The Polling Gap.

[Cactus Jack]

When you see opinion polls before elections in the USA you would be forgiven for thinking the GOP are doing really well.

Joe Biden's approval rating isn't good. Before the 2022 mid-terms and the recent off year elections Republicans had every cause to be very optimistic.

In the UK polling doesn't look great for the Conservatives but there was no reason to suppose the safest Conservative seats in the country would topple with high double digit swings to other parties.

In several countries in Europe, include France, Hungary and Poland, elections that looked to be heading in the direction of right wing populist parties have gone the other way - to varying degrees of surprise.

If this were just in one country it would be easy to dismiss, but it seems to be a more general trend.

So what is causing it?

My guess - and it is just a guess - is that we're seeing a generational change and it has been brought about by Donald Trump and the GOP.

For years it was assumed that although conservatives would talk a good fight they would never actually carry out promises to reverse social advances. There might be some tinkering at the edges, they might make the ability to excercise a right a bit more onerous in an attempt to discourage the uncommitted but rights would never actually be taken away.

Then the 30 year campaign to overturn Rowe v Wade paid off and, whether you agreed with access to abortion or not, there had been a successful backward step in the extension of civil and political rights.

Just as the right wing populists were empowered by 'Trumpism' everyone else now knows they are endangered by it.

Which means that people who didn't really care that much about this or that civil liberties issue or that one to have it guide their vote are now taking notice. There aren't the 'Radical Left', or 'Marxists' that the populists try to attribute the shift in their fortunes to, it's the suburban, the quiet grey men and women of little box land who don't want 'Radical' change, whether progressive or regressive, and are becoming more ready to make their voices heard not on X or Twitter or whatever Elon Musk is calling it this week but in the queue at the supermarket.

[Stooo]

It's a bit more than that.

[Cactus Jack]

It's a bit more than that.

I'm always prepared to be educated.

Proceed.

[Stooo]

Where to start?

The Boomers are dying off and their grandchildren are inheriting what exactly, and do they want more of the same? Taylor Swift has done more to get young people to register to vote than any official campaign and people like Jon Stewart are walking away from compromise with dictators which is where popular people should be rather than running for office.

Make politics boring again.