Anyone understand why Johnson is so far ahead in the polls?

The public only considers the here and now and forgets the foul ups of Brexit, the start of the Pandemic and the general character of the man. He's only been saved by the vaccine roll out.

Chips chips, doo be doo be doo.... ???

Or, that there were more uneducated people in the first place.

*Uneducated - your word, not mine.

Hmmm, since on GN, posters post facts showing that mainly the uneducated voted for Brexit, that would imply that the educated sat on their educated rear-ends and didn’t vote. So is it the educated young we need to hold responsible?
Which group sat there and didn’t vote yesterday, I wonder.

What so many seem to be saying is that people still identify more strongly as Leavers or Remainers rather than party supporters.

Proof if any were needed of the damage that the whole brexit project has done to this country.

MayBee70 While you and he might well be correct, he was still the wrong choice of candidate for Hartlepool. Bringing him in as a candidate was a big mistake on the part of Keir Starmer, he does seem to have a lack of political nous, or is being badly advised.

Perhaps the candidate was a remainer because he could see what a disaster brexit would be for fishing communities and cared deeply for them.

Alegrias1.
Oh I remember that stuff about averages and accuracy well. Starting with mean median and mode, and the average of the averages to be averaged!
The turn out in Hartlepool could have been higher.
Which group of voters didn’t turn out? The young or the old? The uneducated half or the educated half? Labour voters or Conservative voters?
Why was a strong remain candidate chosen for a seat where voters were massively pro leave?
I am disappointed that more voters for my party didn’t turn out. It could have changed the result.

GrannyGravy13

I heard this morning that for the first time ever Hartlepool home owners outnumber the renters, maybe this combined with the overwhelming vote for Brexit in the region and the Labour candidate being extremely pro-EU (what were Labour thinking ?) hence the large Conservative Majority (nearly 7,000)

Yes, that is probably one reason. It also has an elderly population. Teesside also has a Conservative mayor, who is seen as a "do-er" and seems popular.

BTW John Harris of the Guardian did a video last week (?), in which he interviewed a number of people in Hartlepool. I think he probably teased out some of the reasons people have rejected Labour. You can probably Google the video or find it on YouTube.

I heard this morning that for the first time ever Hartlepool home owners outnumber the renters, maybe this combined with the overwhelming vote for Brexit in the region and the Labour candidate being extremely pro-EU (what were Labour thinking ?) hence the large Conservative Majority (nearly 7,000)

MOnica Apart from the fact that there is no such as a unified electorate, what do you think people want?

Alegrias It's the victory of the chips. It hasn't been about sound politics for years, but a quite deliberate culture war.

They were asking people on the news last night. Actual real Hartlepool people. I can't remember what the person voting Tory said, sorry. But the lady voting Labour said that she couldn't believe that people in such a deprived part of the country were voting Tory, given what they stand for.

And the IQ thing on here....so many chips on so many shoulders. Half of people are below average intelligence. That's how averages work. Distribution is a statistical term, not an insult. No assumptions, no insults.

(Anecdote - I remember at work having to explain to several highly educated people that the average of sums wasn't the same as the sum of averages.)

In answer to the OP - populism.

I've decided it is what might be termed the paper clips and rubber bands standard. Most people now accept that a certain amount of minor pilfering of things like paper clips is just a part of office working. They then extend this to bigger jobs and bigger pilfering, until you reach the top where the chances are endless. So Boris is just an ordinary bloke pinching paper clips

Wouldn't the best idea be to stop positing for ourselves as to why people vote one way or another and go out and ask them.

In all the puffery on the radio about why Labour lost Hartlepool, I did not hear anyone asking the people of Hartlepool why they voted the way they did. It was just one pundit after another, one Labour geriatric after another.

The Conservatives are doing what the electorate want. Labour aren't. It is that simple, now go out and talk to them, show them respect and find out what they do want and develop non-ideological policies to do this.

The amount of intellectual arrogance on this thread is astounding. The things being said about 'ordinary' people, The disgusting discussion about IQs and their distribution,with all its undercurrents of the electorate in Hartlepool and other such constituencies voting the way they do because they are so stupid. Posters on this thread obviously assume they are in the clever half, perhaps they need to rethink this.

growstuff

GrannyRose15

growstuff

Not off the top of my head, but I can't think of one which was quite so mired in corruption and sleaze.

I think that might be your perception and the result of 24 hour news and social media rather than being factual so.

I disagree. I hardly ever watch TV news and send little time reading main stream sources. I have, however, spent years having an interest in post war governments and politics.

Hang on. When I say that I think brexit was due to people believing things they read and heard on the media that weren’t true aren’t I am accused of implying brexit voters were stupid? I’m a bit confused here. Are this government really sleaze and lies free: even the ones that have been proven?

I think that I understand nothing already

Yes, of course

Callistemon

^Half are above average and half are below.^

It's a long time since I was at primary school but I'm sure we learnt that then

And it means nothing when it comes to political views

Purely a statistical observation Call

Thanks Alegrias. Explains a lot.

I meant to put ?

Half are above average and half are below.

It's a long time since I was at primary school but I'm sure we learnt that then

And it means nothing when it comes to political views

growstuff

GrannyRose15

vegansrock

What % of the electorate is below average intelligence?

16%
68% are average
16% are above average

By definition.

Well, not quite.

68% are within a few points of average and assessment errors mean that it's more practical to group them all together, using a standard bell curve. If you've read my comments on grammar schools, I made the same point that the vast majority of people are in fact very near average.

Mathematically, half of people have below average intelligence.

I know we've moved on in the conversation but this is bugging me.

In a Normal Distribution 68% are within one standard deviation of the mean. That doesn't mean they are average. Half are above average and half are below.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest....

growstuff

Not off the top of my head, but I can't think of one which was quite so mired in corruption and sleaze.

The problem seems to be that most, but not all of it comes from the man at the top. The culture of organisations is overwhelmingly set by the person at the top of them so it begs the question about the actual culture through the organisation. We are not likely to find this out while they are in power unless they have so much power nothing is hidden.