Posts by Mr Mark
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Polity: Poll Soup, in reply to BenWilson,
Yeah but tribal voting has been declining since the 1960s, Ben. Partisan dealignment throughout western liberal democracies. More and more non-aligned and (in particular) softly-aligned voters.
Labour lost a whole swathe of voters to National at the 2008 General Election - and they weren't lifelong/core Lab voters who saw the Nats as traditional enemies.
Just as I'm pretty sure they don't see Labour as anathema now.
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Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
"......and so it's fairly likely they'll form a plurality and reject change".
Eh ?........ Plurality ?
Surely there are just two choices in the second referendum (when we decide whether or not to "reject change" ). So a majority is needed, surely ?
Although most polls (including the latest Colmar Brunton ) suggest a widespread mix of opposition and apathy towards change, it concerns me that the recent UMR had Lockwood's dog's dinner/monstrosities doing very well. Four of his Fern+Southern Cross designs were clearly far more popular than any of the other long-list candidates. Almost 60% of respondents chose one or other of those four Lockwoods as their first choice.
It's easy, of course, to misinterpret the UMR poll, roughly half of those preferring one of the Lockwoods to other designs would vote to keep the current flag in Ref Two. But the results do suggest that if all those who
(1) favour change and (2) like one or other of the various long-list Lockwoods agree to support the chosen version in Ref two - then it could be close.And, My God, it's gonna be embarrassing if we end up with those amateur, awkwardly-assembled contrivances.
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On Gordon Walters-esque designs by Michael Smythe, I've got a wee bit of a grumble.
Way back in 1990, The Listener ran a design competition for a new national flag, publishing the best in a series of articles over subsequent weeks (Gordon Campbell seemed to be the main journo involved). I submitted a little over 20 designs and 6 of them were based on Gordon Walters' stylised koru paintings (I had his book out of the library at the time. I also used Maori artist Sandy Adsett's paintings/graphic design as inspiration for some of my other submissions).
Michael Smythe was among the panel of judges for that 1990 Listener competition.
Fast-forward 15 or so years and Smythe turns up in the cover story of a 2004 or 2005 edition of The Listener not only promoting his Gordon Walters-inspired designs for a new flag, but quite blatantly suggesting he was the first to ever think of it. (he repeated the process in a more recent edition of the same periodical). Now the last thing I want to do is sound like I've been nursing some sort of bitter, emotionally-overwrought grudge about it all these years - as a few family members and friends will tell you, I simply grumbled a wee bit over the following couple of days - but, you know, it does kind of offend your inate sense of fairness and right and wrong.
Then again, by 2005 I'd decided a Walters-style koru probably wouldn't work all that well as a flag, so it was only a minor issue of irritation at the brazenness of it all for me.
Still think Sandy Adsett's art-cum-graphic-design would transfer really well to a new national flag.
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Cheers, David and Ben.
Some very interesting (albeit necessarily tentative) conclusions.
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Keep the data coming guys.
Some fascinating insights . I don't have SPSS so haven't had access to the NZES data (apart from photocopying a couple of chapters from Vowles' The New Electorall Politics a while back).
Am I right in assuming that those respondents who didn't know where particular Parties (or where they themselves) were located on the Left-Right spectrum - were excluded from the data ? And, if so, do we know what proportion ?
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to giovanni tiso,
"...in response to a patronising article..."
Yep.
For example: "Rule 1 in politics is "learn to count" 33 < 50".
Or his apparent assumption that none of us have ever heard of Anthony Downs' seminal thesis (most of his critics of the last week or so do, in fact, hold Pol Sci degrees)
Convenient, too, how New Labour's win in the 1997 UK General Election apparently had everything to do with Blair's Right turn and nothing whatsoever to do with his comically self-destructive opponents (Black Wednesday, a series of major Tory corruption and sex scandals, endemic Tory disunity over the EU...), but the NZ Labour / Alliance victory in 99 apparently had nothing to do with the political alternative being offered and instead was entirely down to Shipley Government ineptitude. Funny how that happens.
I'll be posting a considered (largely, but not necessarily entirely , snark-free) response on my sub-zero politics blog (although, given severe time-constraints, it might not be for a week or so - by which time everyone will have lost interest). But I'd really like to get to the heart of things and move the debate along a bit.
In the meantime, here's Stephanie Rodgers' quick reply... https://bootstheory.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/a-quick-response-to-rob-salmond/
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Not that I'm suggesting a Corbyn-led Labour Party would win the next General Election. The moment he takes the leadership, the MSM and the bulk of the PLP will wage war on him (hell, it's already happening as we speak). But then, neither Burnham or Cooper are likely to take Labour to victory either.
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Nick Russell "...he is promising to wind the clock back to Labour's 1983 manifesto, the longest suicide note in history...This seems to appeal mainly to people who were not around in 1983 and who think that the voting public secretly yearn to renationalise the railways, abandon nuclear weapons etc ...... I think the technical term for such people is 'deluded' "
See point (2) in my comment above. You appear to be the one who's hopelessly "deluded" and living in the past. Public views have changed - in some cases, quite dramatically - since 1983, my expat Tory chum. Something you're just gonna have to come to terms with.
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Rob "How have centre-left parties gone when they've tacked away from the centre ?.....it goes badly"
and
"declining centre-left fortunes when its narrative swings left.."
and
"the centre-ground really is where elections are won and lost"
and
"pulling the centre back towards the left is massively, massively hard. You win those people over by being relevant to them as they are, not by telling them their worldview needs a rethink. "Very simplistic.
And grossly inaccurate in its implications.
Unlike you and me, Rob, the vast majority of voters don't think in any sort of coherent Left/Right terms.
Polling in the UK suggests they want:
(1) Economic competence and credibility
(2) A Party close to them on key issues(1) Despite Jon Cruddas's highly misleading report that UK Labour lost the May Election because it was too "anti-austerity", All the polling I've seen suggests a majority of Britons oppose a continuation of austerity policies and believe the cuts in spending (both locally and nationally) have gone too far.
Corbyn (assuming he emerges as leader and doesn't full victim to what may be a current campaign by New Labour Grandees to conduct a Soviet-style purge on his known supporters) needs to take the anti-austerity fight to the Tories, making it clear to British voters that their (majority) instincts are, indeed, correct - as Paul Krugman has said 'The austerian ideology that dominated elite discourse five years ago has collapsed to the point where hardly anyone still believes it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the coalition that still rules Britain - and most of the British media."
(2) The problem with your argument, Rob, is that, on so many of his proposed policies, Corbyn is, in fact, entirely in tune with public opinion. He's not the one telling them "their worldview needs a rethink" !!!
On bringing railways and energy companies into public ownership, on rent controls, on higher tax rates for the wealthy elite, on a mandatory living wage, on cuts to tuition fees, on Trident and banning nuclear weapons and on his previous opposition to the Iraq War and bombing Syria - on all of these issues, Corbyn has the majority (sometimes - as in the case of nationalising railways and the energy companies - a very large majority) of voters on his side.......and against both the Blairite and Tory Establishment.All of which, of course, raises questions about just how far to "the Left" Corbyn and the British public actually are. Maybe just maybe - he's occupying the centre-ground on many of the fundamental issues and our Blairite chums are off to the loony-tune Right.
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Tom Semmens 1 ..... Rob Salmond 0
(Brilliant, eloquent, hard-hitting strike by Centre-Forward, Semmens, from his own side of half-way - straight into the back of the net)