The fact that the Coalition have chosen to focus in on these concerns is not a reason not to discuss them (for fear of giving some sort of aid and comfort to partisan enemies, as some would have it) but just a reflection that opposition politicians can read the public mood as well as Government members. We do have a real problem of democratic legitimacy in this country, at a time when the social bases of parties has atrophied and they have turned their backs on participatory democracy, choosing rather to privilege a narrow range of members of a political caste, whose reward for failure is often a highly paid corporate gig.

I myself would like to see both primaries for candidate selection (trialled at state level by the Nationals in New South Wales and Labor in Victoria) and an electoral college for the Leaders of the major parties. I think that there is no doubt that a narrow basis for selection within caucus and party room leaves leaders more vulnerable to the shifting sands of polls (often misinterpreted by the media) and to campaigns mounted by powerful vested interests.

It may well be, as Guy Rundle argues, that – as in the case of Gordon Brown – a model such as UK Labour’s makes it unduly difficult to remove a leader who’s proved to be a failure. But Brown’s problems stemmed as much from the fact that his legitimacy suffered because he had been anointed in an uncontested leadership election. One could easily envisage a less complex method of revisiting a leadership decision which nevertheless still enjoys greater legitimacy. And, crucially, I’d argue, making the electorate for party leadership broader and less reliant on the climate created by the media noise machine and by the fears and herd mentality of MPs would reset expectations of leadership, and create a different political situation.

I believe it would be a better system.

Julia Gillard could leave a lasting legacy by moving to involve the Australian people and party supporters in a much more direct way in the grave question of who leads us.

The UK Labour Party’s electoral college processes are outlined in this House of Commons Library research brief.

I think these matters are worthy of serious discussion, at some remove now from the extraordinary events of last Wednesday and Thursday. As an additional prompt for debate, I’ve excerpted some of a piece by Ben Eltham published at The Drum today, which I think encapsulates nicely what’s at stake. Read on over the fold.

If you need a snapshot of where politics is at in Australia in 2010, consider this: while top mining executives have the phone numbers of senior government ministers, ordinary voters don’t even get to vote on who the Prime Minister is.

You can of course quibble with my analysis by pointing to Australia’s Westminster tradition, in which the convention holds that Prime Minister must enjoy the support of a majority of the Parliament. On this measure, Julia Gillard clearly has a constitutional right to hold office.

But this ignores the fact that Australian election campaigns get more presidential every term. Political parties might reserve the right to change leaders at their whim, but when it comes around to election time, they campaign hard on the leadership qualities of their key figurehead. In 2007, it was the Australian Labor Party that created and championed “Kevin07″, and it was Labor who made much of the ambiguity created by John Howard’s announcement he would step down for Peter Costello sometime before 2010. Hypocrisy is often taken for granted in politics, but we should remember that every lie and every deception subtracts a little more trust in our democracy.

It’s a point made well recently by Jeff Sparrow, when he writes that “ordinary people are more disenfranchised from the political process than in any time in a generation. The institutions and structures that once allowed Joe and Jane Sixpack a degree of policy engagement beyond a few minutes in a ballot box have been atrophying for years.”

While the grassroots of political parties wither, the vested institutional and corporate interests within them continue to flourish. The Constitutional role of the Senate, for instance, was originally framed as a chamber of states’ rights and executive review. Nowadays it is the easiest path to power for machine politicians from the major parties, who can scheme their way to an unassailable spot on a Senate ticket, thus giving a Nick Minchin or a Mark Arbib a six-year seat in Parliament without the tedium of representing a district in the House.

If last week’s events show anything, they show the need for renewed efforts towards constitutional and electoral reform in Australia, particularly the need for primary elections for political candidates and more opportunities for direct democracy. Whatever the other flaws of US democracy, at least there voters have the right to directly choose their head of state. Registered voters can also participate in primaries to select their party political candidate for a particular election. It’s a far cry from the branch stacking and backroom machinations so favoured by the New South Wales Labor Party.

However, there’s some interesting reading at both RedBlueRichPoor and FiveThirtyEight. I suspect the absence of the early vote in the sample diminishes the increases in youth and African-American turnout. And it’s just as well to remember that the election was actually reasonably close in the popular vote, and that the electoral vote map has been tweaked rather than transformed. Trends which were operating this year need reinforcing through the upcoming electoral cycles, and much will depend on Obama’s performance in government. You can never claim that there’s a realigning election on the basis of one cycle (06-08), though my bet would be that this will turn out in retrospect to have been one, for a whole host of more qualitative and interpretive factors.

I haven’t seen any comprehensive data as yet on Hispanic and youth votes’ partisan composition, but some evidence presented during the CNN coverage suggested very strong 60+% Obama votes in both populations. It’s worthwhile noting that the demographics of many states which are swinging to the Democrats strongly – or showing signs of such swings (ie in Texas, Arizona and South Carolina) – are fast changing to a much more heterogenous composition. And that generally, the younger cohort is more socially liberal and less hung up on racial barriers and all the baggage of the culture wars – including among younger Evangelicals.

There’s a lot here for Obama and the Democrats to make hay with in terms of partisan and geographic realignment, if they play their cards well.

Update: Some numbers on the youth and Latino votes:

Latino Catholics appear to have been decisive in flipping three states from red to blue: New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Colorado’s nine electoral votes swung into the Obama column with a strong 53% to 46% win and in New Mexico the margin was even larger: 57% for Obama to McCain’s 42%. In Nevada, 55% of the vote went to Obama and McCain took 43%. If Obama delivers comprehensive immigration reform, these three states and their 19 electoral votes will be blue for a generation. They will also likely be joined by Arizona, which might have joined the shift this year had it not been for the home turf advantage McCain enjoyed. Nine points separated the candidates in Arizona, and the state’s ten electoral votes are low-hanging fruit for the Democrats next election.

Latinos are the fastest growing part of the electorate and young voters are just beginning to define their political loyalties. Obama won both groups convincingly: 67% of Latinos nationwide and 66% of voters age 18-29. That bodes well for the future of the Democratic Party.

Update: Simon Jackman points out – in examining “change elections” – that Obama has been elected with the highest percentage of the popular vote of any newly elected Democrat since FDR.

Update: A good post from Crooks & Liars on the Latino vote, and a thoughtful piece at Salon about the demographics and the numbers.

Update: The invaluable Nate Silver has posted a table comparing Obama and Kerry’s numbers on the exit polls among all demographics.

In other words, Barack Obama and the Democrats are a national party now, while the GOP has become regionalised and fallen behind the times. What a difference a few years can make. It will now be up to Obama and other leading Democrats to solidify these gains through smart politics and smarter policy. So we can all breathe a bit easier, by putting the Bush years behind us forever.

What’s a little surprising is that in the midst of these debates, there’s been little discussion of the exact significance and dimensions of the repudiation of Bushism. As publius says at Obsidian Wings:

Any way you slice it, the 2008 election should be seen as a massive repudiation of the George W. Bush administration.

And not just in psephological terms, as the Republican right may have driven Hispanic voters away for a long time. Let’s make no mistake about it. The collision of neo-con Republicanism and reality has not been kind to the latter. Publius again:

…recent events have repeatedly proven the progressive “sphere” more correct than the conservative “sphere.” Progressives’ policy assumptions seem to jibe better with empirical reality than the fairy tale world inhabited by many in the conservative sphere. In short, in the laboratory of ideas, progressives are winning.

It is fantastic to see the end of a governing philosophy which sought to legitimise torture, wiretapping and all manner of attacks on individual liberties and rights, and whose foreign policy posture was deeply immoral, as well as hugely counter-productive. It is also fantastic to see an end to wishing away global warming in the name of big money interests and the corruption of truth that has distinguished the Bush era. It is fantastic to see an end to a callous and deeply selfish acceptance of inequality as if it were the natural order. Barack Obama’s election is unequivocally a good thing for the world. I make no apologies for being moved by his election and by his victory speech.

It would also be good if Kevin Rudd and his mob realised that the bogey of right wing hegemony is no longer looking over their shoulder, and started to show a little more courage themselves. That would be a very welcome global impact of today’s events.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/obama-hope.jpg"

What’s intriguing about this win is that Obama will exercise influence immediately. George W. Bush is the lamest of lame ducks, and arrangements have already been made for the next president to participate in shaping economic policy, and former Times Economics Editor Anatole Kaletsky thinks that influence will make a difference quickly:

If tomorrow’s election delivers a clear economic mandate to a competent new Administration, the financial markets will soon stabilise — and the US economy could recover surprisingly quickly from the blundering incompetence of Henry Paulson and George W. Bush.

Obama will be naming cabinet members and other key administration figures very quickly, and we won’t have the traditional waiting game for policy and names to trickle out before mid January.

How will he govern? One of the most interesting comments he’s made is when he told Jon Stewart that difficult times enable a President to achieve big things. There’s a bit of an FDR game in play, perhaps, with the modest promises of the campaign potentially being eclipsed by the pressure of events. We’ll see – expectations will certainly be high.

Related posts: The archive of all US election 2008 posts at LP can be accessed here.

Update [by Mark]: The text of Obama’s speech is here.

We seem to be getting a lot of 503 errors, which must mean either increased traffic on our server or the intertubes staggering under the weight of US election traffic generally.

But here’s a widget from MSNBC which should enable anyone checking in here to get a sense of the latest results. You can mouse over each state to get the latest count:

Other places to follow the count – Crikey has both Possum and The Poll Bludger liveblogging. At The Guardian, Anna Pickard is liveblogging the election coverage on tv (and Fox might get interesting!) while Oliver Burkman liveblogs the count. William Edelstein comments on the appalling voting process. There’s also liveblogging at Feministing, Crooks & Liars and much closer to home at Hoyden About Town.

The invaluable FiveThirtyEight.com has a post by post liveblog, and updated results graphically illustrated on the sidebar.

Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise has a twitter map of the US for your edification.

Update: I think scatterplot is right. Obama has won this thing.

Update: New post on the policy implications of Obama’s victory.

This is fun!

You can make your own electoral map to illustrate your predicted result at The Washington Post. I’m not sure if embedding will work in comments, but if it doesn’t, after you’ve gone through the process, you’ll also be given a url to your map to which you can link. You may have to make up a US phone number if you don’t have one, though!

Exit Polls: Take these with a grain of salt. In the states which allow early voting, almost 30 million have already turned out – with big advantages in many states in terms of the proportion of registered Democrats and independents voting over registered Republicans. Obama has “banked”, if you like, a lot of the support he had at the top of the range of his poll results. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he won’t get a lot of support on election day – the number of genuine undecideds would be very low at this point. The race is basically frozen – there hasn’t been much “tightening” and McCain has run out of time. The early voting advantage also means a smoother turnout the vote operation on the day itself, and all the evidence is that the Republicans’ much touted turnout advantage has been completely reversed. In fact, if you put together a lot of what we know about the lack of volunteers and enthusiasm in the GOP camp, this could be quite important.

In addition, the chance of dirty dealing on the results is lessened because a lot of the African-American vote has deliberately turned out early to minimise shenanigans and maximise the chance of votes being counted. So… that takes us to…

Why people are still saying the race could go either way… It’s partly the meejah trying to maintain interest, and partly both campaigns have an interest in making sure their voters think it’s important to turn out. And then there’s Republican denialism and their well known habit of assuming that you can create your own reality. And Democratic nerves.

States in play: Here’s the Kerry/Bush map from 2004 (courtesy of Wikipedia):

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/350px-electoralcollege2004svg.png"

The latest polls have Obama ahead in all the Kerry states, and leading in the following Bush states – New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada and Iowa. Outside chances are Georgia, North Dakota, Montana, West Virginia and McCain’s home state of Arizona. McCain appears to have a lot of eggs in the Pennsylvania basket, but it doesn’t look likely. The invaluable Nate Silver discusses possible McCain electoral math scenarios here, and the key states to watch here.

Update: Nate Silver sums up where the latest polling leaves the race:

Far more important, of course, is the race for 270 electors. It appears almost certain that Obama will capture all of the states won by John Kerry in 2008. Pennsylvania, while certainly having tightened somewhat over the course of the past two weeks, appears to be holding at a margin of about +8 for Obama, with very few remaining undecideds. Obama also appears almost certain to capture Iowa and New Mexico, which were won by Al Gore in 2000. Collectively, these states total 264 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 5 votes shy of a tie and 6 of a win.

Obama has any number of states to collect those 5 or 6 votes. In inverse order of difficulty, these include Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana. Obama is the signficant favorite in several of these states; winning any one of them may be fairly difficult for John McCain, but winning all of them at once, as John McCain probably must do, is nearly impossible.

Robert Corr has tweaked a map of poll closing times in the various states, adding Australian times to it as a guide for tomorrow, and Nate Silver has prepared an hour by hour guide of what to look for as the results come in.

Update: Related post: Election eve links.

Update: Howard Dean’s pollster at Salon on how to read the numbers.

Update: Related post: What to watch for in the Senate races.

Update: Nate Silver on ten reasons why you should ignore exit polls.

One suspicion is that McCain’s campaign is relying on the “Bradley effect”. Nate Silver also has a convincing argument as to why that “effect” may not manifest itself at all.

The possible reasons for the Pennsylvania focus are deconstructed at FiveThirtyEight.Com and Obsidian Wings. The consensus appears to be that this strategy is a triumph of hope over reason. The punchline?

As a famous Democrat once said, of course, hope is not a strategy.