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Politics

Me and My Interest in Politics

Ok so here I am going to be talking about my interest in politics, not what or who I support I am leaving that completely out of it but I am purely just going to be talking about how I came to be interested in politics and why I now and have for a long time followed it.

Featured photo: by ANGELUS from Wikimedia. License.

It all started with elections and the analytics that resulted from them. As I have previously stated in other posts I have a great interest in going through numerous electoral contests such as in constituencies, within states and between candidates battling to be leader and then I enjoy comparing it to previous results to see how things have changed. I also like to use polls in an attempt to make some predictions and I just generally enjoy going through and watching results of elections come in as they happen, with a specific interest of this in UK and US elections.

This analytical side of politics is what I feature prevalently on my blog such as for local elections in the UK, midterm elections in the US, General elections in the UK as well as Presidential and congressional elections within the US. This year I am also doing posts on and tracking the Democratic Presidential nominee primary/caucus elections in the US as well which will lead up to the 2020 Presidential and Congressional elections later this year in the beginning of November.

Analytics. Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels

I sometimes also watch elections in other countries if they are deemed to be significant, this includes the 2017 Presidential election in France due to the prevalence of Marine Le Pen and also Emmanuel Macron, where neither candidate was part of the two main established parties. I also watched the 2017 Dutch General Election to see how Geert Wilders would perform. Anything that could potentially have an interesting result I am likely to watch and track.

I also just have a massive interest in how different systems of government work and how differently elections work from one country to another. One of the big reasons I enjoy democracy is because I get to watch it play out and it is all easily observable. Even watching votes in either the UK House of Commons or US Congress is something I do from time to time, specifically if the vote is significant or if it is possibly going to be close, I watched lots of votes in the House of Commons over the BREXIT debacle and have watched votes in the US Congress during votes on certain legislation and also most recently the final votes that acquitted Donald Trump in the US Senate.

The differences on how voting works between the House of Commons and US Congress is also something I take note of and how the US Congress also seems to be less hectic than the House of Commons can get sometimes, which on the most nosiest of occasions I will refer to as sounding like a ‘barnyard’. Considering the often-dramatic style of the US, it is a surprise that their congress is generally an exception that appears to be tamer and not have consistent heckling and jeering.

UK Parliamentary Constituency boundaries. Photo in Public Domain.

But I do prefer the way the House of Commons votes, which is where all the MPs or those who are voting will leave the chamber and go into lobbies with tellers to vote, it’s old fashioned and made fun of by countries that have parliaments that use faster and more updated technology now, but I enjoy the suspense of it all and also the commentators on the news attempting to guess the outcome based on the composition of the chamber or how the tellers are standing, it’s quite amusing. Of course, with a hung parliament the suspense is real, but with the current large majority the Commons has after December there is now an expected outcome for each vote.

But yeah, I just love the suspense of all that stuff. Back to elections there is another difference between the US and the UK and in-fact a lot of the European country elections… exit polls… the very accurate and incredibly suspenseful moment of knowing who has won before any of the actual results are released. The US does not have exit polls and you have to wait until most of the results are counted until a winner is known. I am torn between both sides, I like the exit poll due to the suspense being absolutely gut-wrenching at times, especially on the last few seconds of the countdown.

But at the same time, it gives you an idea of what to expect of the results coming out and so in that sense it isn’t as enjoyable through the rest of the night, unless a result comes out that is a bit contradictory to the exit poll, then it can get a bit more interesting, but I still enjoy watching the results come out nonetheless as you still don’t know the exact result from one to the other and I love how the focus on a host of significant constituencies that lists each vote count of every candidate standing with a nice little info-graphic of interesting information.

Meanwhile in the US the suspense isn’t so sudden but much more long-winded and so you can have many little surprises as the results are revealed and a state or election is declared for one side or the other with a nice pop-up infographic declaring the result and people from this can get much more of a surprise and much more shocking results as the outcome is a lot less certain compared to being guided by an exit poll.

US States. Photo by Gigillo83 from Wikimedia. License.

So they were all the main things that got me further into being interested in politics and although that is still my favourite part of it all I have got more into researching about candidates and different ideologies and the such and which is why I am also doing profiles for a number of the candidates in the Democratic primaries/caucuses and also one on Donald Trump probably. I just find it interesting now to see the many different and varying stances and ideologies each of the candidates have and what kind of president this may lead them to being. Many of my profiles that I am making and have already made ready to post will be informative rather than opinionated, so people won’t have to do wider research themselves, the meaning of the profiles will allow people to access most of a candidates significant information simply in one area.

So that is about it really there isn’t really much more to say on the topic except that I absolutely 100% love the analytical side of it all and the outcomes and the reactions of people and the media and so on. I can’t get enough of it and I cannot wait for the rest of the primary/caucus elections and the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.


Whatever to talk about next…?!

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