Polls

Welcome to Thunderdome and Happy Halloween — where this scary, chaotic, insane election season is finally coming to a close. You can hear my take on where things stand here. Election Day should come as a moment of relief to finally have some resolution. Instead, many voters worried about what comes next resemble nothing so much as Douglas Adams’s infamous bowl of petunias, falling rapidly out of the sky: “Oh no, not again.”Why do they feel that way?

The political pundits like to tell us that general election polls don’t matter until after Labor Day. That, they say, is when the average American actually starts paying attention to what is happening in the election and so you can get a better understanding of which way the electorate is leaning. The only problem with that traditional wisdom is that it’s hard to put much stock into polls when so many are returning drastically different results.Take the Morning Consult poll that dropped this morning that shows Harris surging with a lead in six of the seven battleground states. The poll has her up eight points in Wisconsin, four in Pennsylvania and Nevada and three in Michigan. To be frank, no one serious believes these numbers.

If you are paying attention, you know that nature is full of inklings and adumbrations. I am writing in New England in mid-September — and it was just about a week ago that a subtle change in the atmosphere proclaimed the advent of autumn. It was not just that the weather listed cooler; it was also that the entire sensory gestalt shifted. The world suddenly bristled with different smells and colors and sounds. Browns and yellows and reds were edging out summer greens in the leaves. The roads were carpeted with acorns. You knew that the world was confronting you with different prospects and expectations. Something similar happens in the world of politics. For a long time, a certain narrative reigns.

As we head into yet another election season, faced with what looks like an inevitable Trump-Biden rematch, it’s hard not to despair at the divided state of the nation. A quick scan of the political landscape, and the condition of our cities, leaves me struggling — everything seems fractured. It’s like a broken mirror: the shattered remains are all reflecting back at each other, bouncing light everywhere. We live in an America that seems familiar, but only because it’s composed of the broken shards of something that once was. There is a lot of talk about how America is in decline. This was a central theme in the first GOP debate. It was presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis’s opening line: “Our country is in decline, this decline is not inevitable, it’s a choice.

New polling this week spells more bad news for President Trump. Nationally, and in battleground states, former Vice President Joe Biden has caught Trump or expanded his lead. Certain pundits are beginning to talk as if November's election is a fait accompli. That's a mistake. This election has a long way to go. From the beginning of his presidency, Trump’s ballot performance has lagged his job approval. Some voters, though satisfied with Trump’s presidency, will not commit to supporting his reelection. If these approvers turn into supporters as Election Day nears, Trump’s position will strengthen. Yes, his job approval numbers have dipped in recent months, but they remain above 40 percent, just below where he started his presidency.

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force. Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a party facing an existential crisis.

There are lies, damned lies and pretending to back Remain. I lie because I am a coward. I hug friends who burst into tears, petrified by life without the European Union. I sympathise with strangers, who act like Lady Di just died and there’s nowhere to lay flowers. I obfuscate, I mutter, I am evasive. And I am not alone. There are hordes of us who’ll not admit we voted Leave to our best friends, our next of kin. We learned to keep schtum a long time ago — thanks to social media — since they’d defriend us if said we’d vote to leave. Now they are outraged, deeply confused — and unsure which of us to blame.

So farewell then Lord Ashcroft: well, not quite. The former Tory Party treasurer has announced today that he has resigned his life peerage, yet will be able to keep his title for life, under changes to the rules passed in 2013. Having fallen out with Cameron in 2010, the billionaire one-time Tory backer and in-house pollster is said to have been severely put out that there was no job forthcoming after having kept the party afloat for the wilderness years. Since then, he has rebranded himself as an independent pollster, though there is still some bad blood with No 10.

As Lord Ashcroft turned 69 this week, the international businessman celebrated with a polling event on his birthday to announce the impending Labour bloodbath north of the border: 'Good evening and welcome. If you have ever wondered what a pollster does to celebrate his birthday, now you know. Somebody kindly asked me this morning if this was the big “four-O”, and I was compelled to admit this estimate was outside the margin of error.' Curiously, Mr S hears that the only party leader to wish the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party a happy birthday was Ukip's Nigel Farage. With Ashcroft's polls currently putting Ukip slightly behind the Tories in South Thanet, perhaps Farage is hoping he can inspire a boost in fortune in his next poll.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the not-very-general election" startat=780] Listen [/audioplayer]There’s normally an easy way to tell which party is losing a general election campaign. Whenever one side starts telling you to ignore the national polls and look at what is happening in certain key seats, it is a sure sign that they are in deep trouble. In this election, however, all the parties are arguing that what’s going on in their target seats matters more than the national polls. No one is keener to dispute the relevance of the national polls than the Liberal Democrats.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_5_Feb_2015_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Alex Massie discuss Labour's problems north of the border" startat=1118] Listen [/audioplayer]Just four months ago Scotland was the scene of great cross-party co-operation — unprecedented in peace-time politics. Gordon Brown was offering advice on David Cameron’s speeches, Douglas Alexander and the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson turned themselves into a formidable debating duo, and Charles Kennedy was being hailed by Labour strategists as the man who would save the Union. Even George Galloway got in on the act.

 Edinburgh When the histories of the Scottish independence debate are written, 13 February 2014 will be seen as a crucial date in the story. It was then that George Osborne suggested that no Westminster government, of any party, could countenance a currency union with an independent Scotland. Such an arrangement might be good for Scotland but it would make little sense for the rump United Kingdom. And with that observation, boom went much of the nationalists’ economic credibility. Osborne and his accomplice Alistair Darling might seem an improbable double act (though Osborne’s record in office bears a passing resemblance to Darling’s plans had Labour won) but together they might just have saved the Union.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_April_2014_v4.mp3" title="Dan Hodges and Marcus Roberts debate the state of Milibandism" startat=47] Listen [/audioplayer]A cruel new joke is doing the rounds about Ed Miliband: that the Labour leader is like a plastic bag stuck in a tree. No one is sure how he got up there, but no one can be bothered to take him down. It’s one of many unfair gags, made on the premise that he is a laughing stock and, ergo, doomed in next year’s general election. Many a Tory comforts himself with the idea that Miliband is just too implausible, too weak, too trivial a figure to make it to 10 Downing Street. Yet anyone wishing to dismiss him has to face some uncomfortable questions.