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The Thatcher Effect
Jan. 9th, 2008 12:54 pm"Hillary heads for heavy defeat" said the UK newspapers this morning.
"Pins hopes on Tsunami Tuesday", said the FT.
Whoops.
The Guardian was at least up-to-date enough to say that early returns showed that the result might be very close. As it turned out, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by three points, rather than lose by 11 to 13 points, as the latest polls (including the normally more reliable exit polls) had indicated.
What went wrong?
This was the Thatcher effect. In 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, the Conservative Party performed better than the polls indicated (although not to the extent that occurred in New Hampshire). There were two reasons for three of those elections. The first was that epeople did not want to admit in public that they supported the Conservative Party, but they were happy to do so in the private of the polling booth. The second was that many men (and a few women) did not want to admit that they would vote for a woman.
This effect was mirrored in spades in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton is not only a woman, but she's a masculine woman. Men do not admit to liking that kind of woman (at least not in public), and in polls, there is more of a factor of saying who you like, rather than whom you will back "to get the job done".
Secondly, Obama is black and popular and, after Iowa, had momentum on his side. A quick read of "The Wisdom Of Crowds" will show you how people will often say what they think people want to hear, rather than what they think. The "surge" for Obama was such that you needed to be a strong-minded individual to tell a pollster that it was all bollocks, and that you would be voting for Hillary. However, in the polling booth, things are different. There's no group pressure there.
And this, I think, was the key factor in Iowa, and it's one that might favour Obama in most of the caucus-electing states. Hillary, dammit, just isn't likeable. She's smart; she's mean, but likeable she ain't. And she is also white, and a woman. Liberal Democrats (the US kind, not the UK kind) are under a lot of group-think pressure to be nice about Obama. If the vote is in public, then they tend to follow that through. In the polling booth, there's no need to follow it through. You can vote for someone who you don't like to admit supporting. That's Hillary for you.
I laid Obama for quite a bit on Betfair the day after the Iowa caucus at 11-to-8. This was a timing error. I should have waited until yesterday lunchtime. I can still close it out at a profit (13-to-8-ish this morning before I came to work), but it's not really a good reward-to-risk gain. I'll probably run the bet through South Carolina to Florida.
++++++++++
It's hard not to admire the irrepressible nature of Americans. One group for whom I feel little sympathy in the current housing recession in the US is that of real estate agents. These lowest-of-the-low will tell you that a market is booming while you are looking to buy and that it is tanking when you want to sell, even when you are doing both simultanesously. They charge horrendous commission rates compared with the rest of the world, will happily lie through their teeth about the state of a property, if it might mean a sale, and made hay over the past few years while prices were booming.
Apparently only 4% of realtors "choose" it as a first career. It's a commission-based operation that welcomes sales-chancers. When the market was booming, these chancers appeared from other sales areas, looking to hit a big score. A newspaper article interviewed one such person leaving the business, who said that "I'm neervous about the future, but I feel happy".
Well, putting a positive spin on things is okay, I guess, but how can you be happy that three years or more of easy money has just vanished? Do you just say "well, it was good while it lasted, let's move on?"
I suspect that there might be some economies (say, the fast-growing areas of New Mexico and Arizona) that will suffer badly. Much of the economy was based on the money that people brought in from outside when they moved in. Perhaps too many of the realtors were inspired by Frank Boscombe.
Still, the never-ending optimism of the Americans will see them through. They'll end up selling life insurance, or mutual funds, or retirement planning, or being an "independent financial adviser", or something else that involves extracting a lot of money from a member of the public and keeping a healthy slice of commission for yourself.
+++++++++++
139 Wardour Street is now solidly boarded up, presumably with the intention of turning it and the extension next door into a restaurant that people will actually go to.
Meanwhile, Luigi's has closed!
Luigi's was the last of the 1970s restaurants in Wardour Street still ticking over. Luigi himself could still be seen, sitting outside,smoking a cigarette, last summer. I suspect that it was the cigarette ban that led him to shut up shop. One morning, all the photgraphs of Luigi with the sometime famous (a young Jenny Agutter, a middle-aged Terry Venables circa 1988, John Motson, Zola, and several B-list celebrities from TV and film) were gone from the front windows. The end of an era.
Now the workmen are in. Luigi's is a good design, and will always attract custom if the food and prices are right.
I wonder if buildings will change their structure in central London? I mean, will architects redesign restaurants, pubs, etc, when they go in for a big refurb, so that there is an area that is technically "outside" (i.e., one where customers can smoke). This would entail moving the "front" of the building back seven or eight feet on the ground floor.
Another example of the law of unintended consequences, if it happens.
++++++++
"Pins hopes on Tsunami Tuesday", said the FT.
Whoops.
The Guardian was at least up-to-date enough to say that early returns showed that the result might be very close. As it turned out, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by three points, rather than lose by 11 to 13 points, as the latest polls (including the normally more reliable exit polls) had indicated.
What went wrong?
This was the Thatcher effect. In 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, the Conservative Party performed better than the polls indicated (although not to the extent that occurred in New Hampshire). There were two reasons for three of those elections. The first was that epeople did not want to admit in public that they supported the Conservative Party, but they were happy to do so in the private of the polling booth. The second was that many men (and a few women) did not want to admit that they would vote for a woman.
This effect was mirrored in spades in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton is not only a woman, but she's a masculine woman. Men do not admit to liking that kind of woman (at least not in public), and in polls, there is more of a factor of saying who you like, rather than whom you will back "to get the job done".
Secondly, Obama is black and popular and, after Iowa, had momentum on his side. A quick read of "The Wisdom Of Crowds" will show you how people will often say what they think people want to hear, rather than what they think. The "surge" for Obama was such that you needed to be a strong-minded individual to tell a pollster that it was all bollocks, and that you would be voting for Hillary. However, in the polling booth, things are different. There's no group pressure there.
And this, I think, was the key factor in Iowa, and it's one that might favour Obama in most of the caucus-electing states. Hillary, dammit, just isn't likeable. She's smart; she's mean, but likeable she ain't. And she is also white, and a woman. Liberal Democrats (the US kind, not the UK kind) are under a lot of group-think pressure to be nice about Obama. If the vote is in public, then they tend to follow that through. In the polling booth, there's no need to follow it through. You can vote for someone who you don't like to admit supporting. That's Hillary for you.
I laid Obama for quite a bit on Betfair the day after the Iowa caucus at 11-to-8. This was a timing error. I should have waited until yesterday lunchtime. I can still close it out at a profit (13-to-8-ish this morning before I came to work), but it's not really a good reward-to-risk gain. I'll probably run the bet through South Carolina to Florida.
++++++++++
It's hard not to admire the irrepressible nature of Americans. One group for whom I feel little sympathy in the current housing recession in the US is that of real estate agents. These lowest-of-the-low will tell you that a market is booming while you are looking to buy and that it is tanking when you want to sell, even when you are doing both simultanesously. They charge horrendous commission rates compared with the rest of the world, will happily lie through their teeth about the state of a property, if it might mean a sale, and made hay over the past few years while prices were booming.
Apparently only 4% of realtors "choose" it as a first career. It's a commission-based operation that welcomes sales-chancers. When the market was booming, these chancers appeared from other sales areas, looking to hit a big score. A newspaper article interviewed one such person leaving the business, who said that "I'm neervous about the future, but I feel happy".
Well, putting a positive spin on things is okay, I guess, but how can you be happy that three years or more of easy money has just vanished? Do you just say "well, it was good while it lasted, let's move on?"
I suspect that there might be some economies (say, the fast-growing areas of New Mexico and Arizona) that will suffer badly. Much of the economy was based on the money that people brought in from outside when they moved in. Perhaps too many of the realtors were inspired by Frank Boscombe.
Still, the never-ending optimism of the Americans will see them through. They'll end up selling life insurance, or mutual funds, or retirement planning, or being an "independent financial adviser", or something else that involves extracting a lot of money from a member of the public and keeping a healthy slice of commission for yourself.
+++++++++++
139 Wardour Street is now solidly boarded up, presumably with the intention of turning it and the extension next door into a restaurant that people will actually go to.
Meanwhile, Luigi's has closed!
Luigi's was the last of the 1970s restaurants in Wardour Street still ticking over. Luigi himself could still be seen, sitting outside,smoking a cigarette, last summer. I suspect that it was the cigarette ban that led him to shut up shop. One morning, all the photgraphs of Luigi with the sometime famous (a young Jenny Agutter, a middle-aged Terry Venables circa 1988, John Motson, Zola, and several B-list celebrities from TV and film) were gone from the front windows. The end of an era.
Now the workmen are in. Luigi's is a good design, and will always attract custom if the food and prices are right.
I wonder if buildings will change their structure in central London? I mean, will architects redesign restaurants, pubs, etc, when they go in for a big refurb, so that there is an area that is technically "outside" (i.e., one where customers can smoke). This would entail moving the "front" of the building back seven or eight feet on the ground floor.
Another example of the law of unintended consequences, if it happens.
++++++++
