Anti-War Victory? Not Even Close.

Liberals love to spin. The one thing they accuse the Bush administration of doing is the one thing they do better than anyone else.

Evan Coyne Maloney, one of my favorite bloggers of all time, makes a great point. In this case, the reporting is the story.

As of this writing, the election results show that the Conservatives have gained 33 seats in Parliament, while the Labor Party lost a total of 47 seats. In other words, over 70% of the seats lost by Labour were picked up by the other major party that supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This hardly seems like a stunning victory for the anti-war side.

Yet the media is playing this issue as if Iraq lost Blair the seats in Parliament. Yet even a cursory glance over the results show that most of the pickups were people who supported the war anyway.

So why the spin?

I work for an English-owned company. The truth of the matter is, it’s the economic issues (this was the discussion yesterday) that hurt Blair. As Evan also points out, it’s best for Labour to just chalk it up to Iraq and forget about it for PR purposes; although they do so at their own peril when people start barking about the economy.

Source: Brain Terminal

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  • http://spencer.sokols.us/ Spencer

    Coorellation != causation

    I’m not saying that’s not the reason behind the loses nor that it’s not plausible, but to determine the reason you’d have to poll the voters. Don’t be sucked in by faulty logic.

    But it’s definitely not a “stunning victory for the anti-war” folks.

  • http://sultry-tart.us/ AWolf

    I see some validity in the argument; however, their electoral process is different from ours in that they have a third major party (LibDems) and the other third parties actually win seats. Labor and Tories combined only got about 65% of the vote with the Conservative’s poll numbers being almost unchanged from the last election. That means the seats won by the Conservatives were a result of the spoiling affect of the LibDems whose numbers are up a full 4 points since the last election. I don’t know enough about UK politics to make a very good guess but I’d put the anti-war vote at some where between 5% and 20%. If the economy was the issue then the Conservatives would have picked up a higher percentage. Also I noticed that several of the Nationalist parties picked up seats and generally increased their poll numbers. Overall, I think the whole election was driven by local issues, pot holes and street lights types of things that Labor would be blamed for because they’ve been incharge for eight years or so.

  • http://spencer.sokols.us/ Spencer

    Coorellation != causation

    I’m not saying that’s not the reason behind the loses nor that it’s not plausible, but to determine the reason you’d have to poll the voters. Don’t be sucked in by faulty logic.

    But it’s definitely not a “stunning victory for the anti-war” folks.

  • http://sultry-tart.us/ AWolf

    I see some validity in the argument; however, their electoral process is different from ours in that they have a third major party (LibDems) and the other third parties actually win seats. Labor and Tories combined only got about 65% of the vote with the Conservative’s poll numbers being almost unchanged from the last election. That means the seats won by the Conservatives were a result of the spoiling affect of the LibDems whose numbers are up a full 4 points since the last election. I don’t know enough about UK politics to make a very good guess but I’d put the anti-war vote at some where between 5% and 20%. If the economy was the issue then the Conservatives would have picked up a higher percentage. Also I noticed that several of the Nationalist parties picked up seats and generally increased their poll numbers. Overall, I think the whole election was driven by local issues, pot holes and street lights types of things that Labor would be blamed for because they’ve been incharge for eight years or so.