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> But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough .. This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation. The number of peop

by Jedd 4y ago

> But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough .. This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation. The number of people voting for neither of those parties (including coalition members) has been steadily growing for years, with the most recent federal election reaching 33%. I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) it was just north of 25%, which even then put us ahead of a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from. The idea of being 'glued' to a political party, or a political personality, feels a bit out-dated -- and/or a bit American (no offence intended to our cousins across the pond). I find the growing popularity of a more nuanced political landscape domestically to be hugely encouraging, but somewhat tempered by a fear this trend can (also) be manipulated, once they work out the algorithms.

orangepurple 4y ago
- csa 4y ago
  > the Democrat party... are consistently better organized, more presentable, better funded, more advanced psychological operations, better connected, and more coherent than their Republican counterparts In the US? Are you serious? - The Federalist Society is a decades long conservative/Republican effort to stack the courts. It worked. There is no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. - For decades Republicans worked to stack state legislatures with their people, and they gerrymandered aggressively once in control so that they could keep it. It worked. You get oddities like Austin (famously liberal city) with only 1 or 2 of 5 state reps being democrat. Or states like Minnesota (edit: maybe Wisconsin… I can’t recall) that (until this week) voted consistently for Democrats in statewide races but had a Republican-majority state legislature. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. - The Koch brothers for decades led many initiatives to support Republican causes with money and infrastructure. They moved away from the Republican Party with trump in the lead, but there are a ton of folks like the Kochs who are looking for a new figurehead to stand behind. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. Meanwhile… - Democrats can’t nominate better candidates than Hillary or Biden when much more electable candidates were available, mainly due to the periphery of the party insisting on getting their (very non-centrist, very non-electable) candidate or they just don’t vote. Hence Trump winning an election in 2016 and almost winning an election in 2020, both of which should have been slam dunks for Democrats even with the electoral college being what it is. - You get congressional Democrats who play nice when they are in control, then get completely taken advantage of when they are not in control. Mitch McConnell is the master of this type of abuse. There are many reasons for this, but one clear one is a lack of unity in the Democratic voting bloc. Republicans are much more consistent at executing “win at all costs” congressional strategies than Democrats are. Note that I wish the above were not true — I am embarrassed by the current state of politics in my country — but I see the reality for what it is.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    Yeah republicans and conservatives are amazing at organizing and keeping order in the ranks. Trump threw a wrench in some of that, but then they come out with things like the Lincoln Project that work really well (unfortunately). Average Dems in power will do anything to keep Social Democrats out of power. Even if they are all still capitalists. The Democratic Party would rather lose to Republicans by a bit than cede power and in my opinion more freedom.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This is sort of tangential, but it doesn’t match what I’ve seen at all. Democratic Party voters are notoriously flaky, turnout is a constant struggle. Every election starts with a struggle between the progressive and centrist branches. The Democratic Party generally represents a larger chunk of the populace than the Republican Party but turns that into middling electoral success (which doesn’t seem to indicate much organization), has failed to block the Supreme Court from becoming a partisan Republican institution, and manages to barely pass like 1 big law per president.
  - SllX 4y ago
    Or: both parties constantly view themselves as the minority party even when they have the majority and complain about how the other party always wins and they never get to. It’s more nuanced: as results go in national elections, they have roughly equal success within the parameters of the electoral system that we have. Some localities are effectively single-party, and some are purple. Personally I think the people that live in purple parts of the country are the lucky ones and wish my own State were solidly purple, but one of the party’s here really doesn’t know how to run for election and win here anymore.
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      Yeah, it's unfortunate that this whole abortion thing came up and all the Republicans had to choose between scaring all the women in their lives or flip flopping, but the party leadership have been trying to divide everyone on mortality issues for years. No idea who to vote for anymore :(
      - SllX 4y ago
        The easy answer is if you don’t have anyone you want to vote for: don’t. I still vote, but much more selectively and I retired the belief I used to have that if you don’t vote you can’t complain. I have priorities, and I know for a fact there isn’t another human being on this planet, let alone one in my general locality that would match my voting preferences perfectly. Nothing wrong with prioritizing because the best you can hope for is good enough for government work.
nirimda 4y ago
> I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) The most recent federal election was this year. The previous federal election was 2019. There were no changes of prime minister in that time; Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2019 election, and Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2022 election. I realise this takes a bit of getting used to, since the last prime minister to get from one election to another was John Howard. > a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from. Only the US has two realistic options, or else your statement is meaningless. Come up with a countexample. In the UK and Canada there are three parties who regularly win general seats namely the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems, or the Tories, the Liberals and the NDP. They both also have Greens who can win certain seats. Moreover they also have various regional parties e.g. Bloc Quebecois or the SNP who compete against the general parties in their regions of interest. In such a system, there might only be two realistic possible governments foreseen by observers, but voters act as if there's more than two realistic options to vote for, and they vote for more than two options, and more than two options get seats. Various other countries have two-bloc politics where you can give your vote to a left coalition or a right coalition, and to a certain party within that coalition. For instance, in NZ you can vote for Labour or the Greens if you like the left, and you can vote for National or ACT if you like the right (notice how the Greens got a ministry after the last election, even though Labour got a majority in their own right). But in such a situation there's clearly more than two realistic options to vote for, even if there's only two possible governments foreseen. (Not to mention that you can also get the situation where no precommitments are made, or the precommitmentments are rendered vain by results, and coalitions have to be formed after the election. But I assume this is regarded as the ideal.) Fundamentally the way people choose to describe a political system depends on the conclusions they intend to draw from it. The UK and Canada are substantially similar, but people want to praise Canada in comparison to its neighbor, and criticise the UK in comparison to its neighbors, so the UK gets called a "two-party system" and Canada gets called a "multi-party democracy". (Both are also sometimes describe as having proportional voting, since minor parties win: but this is false. Neither Canada, nor the UK, nor France have proportional voting.)
- ChoGGi 4y ago

by Jedd 4y ago

orangepurple 4y ago

csa 4y ago
> the Democrat party... are consistently better organized, more presentable, better funded, more advanced psychological operations, better connected, and more coherent than their Republican counterparts In the US? Are you serious? - The Federalist Society is a decades long conservative/Republican effort to stack the courts. It worked. There is no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. - For decades Republicans worked to stack state legislatures with their people, and they gerrymandered aggressively once in control so that they could keep it. It worked. You get oddities like Austin (famously liberal city) with only 1 or 2 of 5 state reps being democrat. Or states like Minnesota (edit: maybe Wisconsin… I can’t recall) that (until this week) voted consistently for Democrats in statewide races but had a Republican-majority state legislature. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. - The Koch brothers for decades led many initiatives to support Republican causes with money and infrastructure. They moved away from the Republican Party with trump in the lead, but there are a ton of folks like the Kochs who are looking for a new figurehead to stand behind. There has been no liberal/Democrat parallel that comes even close in terms of scope and/or effectiveness. Meanwhile… - Democrats can’t nominate better candidates than Hillary or Biden when much more electable candidates were available, mainly due to the periphery of the party insisting on getting their (very non-centrist, very non-electable) candidate or they just don’t vote. Hence Trump winning an election in 2016 and almost winning an election in 2020, both of which should have been slam dunks for Democrats even with the electoral college being what it is. - You get congressional Democrats who play nice when they are in control, then get completely taken advantage of when they are not in control. Mitch McConnell is the master of this type of abuse. There are many reasons for this, but one clear one is a lack of unity in the Democratic voting bloc. Republicans are much more consistent at executing “win at all costs” congressional strategies than Democrats are. Note that I wish the above were not true — I am embarrassed by the current state of politics in my country — but I see the reality for what it is.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Yeah republicans and conservatives are amazing at organizing and keeping order in the ranks. Trump threw a wrench in some of that, but then they come out with things like the Lincoln Project that work really well (unfortunately). Average Dems in power will do anything to keep Social Democrats out of power. Even if they are all still capitalists. The Democratic Party would rather lose to Republicans by a bit than cede power and in my opinion more freedom.
bee_rider 4y ago
This is sort of tangential, but it doesn’t match what I’ve seen at all. Democratic Party voters are notoriously flaky, turnout is a constant struggle. Every election starts with a struggle between the progressive and centrist branches. The Democratic Party generally represents a larger chunk of the populace than the Republican Party but turns that into middling electoral success (which doesn’t seem to indicate much organization), has failed to block the Supreme Court from becoming a partisan Republican institution, and manages to barely pass like 1 big law per president.
- SllX 4y ago
  Or: both parties constantly view themselves as the minority party even when they have the majority and complain about how the other party always wins and they never get to. It’s more nuanced: as results go in national elections, they have roughly equal success within the parameters of the electoral system that we have. Some localities are effectively single-party, and some are purple. Personally I think the people that live in purple parts of the country are the lucky ones and wish my own State were solidly purple, but one of the party’s here really doesn’t know how to run for election and win here anymore.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    Yeah, it's unfortunate that this whole abortion thing came up and all the Republicans had to choose between scaring all the women in their lives or flip flopping, but the party leadership have been trying to divide everyone on mortality issues for years. No idea who to vote for anymore :(
    - SllX 4y ago
      The easy answer is if you don’t have anyone you want to vote for: don’t. I still vote, but much more selectively and I retired the belief I used to have that if you don’t vote you can’t complain. I have priorities, and I know for a fact there isn’t another human being on this planet, let alone one in my general locality that would match my voting preferences perfectly. Nothing wrong with prioritizing because the best you can hope for is good enough for government work.

nirimda 4y ago

> I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) The most recent federal election was this year. The previous federal election was 2019. There were no changes of prime minister in that time; Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2019 election, and Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2022 election. I realise this takes a bit of getting used to, since the last prime minister to get from one election to another was John Howard. > a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from. Only the US has two realistic options, or else your statement is meaningless. Come up with a countexample. In the UK and Canada there are three parties who regularly win general seats namely the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems, or the Tories, the Liberals and the NDP. They both also have Greens who can win certain seats. Moreover they also have various regional parties e.g. Bloc Quebecois or the SNP who compete against the general parties in their regions of interest. In such a system, there might only be two realistic possible governments foreseen by observers, but voters act as if there's more than two realistic options to vote for, and they vote for more than two options, and more than two options get seats. Various other countries have two-bloc politics where you can give your vote to a left coalition or a right coalition, and to a certain party within that coalition. For instance, in NZ you can vote for Labour or the Greens if you like the left, and you can vote for National or ACT if you like the right (notice how the Greens got a ministry after the last election, even though Labour got a majority in their own right). But in such a situation there's clearly more than two realistic options to vote for, even if there's only two possible governments foreseen. (Not to mention that you can also get the situation where no precommitments are made, or the precommitmentments are rendered vain by results, and coalitions have to be formed after the election. But I assume this is regarded as the ideal.) Fundamentally the way people choose to describe a political system depends on the conclusions they intend to draw from it. The UK and Canada are substantially similar, but people want to praise Canada in comparison to its neighbor, and criticise the UK in comparison to its neighbors, so the UK gets called a "two-party system" and Canada gets called a "multi-party democracy". (Both are also sometimes describe as having proportional voting, since minor parties win: but this is false. Neither Canada, nor the UK, nor France have proportional voting.)

ChoGGi 4y ago