Read more: Hillary Clinton—one-term wonder?
The BBC has Sports Personality of the Year; Time Magazine has Person of the Year; the Economist has country of the year. This blog, not wishing to be left behind, offers you number of the year. And even though we are only in April, the number of the year is clear. It is 55. To be more precise, it is 55 per cent.
As things stand, by the end of this year, Hillary Clinton will be President-elect and the United Kingdom will have confirmed its membership of the European Union. However, in both cases, a narrow vote will satisfy neither of the victors. For a real, lasting and effective triumph, both Clinton and the EU "Remain" campaign need to secure 55 per cent support.
Let’s consider the US first. For six of his eight years as President, Barack Obama has had to contend with a hostile Congress, with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives determined to thwart his reform agenda. In part this is because Obama had two terrible mid-term elections in 2010 and 2014. (In these, seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate were contested, along with 38 Governorships, though the Presidency was not. Members of Congress face elections every two years). But in 2012, the year in which Obama enjoyed a reasonably comfortable victory over Mitt Romney, the same voters elected 234 Republicans to Congress, and only 201 Democrats.
The contrast between a Democrat president and a Republican Congress is partly down to split voting: people liking their local Republican member of Congress, but preferring Obama in the White House. But that is only part of the story. Across the US, 1.4 million more people voted Democrat rather than Republican in the 2012 Congressional elections. The Republicans retained control of Congress not because of their national popularity, but because of the power they enjoyed in a large majority of states to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage.
Decisions about congressional boundaries have always been political (as distinct from the independent system we have in the UK). Over the decades both Democrats and Republicans have used their power at state level to achieve the greatest advantage. It’s not the cynical politics of this process that is new, but the explosion of local data and the power of modern computers to analyse it. This enables whichever party is in control in any given state to draw the weirdest shapes to ensure the biggest possible advantage. In the UK the Boundaries Commission is required to take account of local community life, and not to drive new boundaries through natural communities without good reason. No such sensitivities apply in the US.
The result is a huge bonus to the Republicans. The result of the Congressional elections in 2004—the year of George W Bush’s re-election—was virtually the same in seats as 2012: Republicans 232, Democrats 202. But in 2004 the Republicans secured three million more votes than the Democrats. Eight years later, the Republicans won two more seats, despite slipping clearly behind the Democrats in votes.
If Clinton is not only to win the White House but to have a good chance of getting reform-minded bills onto the statute book, she needs her party to regain Congress. And, because of the big bias in the way votes translate into seats, she needs Democrats to defeat Republicans nationally by 55-45 per cent. Which is one reason she must be hoping that Donald Trump is the Republican candidate.
If Trump fails to secure the nomination and the Republicans decide, in a contested convention, to choose Ted Cruz, Clinton is still likely to win the White House. But such is Trump’s unpopularity that he would be likely to drag down the overall Republican vote, and so give Clinton a bigger chance of having a Democratic majority in Congress.
Now to the UK and the coming referendum. As I reported in my analysis for the April isue of Prospect, a close result would display a specific regional pattern, with London, Scotland, wales and Northern Ireland all voting to remain in the EU, and provincial England voting for Brexit.
This means that a narrow victory for "Remain" would mean that “real” England, the England of the shires, industrial heartlands, seaside resorts, market towns and village greens, would (as its people might put it) be thwarted by a combination of London, which is a global city whose outlook is increasingly divorced from the rest of the country, and the Celts, who never really liked the English anyway. The consequences might not be as dramatic as a narrow Brexit victory that prompts the Scots to hold another referendum on independence, but it could put British politics in general, and the Conservative party in particular, under great strain.
To avoid this, provincial England needs to vote "Remain" overall, however narrowly. I reckon that this requires a 55 per cent vote across the UK as a whole to stay in the EU. This should be Cameron’s real target.
After last week’s dramas—the Treasury’s warnings of the damage Brexit would do to the economy, Obama’s visit and Boris Johnson’s ill-judged remarks—let us see what this week brings. This coming Friday would be a good occasion to take stock. The referendum will then be 55 days away.
Now read: Nicholas Soames—there's no such thing as "Project Fear"
The BBC has Sports Personality of the Year; Time Magazine has Person of the Year; the Economist has country of the year. This blog, not wishing to be left behind, offers you number of the year. And even though we are only in April, the number of the year is clear. It is 55. To be more precise, it is 55 per cent.
As things stand, by the end of this year, Hillary Clinton will be President-elect and the United Kingdom will have confirmed its membership of the European Union. However, in both cases, a narrow vote will satisfy neither of the victors. For a real, lasting and effective triumph, both Clinton and the EU "Remain" campaign need to secure 55 per cent support.
Let’s consider the US first. For six of his eight years as President, Barack Obama has had to contend with a hostile Congress, with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives determined to thwart his reform agenda. In part this is because Obama had two terrible mid-term elections in 2010 and 2014. (In these, seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate were contested, along with 38 Governorships, though the Presidency was not. Members of Congress face elections every two years). But in 2012, the year in which Obama enjoyed a reasonably comfortable victory over Mitt Romney, the same voters elected 234 Republicans to Congress, and only 201 Democrats.
The contrast between a Democrat president and a Republican Congress is partly down to split voting: people liking their local Republican member of Congress, but preferring Obama in the White House. But that is only part of the story. Across the US, 1.4 million more people voted Democrat rather than Republican in the 2012 Congressional elections. The Republicans retained control of Congress not because of their national popularity, but because of the power they enjoyed in a large majority of states to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage.
Decisions about congressional boundaries have always been political (as distinct from the independent system we have in the UK). Over the decades both Democrats and Republicans have used their power at state level to achieve the greatest advantage. It’s not the cynical politics of this process that is new, but the explosion of local data and the power of modern computers to analyse it. This enables whichever party is in control in any given state to draw the weirdest shapes to ensure the biggest possible advantage. In the UK the Boundaries Commission is required to take account of local community life, and not to drive new boundaries through natural communities without good reason. No such sensitivities apply in the US.
The result is a huge bonus to the Republicans. The result of the Congressional elections in 2004—the year of George W Bush’s re-election—was virtually the same in seats as 2012: Republicans 232, Democrats 202. But in 2004 the Republicans secured three million more votes than the Democrats. Eight years later, the Republicans won two more seats, despite slipping clearly behind the Democrats in votes.
If Clinton is not only to win the White House but to have a good chance of getting reform-minded bills onto the statute book, she needs her party to regain Congress. And, because of the big bias in the way votes translate into seats, she needs Democrats to defeat Republicans nationally by 55-45 per cent. Which is one reason she must be hoping that Donald Trump is the Republican candidate.
If Trump fails to secure the nomination and the Republicans decide, in a contested convention, to choose Ted Cruz, Clinton is still likely to win the White House. But such is Trump’s unpopularity that he would be likely to drag down the overall Republican vote, and so give Clinton a bigger chance of having a Democratic majority in Congress.
Now to the UK and the coming referendum. As I reported in my analysis for the April isue of Prospect, a close result would display a specific regional pattern, with London, Scotland, wales and Northern Ireland all voting to remain in the EU, and provincial England voting for Brexit.
This means that a narrow victory for "Remain" would mean that “real” England, the England of the shires, industrial heartlands, seaside resorts, market towns and village greens, would (as its people might put it) be thwarted by a combination of London, which is a global city whose outlook is increasingly divorced from the rest of the country, and the Celts, who never really liked the English anyway. The consequences might not be as dramatic as a narrow Brexit victory that prompts the Scots to hold another referendum on independence, but it could put British politics in general, and the Conservative party in particular, under great strain.
To avoid this, provincial England needs to vote "Remain" overall, however narrowly. I reckon that this requires a 55 per cent vote across the UK as a whole to stay in the EU. This should be Cameron’s real target.
After last week’s dramas—the Treasury’s warnings of the damage Brexit would do to the economy, Obama’s visit and Boris Johnson’s ill-judged remarks—let us see what this week brings. This coming Friday would be a good occasion to take stock. The referendum will then be 55 days away.
Now read: Nicholas Soames—there's no such thing as "Project Fear"
