As the dust settles on the US campaign, inevitably analysis on this side of the pond turns to what implications it has for the next British election. Putting aside the non-directly transposable party systems, one lesson can be drawn for the Labour Party. Ignore the noisy TrotsApp faction’s calls for reconciliation. Biden won by rejecting the socialists…

Yesterday a former Clinton campaign organiser and now political strategist ran a fascinating focus group to understand swing voters in the US election. The group comprised of swing voters who flipped their vote in the last two weeks of the election. It’s a good place to start to understand how despite a disastrous pandemic, Democrats failed to pick up crucial Senate seats, went backwards in the House, and came far closer to losing the Presidential race than they had thought…

Key takeaways include:

• 70% said they think Biden “mostly disagrees” with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
• The group agreed with the sentiment that “defund the police” is “crazier than anything Trump has ever said.“
• When the interviewer tried to say “defund the police” doesn’t mean “defund the police”, the group shot back with “Don’t try and tell word don’t mean what they say”.
• There was an attitude that whilst it is bad Trump is not yet conceding, “Democrats wouldn’t have accepted Trump” if he had won either.
• Every member of the focus group believed Biden will be inaugurated and the transition of power will be peaceful.
• The group really didn’t like celebrities telling them how to vote.

If Biden had been able to win over the Trump supporters in this group, perhaps the result would have been more conclusive on the night. Perhaps House seats wouldn’t have been lost. Perhaps the Democrats would have won the Senate.

Biden, who was seen to mostly disagree with the likes of AOC, won in districts where down-ballot Democrats lost. The takeaway chimes with Abigail Spanberger – a Democrat who won her marginal House seat off Republican Dave Brat in 2018 has been saying. In the Democratic caucus postmortem call she ripped into the left, saying “We lost races we shouldn’t have lost.” “Defund the police almost cost me my race because of an attack ad.” “Don’t say socialism ever again.”  Lessons Sir Keir could do with taking on. Today ComRes has Labour down 4% behind the Tories…