The latest polling by YouGov shows extreme support for Larry Cat to win leadership bid. Polling shows him with a shocking 38-point lead on the second most popular candidate Rishi Sunak.

Other candidates are closely tied with only points between them however, it's clear Larry has not only popular support but is favoured by remaining Tory support within Parliament.

X

Most Republicans aren’t aware of Trump’s various legal issues

"For example, the [YouGov] poll found that most Americans think a conviction would be a fair outcome from Trump’s criminal trials. Among Republicans and those who say they voted for Trump in 2020, though, most would view such a result as unfair. Makes sense, given that most Republicans say they haven’t even heard of the criminal trials." [color emphasis added]

---Philip Bump, columnist for The Washington Post

Well, this is frightening.

Philip Bump once again does an excellent job of analyzing the data to show us the degree to which many Republicans live in an alternate reality. This is a gift🎁link for those who don't subscribe to The Washington Post and want to read he whole article. Below are some excerpts.

There is an assumption, probably particularly among those who cover the news and those who read it, that Donald Trump’s legal travails are common knowledge. [...] But this is a sort of vanity: Just because it is interesting to us certainly doesn’t mean it is interesting to others. Polling released by CNN on Thursday shows that only a quarter of voters seek out news about the campaign; a third pay little to no attention at all. [...] YouGov presented American adults with eight legal scenarios to judge the extent of the public’s awareness. Two were invented: that Trump faces charges related to emoluments or related to drug trafficking. Happily, less than a quarter of respondents said those legal threats actually existed.* The other six were real. The one that was familiar to the most people was the federal classified-documents case that is moving forward in Florida; 6 in 10 Americans said they were aware of that case. The one that had the least awareness was the civil suit in New York in which a judge determined that he’d fraudulently inflated the value of his assets. Just under 50 percent of Americans knew about that. But the pattern among Republicans is clear. At most, 45 percent of Republicans said they knew about legal issues: specifically, the documents case and his being found liable for assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. Only a quarter knew about the value-inflation suit, and only 4 in 10 knew about the criminal charges in Manhattan related to the hush money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.** [color/emphasis added]

[...] It seems very safe to assume this lack of familiarity derives from disinterest in hearing negative information about Trump — and, probably more importantly, the disinterest of conservative and right-wing media outlets to report on them. In May, The Washington Post looked at the extent to which Fox News covered the documents and Daniels cases relative to other cable-news channels. It did so much less frequently. [emphasis added] [...] For example, the poll found that most Americans think a conviction would be a fair outcome from Trump’s criminal trials. Among Republicans and those who say they voted for Trump in 2020, though, most would view such a result as unfair. Makes sense, given that most Republicans say they haven’t even heard of the criminal trials. [color/emphasis added]

Those results look very much like the results YouGov got when it asked Americans which they viewed as a more important issue for presidential fitness: Trump’s indictments or President Biden’s age. About 4 in 10 respondents chose each option. [emphasis added]

It’s important to point out that the responses from independents mostly matched the overall numbers, which is often the case. That means only about half of independents are aware of Trump’s legal issues — potentially meaning there is a large group of Americans who might suddenly learn the details of what’s been alleged if Trump is convicted of a crime. [color/emphasis added] That is the sort of thing that might have a measurable political effect.

_________________________ *Unfortunately 43% of Democrats and 40% of Biden voters thought that the emoluments charges existed. They certainly should exist, but they don't.]

**More troubling to me is that only 42% of Republicans knew about the charges of conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results, and only 36% of Republicans knew about the charges of attempted obstruction of the 2020 election certification.

There seems to be no stopping the zombie fans of Donald Trump. Rather than seeing the former president’s multiple criminal indictments, including new charges filed in Georgia last week, as a reason not to support his 2024 run, nearly 3 in 4 Trump voters say showing support during his legal fights is a reason to support him.

According to a CBS News/Yougov poll released Sunday, Trump not only holds a commanding lead over the field of his Republican rivals, he now holds his largest lead yet since CBS/YouGov started polling on the 2024 race. Trump has the support of 62% of likely Republican primary voters, while his nearest opponent, Ron DeSantis, trails him with a measly 16%. That’s a 7 point drop in DeSantis support among those voters just since June.

Likely GOP primary voters also weighed in on Trump’s latest indictment, with 77% saying they believe the indictment is politically motivated. Trump and 18 others were charged in Georgia last week with felony crimes related to his attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The poll also questioned likely Republican primary voters about the events of Jan. 6 and Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Among MAGA supporters, 41% said that then-Vice President Mike Pence did “the wrong thing” that day by counting states’ votes (aka not letting Trump subvert democracy). Only 21% said Pence did “the right thing,” while 38% said they were not sure.

Despite Trump’s countless lies, 71% of Trump voters believe he is a source of “true” information, beating even their own friends and family, who ranked second with 63%.

by Ryan Foley | A majority of Americans oppose allowing men who identify as trans to compete on women’s sports teams and disprove of exposing children to drag shows, a new survey has found. The YouGov survey, sponsored by The Economist and conducted from April 8-11, examined the views of 1,500 U.S. adults and asked about a wide variety of public policy matters. One series of...

What Republican Voters Want ...

If I were running for public office today, say president or a member of either chamber of Congress, I think my platform would include some combination of the following: Environment – promote renewable energy sources and work toward ending reliance on fossil fuels; significantly reduce the use of single-use plastics; reward companies for new innovation to help reduce our carbon…

View On WordPress

(Anthony Salvano et al, "CBS News poll on how 2024 GOP presidential primary race could be Donald Trump v. Trump fatigue," CBS News, May 1, 2023.)

per results of the economist/yougov poll conducted on december 2 - 5, 2023, with 206 us citizens ages 18-29:

27% don't think jewish people face much discrimination in america today, and 12% don't think jewish people face any discrimination at all - 39% overall. (compared to 16%-37% in the other age groups.) [in october alone, there was a rise of nearly 400% in antisemitic incidents reported in the united states, compared to the same period in the previous year.]

17% think hate crimes in the united states against jewish people are only a minor problem, with 11% don't think they're a problem at all; 28% overall. (compared to 17%-33% in the other age groups.) 17% are not sure if they're a problem. (compared to 4%-12% in the other age groups.)

regarding the question, "do jews have too much power in america?" - 28% answered with a version of "agree". (compared to 6%-19% in the other age groups.)

regarding the question, "do american jews make a positive contribution to american society?" - only 52% answered with a version of "agree". (compared to 65%-81% in the other age groups.) 13% have answered with a version of "disagree" (compared to 5%-7% in the other age groups).

answering the question of whether it's antisemitic or not to deny that the holocaust happened, 17% think it's not antisemitic (compared to 3%-11% in the other age groups), and 37% are not sure (compared to 12%-28% in the other age groups).

answering the question of "do you agree the holocaust is a myth", 20% have answered with "agree" (compared to 0%-8% in the other age groups), 30% "neither agree not disagree" (compared to 2%-24% in the other age groups). only 51% disagree that the holocaust is a myth (compared to 68%-97% in the other age groups).

regarding the statement, "the holocaust has been exaggerated" - 23% agree (compared to 2%-9% in the other age groups). 26% "neither agree nor disagree" (compared to 6%-25% in the other age groups). only 52% disagree (compared to 66%-92% in the other age groups).

regarding the statement, "israel exploits holocaust victimhood for its own purposes" - 36% agree (compared to 13%-20% in the other age groups), 23% disagree (compared to 35%-60% in the other age groups), 41% are not sure (compared to 27%-45% in the other age groups).

link to the article version, with some infographics.

gen z is significantly more antisemitic than other gens. this antisemitism is still growing. if you ignore it, if you deny it, if you think only nazis/rightwing extremists do it, if you blame the jews for it, if you justify it in any other way - you're part of it.

happy hanukkah, y'all.

Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me FRIDAY NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The Democratic Party Pizzaburger Theory of Electioneering is: half the electorate wants a pizza, the other half wants a burger, so we'll give them all a pizzaburger and make them all equally dissatisfied, thus winning the election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

But no one wants a pizzaburger. The Biden administration's approach of letting the Warren/Sanders wing pick the antitrust enforcers while keeping judicial appointments in the Manchin-Synematic universe is a catastrophe in which progressive Dem regulators (who serve one term) are thwarted by corporatist Dem judges (who serve for life):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

The Democrats – like all parties in two-party systems – are a coalition; in this case, a "progressive" liberal-left coalition with liberals serving as senior partners, steering the party and setting its policies. These corporate dems like to color themselves as "neutral" technocrats with "realistic, apolitical" policies that represent what's best for the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This sets up the left wing of the party as the starry-eyed, unrealistic radicals whose policies are unpopular and will lose elections. But for a decade, grassroots-funded primary challenges have made it possible to test this theory, by putting leftist politicians on the ballot in front of voters, especially in tight races with far-right Republicans (that is, exactly the kinds of races that the corporate wing of the party says we can't afford to take chances on).

The 2022 midterms included enough races to start testing these theories – and, unlike traditional midterms, these races enjoyed high voter turnout, thanks to the unpopularity of GOP positions like abortion bans, book bans and anti-trans laws. Jacobin teamed up with the Center for Working-Class Politics, Yougov and the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU and analyzed those races:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11134429/CWCP-Report-2024.pdf

Their conclusion: candidates from working-class backgrounds who campaigned on economic policies like high-quality jobs, higher minimum wages, a jobs guarantee, ending offshoring and outsourcing, building infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US won with a 50% share of the vote in rural and working-class districts. Dems who didn't lost with a 35% share of the vote:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-18-how-actually-existing-democrats-run-for-office/

In other words, in the kinds of districts where Trumpist politicians are beating Democrats, running on "left populist" policies beats Trumpist politicians.

That's the good news: if Dems recruit leftist, working class politicians and put them up for office on policies that address the material reality of voters' lives, they can beat fascist GOP candidates.

Now for the bad news: the Democratic establishment has no interest in getting these candidates onto the ballot. Working-class candidates, by definition, lack the networks of deep-pocketed cronies who can fund their primary campaigns. Only 2.3% of Dem candidates come from blue-collar backgrounds (if you include "pink-collar" professions like nursing and teaching, the number goes up to 5.9%):

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-populists-working-class-voters

All of this confirms the findings of Trump's Kryoptonite, an earlier Jacobin/CWCP research project that polled working-class voters on preferences for hypothetical candidates, finding that working-class candidates with economically progressive policies handily beat out Republicans, including MAGA Republicans:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/08125102/TrumpsKryptonite_Final_June2023.pdf

Since the Clinton-Blair years, "progressives" have abandoned economic populism ("It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money" -T. Blair) and pursued a "third way" that seeks to replace half the world's of supply white, male oligarchs with diverse oligarchs from a variety of backgrounds and genders. We were told that this was done in the name of winning elections with "modern" policies that replaced old-fashioned ideas about decent pay, decent jobs, and worker power.

These policies have delivered a genocide-riven world on the brink of several kinds of existential catastrophe. They're a failure. The pizzaburger party didn't deliver safety, nor prosperity – and it also can't deliver elections.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/#bread-and-butter

I've been thinking about potential pick-up of Our Flag Means Death by another streamer, and how it all might be tying in with the current BBC release, and I have some thoughts about what might be happening and what we can do to give the show the best chance of being picked up.

I think it's important to start by saying that all the whisperings that I heard over the past few months (including from some people who work at/with the BBC) pointed firmly towards a scheduled March release for Our Flag Means Death on the BBC. Needless to say, this means I was extremely surprised when they suddenly announced it was dropping at the beginning of February. I think it's also clear from everything I've seen that the BBC's marketing/social media plan for the release was not ready for February (there was no trailer, which was odd), which, again, really supports the idea that the show was initially schedule for a March release, not a February release.

I firmly believe the release was brought forward. The question is: why? Is it because they saw how much noise and press the show (and our campaign) was getting, and decided to try and capitalise on it? Or is there something else going on?

On top of that, we now have specific questions about Our Flag Means Death appearing on YouGov UK, including asking whether respondents would watch another series. This doesn't just happen. The charity I work for has commissioned YouGov polling (including some very recently) which I have been tangentially involved with, and so I know that this sort of polling is not easy work, and it's not cheap. Someone has put time AND money into commissioning this polling. This is significant. Someone is not only watching, but they are specifically watching the UK response to the show, and putting questions to the UK audience about it.

I have strong suspicions that a streamer (or several streamers) are interested in picking up the show, and are using the UK release as a live case study (Apple, Amazon and Netflix also have a presence in the UK, so we are a big target audience for them in a way we never were for Max). This could account for both the potential bringing forward of the BBC release (they didn't want to wait until March), and the YouGov polling that's going on (bear in mind, the YouGov questions were specifically as part of a wider survey about streaming services).

And this isn't just a passing interest: working with the BBC to bring forward the release, and investing time and money into YouGov polling? That's a strong interest. That's so interested they've already invested something into it.

Of course, I don't know anything for certain, so take everything with a pinch of salt (it's just a theory...a gay pirates theory...), but I think it's something to consider as a strong possibility.

So what does this mean for us?

It means we need to keep streaming on iPlayer. Watch it as many times as you can. Share it with your friends and family. If you're outside the UK, get yourself a VPN and join the party. Watch the live broadcasts on Monday nights (if you have iPlayer, you can stream the live broadcast - this is what I do because I don't have a TV). Keep tweeting about it (add the #OurFlagBBC hashtag to the existing hashtags we're using). Tag and email the UK media (including TV guides and radio shows) and ask them to talk about the show/our campaign. If you're tagging/emailing Apple, Amazon or Netflix, make sure you mention you're from the UK (and tag their UK specific social media accounts).

According to Parrot Analytics, the demand in the UK for the show is rising - let's keep adding to that!

You can also sign up to YouGov and rate the show (more instructions in the quote retweets of the tweet I linked to earlier), and keep answering questions about TV shows and streaming (and marking Our Flag Means Death as one of your interests) as a way to try and get them to give you the specific questions about the show (these start as a question about streaming and streaming services, which then turn into questions about OFMD, so if you get a survey like that, take it!).

It's also worth considering that if there's any validity to this, then there's a possibility that they might be waiting until after the show has finished airing in the UK (the finale is airing on 25th March) to crunch all the numbers together. This means that if we don't hear anything in the next few weeks, do not despair! We need to buckle in for a long fight, and to keep pushing the show and making noise over the next few weeks and months, especially around the BBC release.

This show is worth the fight. Let's get our damned men back!

According to the Economist/YouGov poll, roughly equal numbers of adults believe Israel’s military campaign against Palestinians, which is estimated to have killed more than 25,000 people since 7 October, amounts to genocide: 35% say it is, 36% say it isn’t, with 29% undecided. Among younger Americans, and along political lines, divisions are more prominent. Almost half of those surveyed aged 18-29, 49%, say Israel is committing genocide, with 24% disagreeing and 27% uncertain.

The figures are broadly similar for registered Democrats, who believe 49%-21% in the genocide characterization, while 30% are undecided. Republicans are far more supportive of Israel’s actions, with 57% of respondents saying there is no genocide, only 18% saying there is, and exactly one-quarter unsure.

Nearly two-thirds — 62% — of Americans in a new poll said that former President Trump should not be allowed to serve as President again if he is convicted of a “serious” crime.

The Yahoo News-YouGov poll found that a slightly smaller majority — 52% — said they believe that Trump has committed a serious crime at some point in his life.

The former president is facing a litany of investigations, including the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into an alleged hush money payment he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election and the Justice Department’s dual investigations into his handling of classified documents and role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Just over half — 52% — also said that they considered falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star to be a serious crime. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan criminal probe in early April. He pleaded not guilty.

Some 66% also said that conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election was a serious crime, while 63% and 64% each said the same of attempting to obstruct the certification of the election and of inciting or aiding an insurrection against the federal government.

Further, 63% said they considered taking highly classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them to be a serious crime.

Trump’s lawyers were spotted meeting with federal prosecutors on the classified documents case Monday, after CNN reported last week that the prosecution had obtained a recording of the former president discussing a classified document that remained in his possession in July 2021.

He reportedly appeared to acknowledge that the document was still classified on the recording, telling two authors that he couldn’t show them the document because they lacked security clearances.

However, despite his legal woes, a large portion Americans in the poll said that the various investigations into Trump don’t affect their opinion of the former president. Among respondents, 43% said they have the same opinion of him as before, while 34% said they feel more negative about Trump and 13% said they feel more positive.

Trump remains the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination amid a growing field of opponents. He sits more than 30 points ahead of his closest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a recent polling average from FiveThirtyEight.

The Yahoo News poll was conducted May 25-30 with 1,520 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

A majority of voters in Britain back a ban on arms sales to Israel, according to a YouGov poll. One of the first up-to-date assessments of whether Israel is losing public support in key allied states, the research also suggests most people believe the Israeli government is violating human rights in Gaza. The loss of public support in the UK will alarm Israel, which has always relied on strong UK backing. The poll was commissioned by Action for Humanity and conducted before seven aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike, an event for which Israel has apologised but not yet provided an explanation. The poll shows that among all voters in the UK a majority of 56% to 17% are in favour of a ban on the export of arms and spare parts. By a majority of 59% to 12% voters say Israel is violating human rights in Gaza. There has been very little British polling of public opinion on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, unlike in the US. The findings suggest that strenuous Israeli efforts at public diplomacy have failed to convince the British public.

So, about 5 days back YouGov released poll results for a very comprehensive public opinion poll they did for the US, which you can see here: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_tT4jyzG.pdf The poll itself asks about a lot of different topics, but the section I wanna focus on here is the section between pages 96 to 112, which focuses on Antisemitism and Israel. Most polls with questions like these tended to only survey around 100~200 people, and had really depressing results, so I was really hoping going into this study that we'd see some more cheerful statistics. Maybe those small sample sizes caused some bias, I dunno. Maybe the numbers were off.

I kept being disappointed by how many people denied the holocaust in those studies. I didn't want to believe those numbers were real, quite frankly.

Well.

Of a poll of 1500 people, give or take, 7% say the holocaust is a myth, with another 16% saying they "don't know" whether it is or isn't, with people in the 18-29 age group having even more alarming numbers than that: 20% think the holocaust is a myth, and 30% that they don't know. Conversely, in the 65+ age group, not a single responder denies the holocaust.

If you take this poll as being representative, then out of 331.9 million people living in the US, that gives us about 23.2 million people (rounded down) in the US alone who think the holocaust did not happen.

For reference, there are only 16.2 million jews in the entire world, with 7.1~ million of them in Israel.

Turns out the numbers I saw previously were representative.

Fuck, dude.

do you think there's a considerable amount of (young) people refusing to vote for biden because of i/p, or do you think theyre just a loud minority? i cant really tell, myself

I have been keeping a fairly close eye on polls (at least the good high-quality large-sample ones, not the numerous trash ones which currently flood the sphere), actual voting results, and other empirical data that relies on non-social-media blathering. And while we will still need more data and see if anything changes, at this point I think we can presume that any electoral effect of the I/P situation is already baked into Biden's expected results and performances, and I honestly don't think there's much, if any, of a measurable effect.

I say this because first of all, one of the most recent high-quality, large-sample youth polls (I think it was YouGov, but I can't be sure) had precisely 0% of voters between 18-29 listing foreign policy as their top priority in 2024. There were other expected priorities: the environment, the economy, American democracy, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, etc -- but not foreign policy. Now, caveat emptor about this being only the people who respond to polls, the fact that most polls have been largely junk this primary cycle (notably, they have way overestimated Trump's performance and way underestimated Biden's), and so forth. However, even in libertarian New Hampshire, which tends to wander more than the other solidly-blue presidential election New England states (as a number of them still have Republican governors), "ceasefire" only garnered 1% of all write-in votes, and Biden won commandingly despite not being on the ballot. In South Carolina, he just won 97% statewide, and even the Democrats who skipped the primary due to it not being particularly interesting or competitive (as compared to the highly competitive open primary in 2020) still generally say that they plan to vote for Biden in November. So overall, Biden is doing even better at this point in the primary cycle than he was in 2020, where Sanders' early wins in Iowa and NH were generating chatter about an upset. Once again, this is early and we are working with a limited sample size, but despite everything, I think we can posit that the "Democrats/Black people/Hispanics/young people won't vote for Biden because of xyz issue and therefore We Are All Doomed" thesis is at best, considerably overinflated and at worst, totally untrue.

Likewise, to be blunt: the loudest voices shouting about how they will never vote for Biden because of the Gaza situation either don't vote at all, only voted once in 2020 under extreme duress and haven't voted since, and otherwise aren't being taken into account either in polls (which are bad data because they are by nature experimental and speculative) or actual voting results (which reflect the way real people actually voted in elections). The reason the YouGov sample might not have pulled any voters between 18-29 listing foreign policy as their top priority very well could be because these people flat out don't vote and therefore won't pass any "likely" or "registered" voter screens, so despite all their yelling on social media, there's not been any actual impact. Now, this is not to say that there won't be; there has, for instance, been speculation that Biden might be hurt in states like Michigan, which have a large Arab-American population. Michigan is obviously one of the traditional Blue Firewall states that Hillary lost in 2016 and which Biden retook in 2020, and any electoral wobbling there would be ominous for his overall results. However, this is also reckoning without the fact that there is now a largish chunk of old-school GOP/independent voters who say they will not vote for Trump under any circumstances, with that number growing if he's explicitly convicted of a felony. Some of these voters might sit out, or vote for Biden, or maybe decide to vote for some stupid crackpot like RFK Jr., but the point is, if they do in fact not vote for Trump or even vote for Biden, that changes the electoral math.

Likewise: there are about 40,000 Arab-American voters in Michigan. Biden won the state by 154k votes, or 3.35%, in 2020. Even if every single one of those voters voted FOR Trump this time (which would be insane, but never mind), that alone would not be enough to flip the state from Biden, and that's reckoning without the votes that Trump will lose elsewhere. I've seen a few left-leaning publications such as the Guardian picking up the "will Biden's stance on Gaza hurt him in November" question, and the loud social media blabbermouths want to insist that it will because it makes them feel important, but at this point, I honestly don't see widespread electoral evidence of it, because, put bluntly: Democrats vote. Posturing social media "progressives" largely don't. Therefore for all the screaming they do, their views do not get incorporated into the actual results, which is a damn good thing for us.

So in short: No, as of right now, I don't think there is in fact a substantial anti-Biden protest vote, and the people threatening it the most were never going to vote for him anyway. This has gone on long enough that if it was going to flag up as a major thing, I think it would have. There will always be the idiots throwing away their vote on some stooge like Cornel West or Jill Stein (lol), but once again, these people were never going to vote for Biden in the first place and it is not necessarily the case that we need to put undue credence in their threats. Not that we can slack our vigilance, as we cannot and every single person who can vote blue in 2024 needs to fucking do so if they're interested in continuing to live in a democracy, but the situation is not apocalyptic, and yet again, the Online Leftists are far from the most reliable metric of how effective their screaming actually is. So, yeah.