Tag: voting trends

One must be careful when invoking comparative politics.  If politics is indeed local, nothing could be a greater challenge than making sweeping generalities between different countries without understanding the full context.  Having said this, I have followed the recent UK General Election campaign with much attention and interest over the course of the past few weeks.  Those who follow politics to any degree often look for emerging trends which might promise some early clue to predict the future.  Much of what enraged and inspired Britons to turn out in relatively large numbers (provided they were able to vote at all), are the very same issues driving an anti-incumbent maelstrom, the results of which on our shores we will not fully understand until early November.  

For all the recent flurry of speculation and analysis regarding the Democratic Party’s shockingly sudden decline in power, one particular metric has never been adequately explored.  Though it is certainly demoralizing that in merely twelve months a feel-good sugar high of optimism has given way to despair, airing our grievances should quickly give way to building strategies for the times going forward.  We have learned quickly that party identification can never be taken for granted and that the American people want results, not gridlock.  2008 was seen by many (and indeed, me, for a time) as a realigning election along the same lines as 1980, but it seems that Obama’s coattails are really only his for the riding and that personal charisma and stirring rhetoric are subordinate to results in the grand scheme of things.