.)
That is the phenomenon of why, for example, often the winner in a debate goes on to lose the election. And why a party leader's trajectory can be so different to that of their party, with a highly popular leader leading a party falling in the polls, or vice-versa.
All views expressed are my own.
Could you link to this research Tommy, I'd be interested in reading it.
Unenthusiastic about any of the buggers.
Cameron will be PM purely by finishing as the leading party, as the British public wouldn't accept Brown attempting to continue in power even if they only finished 1 seat behind. I do believe however that the Lib Dems will make progress by being able to gain off regional biases in both the North and South. It's debatable whether they can gain promises of PR, but they should extract agreements on tax and education.
My political compass:
Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64
Me too. Links please.
Can you imagine if UKIP got enough votes to make the Tories come crawling to them for an alliance. I know it would probably end up like the FF/Greens scenario, but still it would be a right shocker! They would have to make Farage a Minister. I can imagine the first thread following his appointment at p.ie --op would be "nooooooooooooo!"
'Climate-Gate' Scandal Should Be Wake-Up Call For Press, Politicians
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It'll be the same as with the States then --like the argument that Obama has to be nice to Wallstreet and intensify the "War on Terror" not because he wants to but because he inheritied the mess. We will hear the same crapo arguments from the Tories... but we don't want to befriend the Banksters or continue with these wars... it's because we inherited the mess from Labour!
You will also notice that the Tories have being stealing material for there campaign:
How stupid and dumbed down to they think the general public are?! Um, og yeah, that's right, the general population are, deep down, that trusting and naive!
'Climate-Gate' Scandal Should Be Wake-Up Call For Press, Politicians
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I don't see there being many real issues if the Tories needed UKIP. Policy wise they are not a million miles apart and it would be a fantastic boost for UKIP who are coming in from being a marginal party.
Won't happen, apparently a vote for the Tories is a "vote for change!" Where have we heard that before?!
'Climate-Gate' Scandal Should Be Wake-Up Call For Press, Politicians
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