Is There Anything To Learn From The U.K. Elections? Part I

"Massive" 43.6% win

Before people kill themselves over the terrible results in Britain yesterday, remember, more people voted against Boris Johnson and the Conservatives than voted for them. His party only took 43% of the votes. The British version of gerrymandering gives him a commanding control of Parliament, not the will of the people, despite all the crowing from the corporate media and rightist politicians from Trump to Biden. This is what actually happened:

• Conservative Party- 13,966,565 (43.6%)-- 365 seats (+48)
• Labour Party- 10,295,607 (32.2%)-- 203 seats (-59)
• Liberal Democrats- 3,696,423 (11.6%)-- 11 seats (-1)
• Scottish Nationalists (Scotland)- 1,242,372 (3.9%)-- 48 seats (+13)
• Green Party- 835,579 (2.7%)-- 1 seat
• Brexit Party- 642,303 (2.0%)-- no seats
• Democratic Unionist Party- (Northern Ireland) 244,128 (0.8%)- 8 seats (-2)
• Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland)- 181,853 (0.6%)- 7 seats
• Plaid Cymru (Wales)- 153,265 (0.5%)-- 4 seats
• Alliance Party (Northern Ireland)- 134,115 (0.4%)-- 1 seat
• ocial Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)- 118,737 (0.4)-- 2 seats (+2)

Cas Mudde is an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia who writes for The Guardian. He's not buying all the Biden-Bloomberg and corporate media crap that Labour's loss in the U.K. means the Democrats have to move right. "In many ways," wrote Budde, "the results were in line with broader trends in Europe, notably that (radicalized) mainstream rightwing parties are quite successful, as, for instance, in Austria and the Netherlands, while social democratic parties are getting hammered virtually everywhere, irrespective of whether they are 'moderate' or 'radical.' The idea that British elections are most similar to U.S. elections is based on a simplistic understanding of the two political systems. It is true that both share a first-past-the-post system, with single-member districts, leading to a two-party system, but that is about it. The UK has a parliamentary system and the US a presidential one, which puts much more emphasis on one person and makes the undemocratic electoral college the key decider."

But most importantly, all elections are still primarily national rather than global. The British election had its own, partly unique, issues and candidates. First and foremost, the election was about Brexit, an issue irrelevant to the U.S. electorate. Also, Corbyn was an extremely controversial candidate. While very popular within the (new) party base, and among millennials, 61% of Brits had a negative opinion of Corbyn, which included particularly older white men, who vote in large numbers. This unpopularity was only partly related to his “hard left” platform; issues such as his weak stance against antisemitism and his non-position on Brexit didn’t help either. To be fair, Johnson isn’t popular either, but he is much less unpopular than Corbyn.

So, which lessons can we draw for next year’s presidential elections? Many, although most are general lessons, not specific to this result.

First, unpopular candidates can win elections-- a lesson we should already have drawn in 2016. It doesn’t matter whether a majority of the population dislikes you, but that a majority of the voters likes you. Trump’s base might be small, but it is mobilized and united.

Second, internal divisions, over candidates and policies, will harm both support and turnout. While Corbyn has a pretty strong grip on the party membership, which is why he can probably stay on to oversee his own succession, he has been involved in an ongoing and public conflict with much of his parliamentary party. Moreover, the party was internally divided over key issues, most notably Brexit. This all meant that the Labour party contested the elections with an unclear profile. Given the divisions within the Democratic party, and the open animosity between donors and supporters of both “moderate” and “radical” candidates, there is a serious risk that this could harm the Democrats in 2020, too.

Third, the electoral system is key to any successful electoral campaign. Plurality systems are extremely disproportional. In Thursday’s election the Tories got one seat for every 38,304 votes, while Labour needed 50,649 votes for each seat-- the numbers for the Liberal Democrats and Greens were 331,226 and 857,513, respectively. Moreover, Corbyn’s “dramatic” result last night was only 3% lower than the 35.2% that won Tony Blair his third election in 2005. The U.S. system is even less democratic, given that the electoral college trumps the popular vote.

Fourth, and most importantly, campaigns matter. Yes, Labour had fantastic short videos, and an incredibly detailed and elaborate election manifesto, but its campaign missed a clear focus and target-- obviously, in large part because Corbyn was unwilling to take a clear position on the key issue of the election. In sharp contrast, the Tories had a clear message (“Vote to deliver Brexit; vote to respect the referendum”), however problematic in reality, and spent much of their money on Facebook in the last week of the campaign, when many voters decide whether and who to vote. The Trump campaign has been spending millions of dollars on Facebook for the last year, pushing a very similar message-- in the language of its leader, “DEMOCRATS WANT TO STEAL THE ELECTION.”

What this all means is that Democrats should put much less trust in general polls, as in a highly polarized country like the US average levels of public support do not necessarily tell us much about who will win the presidency. What matters is who shows up. Republican voters know who and what they will show up for. Do Democratic voters?

Part II will be tomorrow in this same time slot.