STEPS FORWARD, STEPS BACK

Bibi backsliding. Boris flailing. Hong Kong rising. The authoritarian trend is not inevitable. Fight back. It will work.

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) September 18, 2019

On the subject of the Israeli election, Haaretz reports:

Netanyahu crony admits cameras at polling stations was bad idea

Likud lawmaker and Netanyahu loyalist Miki Zohar said his party was damaged by its failed attempt to pass a law allowing parties to film voters in polling stations, “out of belief that there is voter fraud in polling stations in Arab towns.”

“Without a doubt, the cameras campaign came back at us like a boomerang,” Zohar said, adding that Joint List leaders took advantage of the campaign, seen as an attempt to intimidate voters, and capitalized on it to increase Arab voter turnout.

So the political tactics of America's Republican Party don't always work. (Now we need to make them fail in America.)

But on the other hand...

While Boris Johnson has been mostly making headlines for his struggles against Parliament, new YouGov polling reveals that the ongoing Brexit chaos hasn’t adversely affected the PM’s favourability figures - which are, in fact, slightly higher now than they were when he first moved into Downing Street.

Currently 38% of Brits say they have a favourable view of the Prime Minister, compared to 54% with an unfavourable opinion of him, giving a net score of -16.

This is an improvement from the net score of -21 he received when the same survey was conducted on 23-24 July, just as he had been announced as having won the Conservative Party leadership contest and would therefore be the next Prime Minister....

Since becoming Prime Minister, Johnson has experienced a boost of 21 points among Conservative voters (from a net score of +29 on 23/24 July to +50 now) and a 16 point increase among Leave voters (from +30 to +46).

The good news: Johnson's still underwater. The bad news: He's far more popular than Labour's Jeremy Corbyn (21% approval, 70% [!] disapproval) and he has a higher approval rating than the Liberal Democrats' Jo Swinson, who's not nearly as well known (26% approval, 38% disapproval).

The struggle continues.