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"Tensions continue to rise in Canada after the most recent election ended in yet another landslide for the NDP. Having ruled since winning the independence struggle in 1961, the hegemonic New Democrats have maintained their rule with methods described as autocratic by some observers, but remain popular among the anglophone public and have brought enough economic development to prevent the nightmare scenario of a civil conflict in the Francophone Eastern regions. The rising opposition leader, Maxime Bernier, has called the results a sham despite his own gain of seats, and proclaimed that he will continue to fight for political liberty..."
I was curious about what OTL's most recent election in the UK, where Labour won a massive majority on a third of the vote, would have looked like under what is called "alternative vote" over there. I used the poll results here to base the preferences, mostly using each parties' second choices since I don't hate myself enough to try and back-engineer the preference flows for every single permutation.
For the pro-Palestinian independents and Workers' Party people, if they were still in the running, I basically just gave them the combined preferences of parties that had already been eliminated. If they were eliminated, I basically just split them evenly among the remaining candidates. Same with other independents & local parties.
For Northern Ireland, I was lazy and had all the republican and unionist parties/candidates combine their vote-shares, with the largest party of whichever group had a majority (or at least a plurality) getting the seat. The only change was in Lagan Valley, where the Alliance IOTL won thanks to the unionist vote being split three ways between the DUP, UUP & TUV.
Yes, Labour's landslide would get even larger under AV. They're the Condorcet winner, after all, although the Liberal Democrats essentially tie them for the most gains compared to their OTL total, mostly thanks to them being the beneficiary of the anti-Tory preference flows a lot of seats.
That the Conservatives come within an eyelash of falling to double-digit seats without the spoiler effect is pretty remarkable.
I basically winged the seat totals for AV!2019 by comparing projections for 2017 under AV and 2017 under STV (single transferrable vote) in this Electoral Reform Society report and then applying the same ratio of seats ERS projected that party would win under AV to what they projected they would win under STV to their projection of 2019 under STV.
The note on the TPP (two-party preferred) in the box is basically just an explanation of that it's only the TPP for Great Britain, not including Northern Ireland.
Alliance Lagan Valley (DUP)
Conservative Beaconsfield (Lib Dem) Broadland and Fakenham (Lab)
Bromley and Biggin Hill (Lab) Central Devon (Lib Dem) Chingford and Woodford Green (Ind) Croydon South (Lab)
Dumfries and Galloway (Lab)
East Grinstead and Uckfield (Lab) East Hampshire (Lib Dem)
Exmouth and Exeter East (Lib Dem)
Farnham and Bordon (Lib Dem)
Godalming and Ash (Lib Dem)
Hamble Valley (Lib Dem)
Havant (Lib Dem)
Hinckley and Bosworth (Lib Dem) Huntingdon (Lab)
Leicester East (Lab) Mid Buckinghamshire (Lib Dem)
North Cotswalds (Lib Dem)
North Dorset (Lib Dem) Reigate (Lab)
Salisbury (Lab) South Shropshire (Lib Dem)
South West Hertfordshire (Lib Dem) Spelthorne (Lab)
Tatton (Lab)
The Wrekin (Lab)
Windsor (Lab)
Independent Birmingham Perry Barr (Lab)
Blackburn (Lab)
Leicester South (Lab)
Labour Bradford West (Ind) Cannock Chase (Con)
Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Con)
South West Norfolk (Con)
Stoke-on-Trent South (Con)
Tamworth (Con)
Plaid Cymru Caerfyrddin (Lab)
Reform Boston and Skegness (Con)
SNP Aberdeen North (Lab)
Aberdeen South (Lab) Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Con) Arbroath and Brought Ferry (Lab)
Dundee Central (Lab)
As the lead-up to a potential "WI Biden stayed in" 2024 infobox, I thought I might as well get the juices flowing by revisiting the one Trump-era presidential cycle where nothing exciting happened and the Democratic Party primaries didn't cause massive teeth-gnashing or complaining about other candidates' supporters: 2020. Specifically, I wanted to see what a Sanders/Trump match-up would look like using real-life data taken from the point where it really became a Sanders/Biden contest for the Democratic nomination.
To head off the inevitable complaints about the poll being taken right after the Sanders campaign's OTL high-water mark: this poll was just the one I could find on this page that was taken closest to that date that included the white college-educated/non-college educated split that I needed for the calculator.
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IRL 2020, Biden won a clear majority in the popular vote, but only won the Electoral College due to around 43,000 votes (or 0.03% of the total votes cast) in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania going his way. That leaves precious little room for error, and unfortunately, Sanders performs slightly worse than Biden (by literally like one percentage-point apiece) among all the demographic groups the calculator uses. But it's enough for the resulting map to be a repeat of 2016.
In a darkly humorous turn, the popular vote margin is a rough inverse of OTL 2024, with Sanders becoming the second Democrat in a row to win the popular vote but losing the election (which would also make Trump the only two-term president to lose the popular vote twice). The only change from 2016's map (minus the faithless electors in 2016) is Nebraska's 2nd district, which Sanders flips to the Democrats. The map is also the same as OTL 2024 in terms of which party won which state, except that the Democrats win Nevada.
Who knows what takeaway there would be from this result, especially given how the 2016 and TTL!2020 map would be almost identical and how much wild shit a second consecutive Trump term would be. Trump ITTL would also be the fourth president in a row to be re-elected, which would probably factor in to post-election discussions/recriminations.
I had always imagined (more for 2016 than 2020) that Trump would have won Nevada and Virginia but Sanders would have more of a chance than Clinton did in the rustbelt.
I had always imagined (more for 2016 than 2020) that Trump would have won Nevada and Virginia but Sanders would have more of a chance than Clinton did in the rustbelt.
As the lead-up to a potential "WI Biden stayed in" 2024 infobox, I thought I might as well get the juices flowing by revisiting the one Trump-era presidential cycle where nothing exciting happened and the Democratic Party primaries didn't cause massive teeth-gnashing or complaining about other candidates' supporters: 2020. Specifically, I wanted to see what a Sanders/Trump match-up would look like using real-life data taken from the point where it really became a Sanders/Biden contest for the Democratic nomination.
To head off the inevitable complaints about the poll being taken right after the Sanders campaign's OTL high-water mark: this poll was just the one I could find on this page that was taken closest to that date that included the white college-educated/non-college educated split that I needed for the calculator.
----------------
----------------
IRL 2020, Biden won a clear majority in the popular vote, but only won the Electoral College due to around 43,000 votes (or 0.03% of the total votes cast) in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania going his way. That leaves precious little room for error, and unfortunately, Sanders performs slightly worse than Biden (by literally like one percentage-point apiece) among all the demographic groups the calculator uses. But it's enough for the resulting map to be a repeat of 2016.
In a darkly humorous turn, the popular vote margin is a rough inverse of OTL 2024, with Sanders becoming the second Democrat in a row to win the popular vote but losing the election (which would also make Trump the only two-term president to lose the popular vote twice). The only change from 2016's map (minus the faithless electors in 2016) is Nebraska's 2nd district, which Sanders flips to the Democrats. The map is also the same as OTL 2024 in terms of which party won which state, except that the Democrats win Nevada.
Who knows what takeaway there would be from this result, especially given how the 2016 and TTL!2020 map would be almost identical and how much wild shit a second consecutive Trump term would be. Trump ITTL would also be the fourth president in a row to be re-elected, which would probably factor in to post-election discussions/recriminations.
Yes, obviously we can't assume poll numbers taken months before the general election will change in the exact same way as they did IRL.
However, since everything else is essentially just a guess, I've opted to use the RL polling pattern shifts and not just do whatever I think would happen demographically had Sanders been able to triumph on Super Tuesday and clinch the nomination to face Trump.
The box that was promised: what if Joe Biden remained in the 2024 presidential race instead of dropping out?
Similar to the Bernie infobox above, the methodology was the same used here, with this poll (taken just before Biden dropped out & that has crosstabs with Harris to contrast) as the baseline and the Cook Political Report's 2024 Swingometer.
Unlike the previous boxes, I decided to check how much of a swing-state effect the alternate VP choice (Harris instead of Walz) would have had in the OTL VP nominee's home state (since MN could conceivably flip) using the formula laid out in this paper.
Not surprising that Harris turns out to have been a better candidate than Biden, even if she still lost. The increased popular vote margin for Trump means, assuming the relationship between the top of the ticket and OTL Senate candidates remains the same ITTL, the Republicans pick up three additional Senate seats (Michigan, Nevada & Wisconsin) and likely several more House seats.
Harris' selection of Walz, according to the "home state effect" formula in the paper above, apparently saved Minnesota from going red for the first time since 1972 (if Harris had a similar margin of defeat in the national popular vote, but didn't have Walz as VP, she would have lost Minnesota to Trump by a similar margin as she did Wisconsin). Which means, in a scenario where Harris remains the VP nominee (and Biden does worse in the popular vote), Trump picks up Minnesota's electoral votes.
New Hampshire is the only other state to flip from OTL, which surprised me until I remembered that Harris lost almost all of the swing states already.
To be honest, wasn't as bad as I was expecting; I've heard reports of the Biden admin's internal polling reportedly having Virginia and New Jersey flip red too.
To be honest, wasn't as bad as I was expecting; I've heard reports of the Biden admin's internal polling reportedly having Virginia and New Jersey flip red too.
I've seen that too, but I've never seen actual campaign internals showing that. The most I can trace it back to is one of the Pod Save America guys asserting (after Harris lost) that that's what the Biden campaign's internal polling said.
