Lots of photos of big queues outside polling stations suggesting either high turn-out or piss-poor organisation. You pays your money and you makes your choice. Anyone's guess if turnout is really up and who that actually benefits.
I live opposite my local polling station, no queues but a constant trickle of voters. Only one person inside marking off names so there was about a minute's worth of hanging around inside waiting to get see to.
GeenDienst wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2019 10:23 am
This is the only explanation I can think of why Corbyn called this election when way behind in the polls, reportedly over the objections of his shadow cabinet, and when the Johnson government was trapped and floundering.
Conversely, when the government is trapped and floundering is exactly the right point to call an election.
Similarly with the end of October deadline looming Labour had a get-out in avoiding an early election to prevent an "accidental" No Deal Brexit by default but once that got shifted to January 2020, with just enough time for a Xmas election to attempt to bring some Parliamentary clarity, they no longer had that reason and risked looking frit.
You also have to remember all the polling at the time suggested Johnson failing to die in a ditch on the 31st October would result in a Conservative polling meltdown, to the benefit of the BP, with Labour then sneaking through the middle. What we had instead was an electoral Heisenberg Event with everyone adjusting their behaviours accordingly, so Johnson's went harder on the "Get Brexit Done" line than he might have done, Farage made his miscalculation which saw the BP apparently evaporate and Swinson et al. went down an informal Remain Alliance route to the apparent benefit of Corbyn. It is still to be seen how all those adjustments ultimately hold-up and unknowable what an alternative Corbyn decision would have resulted in.
Ideally I'd have left Johnson swinging in the wind a bit longer with a negative majority, a disgruntled DUP and the economy turning sour; the likelihood is a Spring 2020 election would have been a completely different box of monkeys but I'm not sure that was ever a viable option with the January deadline approaching.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
