Us politics

Nick Clegg, this morning, advocating closing loopholes for the rich to pay for raising the income tax threshold: ‘Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.’ Oh, all right, that wasn’t Clegg. That was Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. But it’s remarkably similar to what Clegg just said in his speech at the Resolution Foundation this morning. On his account, the government ought to be ‘calling time on our out-of-whack tax system,’ as well as the ‘scandal of

As Pete says, Obama fired some well-aimed arrows in the direction of Mitt Romney in his State of the Union address. But it was also a clear attempt to outline Obama’s re-election message, which would, I think, be the same no matter who he faces in November. The idea is to stress that Obama, unlike the corrupt Republicans who nearly bankrupted America, is a ‘fair shake’ candidate, who stands for hard work and responsibility. It is hypocritical rubbish, as I tried to point out last month. The idea of Obama as the straight-shooting, anti-corruption candidate is absurd. President Obama has proved to be a very different politician to the progressive

They said South Carolina would be Mitt Romney’s big test. Tonight, he failed it. The networks have called the primary for Newt Gingrich, and CNN’s exit poll shows him beating Romney 38-29. It’s an astounding turnaround, considering that Romney led by around 10 points just a few days ago. The Romney campaign is already trying to claim it’s not too disappointed by the result – that a few weeks ago they would have been happy with third place, that it’s Florida that really matters. But the truth is, he’s suffered a big upset. After it looked like he’d won Iowa and he took a solid if unsurprising win in New Hampshire,

When the week began, the idea of anyone but Mitt Romney claiming victory in tonight’s South Carolina primary seemed fanciful. He had a 10 point lead in the polls, giving him a 90 per cent chance of victory according to Nate Silver’s model. Any talk of someone else winning sounded like the wild hopes of a media keen for the nomination battle to go on as long as possible. But no longer. As I said on Thursday, it’s been a particularly bad week for Romney and a particularly good one for Newt Gingrich. Gingrich even managed to turn the one thing that seemed likely to halt his momentum – an

Of course, Mitt Romney hasn’t secured the Republican nomination yet. But now that the bookies have him odds on at 1/9, it’s definitely worth thinking about how he’d shape up against Barack Obama. Does he have much of a chance? Well, yes, actually. The head-to-head polls so far point to a close fight between Obama and Romney. And Obama’s approval ratings and GDP growth forecasts — better predictors of the result at this stage — also point to a very tight election. It’s shaping up to be one of those elections where the key to victory is not the national popular vote, but the Electoral College. It’ll be winning each individual

Tonight’s New Hampshire primary is very unlikely to provide the sort of razor-thin margin we saw in Iowa last week. Mitt Romney looks assured of a comfortable win – Nate Silver’s poll-based model (above) gives him a 98 per cent chance of victory. If one of the others did somehow beat him, it’d be the biggest upset of any modern US primary. The only real questions are just how comfortable it’ll be (20 points? 30? or just 10?), and who will come second. The polls suggest the battle for runner-up will be between Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. Paul is the favourite to take it, but the momentum of the

Mitt Romney’s status as the overwhelming favourite to be the Republican nominee for president is confirmed by a new poll out of South Carolina. It has Romney on 37 per cent, 18 points ahead of his nearest rival Rick Santorum. South Carolina is the next primary contest after New Hampshire, which takes place on Tuesday and which Romney is expected to win comfortably.   The significance of these new numbers is that South Carolina, the first primary in the south, has long been considered inhospitable territory for Romney. (In the 2008 primary there, he finished a disappointing fourth with 15 percent of the vote). If Romney is to be denied