The General Election Campaign begins!

As it is the first General Election that is being held since the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, we know when the next election will be - 7 May 2015.  This means that the campaigns have already started, as you may have noticed when reading the news yesterday.  At Nonsuch, we will be holding a mock election which will give everyone the chance to vote for a party within school so you will need to be informed.  The links below will whet your appetite and get you thinking:

http://theday.co.uk/politics/battle-lines-drawn-as-election-year-begins

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11324270/And-theyre-off-the-2015-General-Election-campaign-unofficially-begins-today.html

http://www.parliament.uk/education/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/

Campaigning for Obama in Ohio

This time last year, I was told there was a chance that I could spend October 2012 campaigning for President Barack Obama. Obviously, I jumped at this opportunity and refused to let go. Which is how, last month, I found myself travelling 2,000 miles to the swing state of Ohio as part of a contingent from the Labour Party to help our sister Democrats. It was to be one the most demanding, exhausting, and ultimately thrilling weeks of my life.
First we flew to Detroit to stock up on Motown, before starting our road trip east. As soon as we arrived in Cleveland, we were taken to campaign headquarters to be briefed. Here we were told that our battleground was Cuyahoga, the most marginal county in the state. We were armed with clipboards, split into crack teams of door-knockers and given our marching orders. Ohio early voting starts a month before election day, and our job was to get this vote out. The next week passed in a blur of determined canvassing, leafleting and occasional running away from Republicans’ dogs.

We soon discovered that the most rewarding places to campaign were the predominantly poor and African-American neighbourhoods, where there was almost universal support for Obama. Many were practically disenfranchised from early voting by poor access to polling stations and being overlooked by the parties for fancy publicity campaigns. The most interesting part of the week was just speaking to people on the doorstep, talking about things like how the laws passed in Washington really affected their everyday lives; how grand rhetoric about the economy actually translated into wages in the bank and food on the table. Over the course of the week, we knocked on over 10,000 doors.

We were lucky enough to be in Ohio in an eventful week – the local Democrats threw a watch party for the broadcast of the second presidential debate, and on our last day we attended a rally headlined by Bruce Springsteen and Bill Clinton. Locals were particularly anxious about the second debate, after Obama’s flop in the first (there were many, many theories about this – from Obama being kept up the night before due to alien landings to Romney’s skiing experience helping him cope with Denver’s thinner air). Emotions at the rally ran high as Bruce, with Bill Clinton cheering from the side, covered Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to a stadium full of people singing along.
Finally, our convoy rolled on towards our final destination, Washington D.C. We said goodbye to our friends in the campaign headquarters before stocking up on everything Obama-related we could lay our hands on. In D.C. we spent the day touring Congress, the monuments and the tat shops, and in the evening we were lucky enough to have dinner with a few local Democratic senators. We finally waddled through customs with our suitcases bulging with badges, masks, and a few ‘Obama for America’ emblazoned frisbees, desperate for our first full night’s sleep in ten days.

Three weeks later, our group, though now far-flung across the UK, was reunited in sitting glued to our TV screens into the early hours. After a nail-biting night, watching Obama’s electoral college votes slowly mount, there was an eruption of several very loud celebrations as Cuyahoga County came through for Obama, and with it Ohio.

Bring on 2016.

KSN

Elections: AS Examples and Comments

Please add to this post any good examples or comments to assist with the Elections section of the AS Politics Unit 1 paper.

Obama announces re-election campaign

Barack Obama has announced his re-election campaign. He says that he is announcing it early to allow the campaign to build. Here is his website's video announcement. What do you think, a good start? No other candidates, either Democrat or Republican, have yet announced. Here is the list of Republican contenders. Tim Pawlenty is the only one to have officially declared his intention to run. Which one would you back at this stage?

The AV Debate

Here is a report from our correspondent, VD, who attended a special meeting on the AV debate this week. Many thanks!

Should we say yes to AV? The question of changing to the alternative vote will be one of the most controversial topics in politics right now, as it is the first time the electorate will be able to decide on how they should vote. On March 17th, LSE hosted a lecture based on this issue, chaired by Simon Hix. The main reasons supporting AV were:

• Under the current system, MPs can get a job from just 1 vote in 3, meaning that two thirds of their constituency voted against them.
• Now that there are 6 to 7 party systems in every region, using first-past-the-post (FPTP) will lead to tactical voting, as votes would be wasted if not used on the two main parties.
• People believe that it will be advantageous to extremist parties, but the BNP is in fact against AV. This is because they are not a mainstream party, and research showed that they would have gained no seats in the 2010 election under AV.
  

Reasons for supporting FPTP were as follows:

• Voters do not like FPTP, but they are confusing AV with proportional representation (PR). They should not vote for an electoral system because it is the only available alternative (as this is what happened in the coalition agreement; Clegg accepted the only electoral reform offer given to him).
• 'Safe seats' can still remain the same under AV, as they will still have the majority of the electorate’s votes.
• Second preference votes should not be treated the same as someone's 1st vote - as this is not equal.
  

It is likely that this debate will only get stronger as we come closer to May 5th. While AV is a reasonable solution to FPTP's flaws, it is not the best option, and once changing the system, voters will only want more change, leading to a slippery slope of electoral reform. So should AV really be our new electoral system? May 5th shall reveal what the public really thinks about it.

Electoral results

An election and referendum result in one day! The Barnsley Central By-election was won by Labour with 61% of the vote, up from 50% at the General Election 2010. The Liberal Democrats were pushed into sixth place which will obviously leave Nick Clegg with some questions from his party. Two different interpretations of the results: one from the Guardian lauding the success of the Labour Party and one from the Telegraph delighting in the Liberal Democrats' humiliation.
The Welsh Referendum on whether to devolve further powers to the Assembly was successful with 63% voting yes. This will mean that the Assembly has direct law-making powers in twenty areas including health and education. See the BBC's site for more information and for what it might mean for the future of the Welsh Assembly.

STV and the Irish Election

This week's Irish elections look set to result in a coalition between Fine Gael and Labour, with Fine Gael's Enda Kenny appointed as the new Taoiseach. It is of particular interest to Nonsuch HP readers as it is an example of how the Single Transferable Vote system works on a national scale. The elections have seen the previous ruling party, Fianna Fáil, resoundingly defeated over their handling of the economic crisis. Not all the results are yet in due to the need to have several recounts within each constituency, as the votes are transferred until sufficient candidates have met their quota. You can read a good explanation of how the system works here, and get the latest statistics on the Irish Elections here, courtesy of the Irish Times.

By-election

A victory for Labour? Relief for the Lib Dems? Concern for the Conservatives? What do you think the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election last night shows and what do you think it will mean for the May elections?
Have a look at the reporting of the result on the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph (also a nice feature on most influential politicians), and make up your own mind.

Aung San Suu Kyi

A rather belated post about Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi's release by the military junta last Saturday. Under house arrest for seven years, Suu Kyi is the leader of the pro-democracy party in Burma, the National League for Democracy. The party overwhelmingly won elections in 1990 but was prevented from taking power by the junta who continued its military dictatorship. Following the recent elections in Burma, widely criticised for not being free or fair, the NLD leader is now free but for how much longer and will her release really change Burma? Here is her interview with John Simpson and here some more information about the elections and the situation in Burma.
For some more discussion on Burma's history, see Laurence Rees's blog.

1994 v 2010

An interesting article here from Time looking at the key differences and similarities between the USA mid-term elections of 1994 and 2010. A great way to discover more about 1994 and start predicting what might happen for Obama in 2010. What do you think?

Barack Obama - election & race

Make sure you watch the programme aired on Saturday night entitled 'By the people: the election of Barack Obama' - here is the link. It has obviously been edited positively but it is nevertheless a fascinating insight to his election and the election campaign in the USA more generally.

On another Obama note, what do you think about Harry Reid's comments for a book that have resulted in calls for him to step down? Do you think he should resign or have his comments been blown up out of proportion? Here is the Guardian story, here some comments from CNN and look at Mark Mardell's comments in his most recent blog (on the right of the screen).

Polling fun

A fun site here for the weekend - you can put in your own predictions for the General Election or look up target seats or analyse all the most recent polling data. Great for the mock election and election prediction competition coming up!

Election TV Debates

Exciting news over the holidays that Britain is to have live TV debates before the next election. They have had debates in other countries for some time, especially the USA, but what effect they will have here is unknown. What do you think? Are they a boon to democracy or an unnecessary media hype?
See here for the Times article and Sky summary and here for an interesting analysis from Ben Macintyre.
On another election note, here is Gary Gibbon's blog from Sunday about the possibility of a hung parliament.

Street Fight

A clip below from an award-winning documentary about the mayoral election in Newark in 2002 in the USA that symbolises old v new in black politics. The 'new', Cory Brooker, is now Mayor and is making a splash nationally whereas the 'old', Sharpe James, has just been sentenced to two years in prison for corruption.

The European Parliament Elections 2009

A huge amount of comment so have just picked out a few things... There is a fantastic interactive map on Channel 4 of the results here and here a comment by Peter Riddell from the Times how Gordon Brown is going to try to revive his premiership - we shall see!

Elections June 2009

All you ever wanted to know about the European and local elections coming up. See here.