Liberal Democrats

• Here is an updated graph of the 2023 Voice polls by pollster that I first published two weeks ago.
• To be successful, a referendum requires at least four of the six states as well as a national majority in favour.
• Based on June and July Resolve polls from a combined sample of 3,216, “no” is now ahead in four states.
• On Australia’s level of support, 45% thought it should be maintained, 31% increased and 9% decreased or withdrawn.

National Essential poll: Albanese’s ratings slump

• This is Labor’s equal lowest lead in Essential this term, tying with a 49–44 lead in March.
• Anthony Albanese’s ratings were 48% approve (down six since May) and 41% disapprove (up six), for a net approval of +7, down 12 points.
• This is his worst net approval in Essential since the 2022 election.

WA poll: massive swing to Liberals since May puts them ahead

• The Liberals led by 54–46, a huge 15-point swing to the Liberals since the May Utting poll that was taken soon after Mark McGowan announced his retirement as WA premier and member for Rockingham.
• Primary votes in this poll were 37% Liberals (up nine), 6% Nationals (up one), 32% Labor (down 20), 10% Greens (up two) and 15% for all Others (up eight).
• At the March 2021 WA election, McGowan won Rockingham by an 87.7–12.3 margin, from a primary vote of 82.8%.
• If this WA state poll is accurate, we would expect a huge swing to the Liberals at the byelection.

Tories lose 2 of 3 UK byelections; right fails to win majority in Spain

• The Conservatives lost two with very large swings, to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but held former PM Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge.
• The right had been expected to win an outright majority.

• There’s no progress.
• Much of the breathless news coverage of the debt limit crisis relies on leaks, speculation, wishful thinking and maybe even the reading of tea leaves.
• Harbridge-Yong is a specialist in partisan conflict and the lack of bipartisan agreement in American politics, so her expertise is tailor-made for the moment.

What do the debt limit negotiations look like to you?

• The first: Since the 1970s, both the House and Senate have become much more polarized.
• Members of the two parties are more unified internally and further apart from the opposing party.
• You don’t have the overlap between parties now that existed 50 years ago.
• These dynamics, layered on top of policy interests, all contribute to the problems that we’re seeing now.

What’s the role of brinkmanship in this conflict?

When I think of brinkmanship, I’m thinking about negotiating tactics that push things until the very last minute to try to secure the most concessions for your side. Right now that means coming to the edge of potential default on the debt.

Does brinkmanship work?

• In some instances concessions were granted, so brinkmanship paid off.
• Brinkmanship and gridlock are disproportionately consequential for Democrats, who generally want to expand government programs, versus for Republicans, who tend to want to constrict government programs.
• It may be part of why we see Republicans going harder on this kind of brinkmanship.

How does the public see brinkmanship?

• My own work has shown that the public does not like gridlock on issues in which people agree on the end goal.
• The public, on average, even prefers a victory for the other side over policy gridlock.
• So on the one hand, the public doesn’t like gridlock – especially gridlock when the consequences are so bad, as default would be.

Democracy is about representation. As they conduct these negotiations, do lawmakers see themselves as representing voters?

• They represent very strongly partisan districts who may agree with them that they need to fight for concessions.
• Individual legislators may be thinking they’re representing constituents, but that leads to an aggregate that is not representative of the country as a whole.
• What the public as a whole – which tends to be more moderate – wants is compromise and resolution of this issue.

• These are huge contests, covering 237 councils, of which 151 are holding all-out elections, with every seat up for grabs.
• In the other 86, one-third of the seats are being fought.
• The Conservatives have most to lose since the poll includes “shire” councils in rural locations, which are traditionally fertile Tory territory.

What does a good night look like?

• Theresa May was prime minister and was battling to get her Brexit deal through parliament after losing her majority in an ill-fated election two years previously.
• Starmer needs a swing the size of Tony Blair’s in 1997 to win an outright majority in the next general election.
• For the Conservatives, keeping losses well below 700 seats would be a triumph of sorts, an indication Rishi Sunak is still in the game.

Which are the regions to look out for?

• Labour could regain northern councils that had been lost to no overall control in places where the party has also lost parliamentary seats in recent years.
• This could indicate a fight back in the areas that delivered such a devastating loss for Labour in the last general election.
• Look out for Dacorum, West Berkshire and East Cambridgeshire councils which could all fall to Ed Davey’s party.

Will voter ID change things?

• The Electoral Reform Society thinks it has been introduced to solve a problem of impersonation that does not exist.
• Take up for voter authority certificates, available to those not holding appropriate ID, has been low.
• That’s unless you think bins, burials, green spaces, housing, leisure facilities, libraries, planning, schools and social services are all trivial.

• But this animosity seems to have more to do with tribal loyalty than liberal-versus-conservative disagreements about policy.
• Liberal Democrats are on the left, conservative Republicans on the right, and a small sliver of moderate independents are in the middle.
• But political scientists like us have long argued that a line is a bad metaphor for how Americans think about politics.
• Recently, some political scientists have argued that views on racial issues represent a third “dimension” in American politics.

A new picture of American politics

• In our new article in Sociological Inquiry, we analyzed public opinion data from 2004 to 2020 to develop a more nuanced picture of American political attitudes.
• Our aim was to do a better job of figuring out what Americans actually think about politics, including policies related to race and racism.
• Many have very strong views on certain issues, but can’t be pigeonholed as being on the left or right in general.
• Picture, for instance, those voters in 2016 who were attracted to both Bernie Sanders’ economic populism and Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants.

Five groups – but only two parties

• These three groups of Americans have a difficult time fitting in with either of the two major parties in the U.S.
• Seeing Americans as divided into these five groups – as opposed to polarized between the left and right – shows that both political parties are competing for coalitions of voters with different combinations of views.
• But perhaps most importantly, these five groups show how diverse Americans’ political attitudes really are.