Time series charts of results show the true nature of elections. This one from the UK, for local government.…

Time series charts of results show the true nature of elections. This one from the UK, for local government. Red and blue, Labour and Tory. Mirror images of each other, one is in fashion, the other out, and that position swapped regularly over time. /1 https://t.co/cDylZEHoY0

In the meantime minor parties and independents (yellow and grey) surge when both major parties are on the nose, and sink when they’re not. Apologists for elections explain all of this by saying a nation, particularly ‘swinging voters’, decide which party is best for now. /2 https://t.co/FuXSd2AWHY

It’s a nice try. The ideologies of major parties are usually so fundamentally different that the idea that every few years voters rationally determine to throw the whole country into reverse again is pretty silly. Voting patterns are social patterns. They’re trends, fashions. /3 https://t.co/OveKVze4wa

None of the ideologies really exist in the real world, most of the machinery of state operates independently of any of them. Voters back a team like they back a football team, as a thin veneer on top that actual machinery. The parties go in and out of fashion like shoes. /4 https://t.co/ktGnHNkEX2

Or musical acts. Or recipes. None of it has anything to do with the actual running of a country. Occasionally an Aldi makes some inroads to a Coles/Woolworths duopoly (yellow and grey lines), but the duopoly reasserts itself once the public has tired of that new distraction. /5

At a minimum the time series shows that none of the ideologies, if that’s what voting actually represented, have any lasting success or impact. Voters swap them like they swap haircuts. It’s almost totally divorced from what it’s said to be about (running a country). /6 https://t.co/80XFZrPg31

It’s a popularity-driven fluctuation of fashion thing. At best some voters think ‘ok better give the other lot a go’, mostly not even knowing what the other lot or their lot have really done for the past 3-4 years anyway. They’re just bored, or their lives aren’t going well. /7 https://t.co/GXfqPv8ppo

In reality the machinery of State operates independently of the whole popularity theatre. If we’re lucky the elected twits stay out of the way of that machinery for their term. We’re unlucky though because they now increasingly believe they’re actually ‘running the country’. /end https://t.co/6PlEkbeRv8