My friend Shaun Kenney provides his optimism about Ed Gillespie here. This post is in response, explaining why I think my guy, Ralph Northam, has better reasons to be hopeful of victory. First, there is the relative state of the parties in Virginia. In the last two gubernatorial races, the Commonwealth was within one point of the…
As I write this, it is nearly 9AM in the United Kingdom, whose voters have chosen to take away the small Conservative majority from 2015. It appears that the Tories will still be able to govern, so long as the Democratic Unionists support them, but it’s a far shakier situation then it was before dissolution. First…
Be afraid; be very afraid. As I write this, it’s past 1AM in London, and less than six hours from the start of voting. Meaning it’s time for yours truly to once again try to predict an election. If anything, the approaching vote is increasingly looking like what I expected it to be: opportunities for the…
As Survation doubles down on its insistence that a hung parliament is in the offing (Telegraph), arguably the Tories’ best weapon was unleashed in County Durham – Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Johnson stuck to the strategy of focusing on Brexit, but he added his usual flourish. Mr Johnson delivered a campaign speech on Brexit in…
…and the pollsters appear to be in as deep a disagreement as the two major parties. To those in the arena first: Jeremy Corbyn did something bizarre in complaining about cuts to British police funding while Prime Minister Theresa May was Home Secretary. No, it was not the complaint itself (although even the Guardian noted…
Henry Hill, a longtime contributor to Conservative Home on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, wins the week – and, frankly, the campaign up to this point – with this jibe (note: CCHQ = Conservative Campaign Headquarters). In the distant past of a few weeks ago, observers of the Conservative campaign were talking about how the…
Over the last 24 hours, two major arguments have arisen – that among the politicians, and that among the pollsters. The Prime Minister is largely trying to avoid both of them and stick to discussing Brexit. For the first argument, most of the opposition parties spent their time at a leaders’ debate snapping at each…
In their endorsement editorial, the Financial Times described themselves (behind a paywall) thusly (via Guido Fawkes)… This publication stands for a liberal agenda: a small state, free trade, free markets and social justice. That would surprise those of us who know it by its rampant Europhilia (indeed, as Guido himself notes, “Quite a few FT…
The Prime Minister could have gone a few different ways in her speech today. Jeremy Corbyn suffered a bad gaffe on the cost of a manifesto promise (Telegraph), while also causing some confusion over his party’s policy on a second Scottish independence referendum (Telegraph). Before her lead went from insurmountable to unstable, she might have…
As I write this, we are less than 90 minutes away from Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May facing the voters in a live TV studio. They will not share a stage, so it is not a debate as we would call it here in the US, but it is the closest thing the British voters…