Is there any evidence that a "ground game" matters in a presidential race? I am seeing a lot of backslapping on professional Democratic party-type X about how well the Harris campaign was run but having a sloppy and disorganized campaign doesn't really seem to have held back trump in the past...
I think it matters a little. There are some people who truly need that extra push. On the margin of 0.5% or something maybe? Which could be the difference, but usually is irrelevant.
One bit of hope I'm allowing myself is the fact that Trump has gone all in on mobilizing low propensity voters with an incompetent ground game. Not a great strategic play.
So far in Ohio, the early vote has seen very large numbers of unaffiliated voters cast their ballots, and around 55% of early voters are women, both groups that appear to be favoring Harris. I don't think Harris takes Ohio, but it could help Sherrod Brown and our redistricting ballot measure.
Let's have a Slow Boring SoCal meetup on Saturday, November 16, at 1 pm in Shoreline Aquatic Park in Long Beach (next to the Aquarium of the Pacific). We can either rejoice in a Harris victory or freak out over the return of Agent Orange together! I'll have a stuffed toy octopus with me so you can recognize me.
Bo, Lisa C, and Tom Hitchner, does it work for all of you?
Any other local Slow Borers who are interested in joining?
Ooh exciting! I’m not going to the two conferences I want to go to that are both in New Orleans at the same time (philosophy politics and economics society, or philosophy of science association) so maybe I can convince my partner this is a good idea. Or drop him off with our friends in Long Beach while I come to this!
If “we” includes innocent Ukrainians slaughtered by Putin’s troops and women who bleed to death due to complications of pregnancy/miscarriages, then no, “we” won’t “get through “ this.
I am hoping that this cycle the smart folks can do a hard double check on betting markets here... election prediction when the race is super close is not a great place for betting markets to add value. It makes no sense to build a great gambling model for an event that's so infrequent.
In sports, gamblers make money by hammering small but reliable edges repeatedly so a small statistical advantage can tell. So one example of this is the style of officiating changed last year to make scoring harder, smart gamblers made some money for a few weeks betting the unders until the books caught up. But of course it would be hard to make this advantage tell if it was just a single game...
The election markets are not large, meaning that if a wealthy person wanted to buy out positions simply as a marketing tactic (not caring about whether the bet is +EV on its own or not), in order to influence public opinion, they can easily do so.
Freddie de Boer this morning: I voted for Jill Stein because the Democrats suck ass, they're soulless corporate shills who stand for nothing and are further right than they were back when I voted for Nader in 2000, all you assholes gotta convince me why I should have voted for Harris and not just against Trump.
Ladies and gentlemen, the reason why I continue to subscribe to Noah and not to Freddie.
The Democratic party has to pick between the far left and moderates who believe in a market based economy. Right now, it's trying to straddle both boats and doing a terrible job.
I honestly believe that every moron who votes for Stein is just a voter who would abstain anyway if she weren't on the ballot. Everyone that is worried she is helping Trump win is extremely misinformed.
Stein voters are have no more influence on the outcome than the idiots who do write in votes for "Free Palestine" or whatever. They are just abstainers.
I’ll read about the election tomorrow morning. And then I’ll get on with my life no matter which deeply-flawed candidate won. The new president will, in some manner, attempt to don the mantle of mandate, despite the polity’s noticeably deep and abiding divides. There will be some violence. There will be some tears. There will be some catastrophism. There will be some public recriminations. There will be takes of all sorts and of all temperatures, mostly dumb. The new president will quickly issue a slew of executive orders; half the county will disapprove.
The new president will do and say some outrageous things. The new president will favor economically ignorant policies. The new president will criticize the federal government. The new president will blunder on the international stage, perhaps dangerously so. The new president’s policies will be challenged in the courts, and will be occasionally struck down. The new president will attempt to define (or declare) a new zeitgeist, but that will utterly fail because our volksgeist, while genuine, is very, very narrow.
I mean a Trump presidency with a Dem Congress/Senate/SC would be fine for the most part. Problem is, that’s really unlikely. Whereas a President Harris is unlikely to be empowered to do anything, good or bad.
But what if Trump actually means what he says about what he wants to do? And what if he surrounded by willing acolytes intent on carrying out his vision in the Executive Branch? And what if a supine Republican Congress, seeing the election results, refuses to stand in the way?
Reflecting on Trump 1.0, you can play Russian roulette, hold the gun to your head, pull the trigger once and nothing fatally bad happens. But you still need to read the Surgeon General's warning on the side of your "Russian Roulette: The Game" box where it says, "past performance is no guarantee of future results."
I’m far more worried about what Harris would do with a compliant Congress. Though I’m not sure what it is you believe Trump wants to do that he actually can do.
Well yes, because slightly higher tax rates on rich people, a modest expansion of the welfare state, and people living in territories becoming full and equal members of the United States are terrible terrible things.
Yes, I realize you prefer a Supreme Court chosen by President's who never earned a majority put on the Court by Senator's from 9 people each imposing their will on the population.
I simply think the party that wins more votes in 6 out of 7 elections should probably have a majority of Supreme Court Justices, just like while it sucked incredibly for my own views, it made sense, the Supreme Court was majority Republican by time H.W. Bush's term ended.
Wow, Ken, this entire comment deserves to be in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Equivalency, False."
"None of this will amount to much in the long run."
I dearly hope you're right, but if Trump wins... I mean, MAYBE it won't amount to much, but how reassuring is that? Say, the risk of Trump destroying American democracy if he wins is "only" 5%. Would you feel comfortable with surgery that has a 5% risk of death?
I mean, preferably with more of a "Trump is a f*cking disaster who should be losing by double digits" and not what you've written above, which is a "meh, both candidates bad" with zero indication that one of them is, yanno, a sh*t-ton worse than the other.
How to prevent Agent Orange from *actually* destroying democracy if he wins? Hell if I know. That's the key question, and it's way above my paygrade. I was going to brainstorm with my fellow Slow Boring and The Bulwark subscribers.
That one is worse than the other is obviously a matter where opinions differ, or polls wouldn’t be so close. Put another way, the judgement of the American people says they’re both about as bad.
Trump tried to overturn a free election. He deliberately spread lies and tried to pressure an elected official (Raffensberger) into "finding" him extra votes in Georgia. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a fact.
Whether or not you think this should be disqualifying is a matter of opinion I guess, in the same way as "should we have denied women the right to vote" is a matter of opinion, but seeing almost half of Americans agree with this opinion is goddamn depressing.
“Whether or not you think this should be disqualifying is a matter of opinion…”
Oh, I think he should have been impeached on January 6th, and convicted the same day. Congress disagreed.
That half the country reasonably sees Trump as the preferable alternative to Democratic Party control of the Executive is a fact that seems to be lost on most Democrats. If Trump wins this election I do not expect the Democratic Party to learn the lesson.
"Please, for the love of God, do not draw strong inferences about American society based on exit poll cross tabs"
Too late, Matt! One of the three Dixville Notch Trump voters was a Mexican-American lesbian -- Harris' support among women, Hispanics, AND the LGBTQ community has clearly imploded and the only question now is whether Trump carries the District of Columbia since a meltdown of this magnitude necessarily presages Trump exceeding 75% of the vote in every state.
But one of the four Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for Harris. In catering to these special interest groups, Trump has suffered a catastrophic implosion among his base! It’s still 50/50 if you ask me.
One other plea: don’t make inferences about whether this was a high or low turnout election until all votes are counted in all states. Often elections appear to be low turnout at first because vote by mail states, including California, take over a week (or more) to have their ballots received and counted. I remember many people falsely stating 2016 was low turnout in the immediate aftermath.
Better to mandate a precise date of postmark, ideally four days before Election Day or something, so that people don’t get paranoid about whether the post office will delay their ballot so it doesn’t count. With a good postmark deadline, well over 90% of postal ballots will be in before Election Day, and the few stragglers will still get counted but only matter in cases where there will be a recount anyway.
Having a required postmark date *before election day* would have lots of folks who didn’t get the memo and wouldn’t have their votes counted.
Better to just prohibit exit polling or announcing any results until all the votes are counted, even if it takes a week. I know we’re a country with a short attention span, but fuck accommodating it
The absentee ballots themselves would say the relevant deadline all over them. Based on the amount of mail I got in California informing me about my ballot and deadlines and such, I am not worried about the ability of California to inform people of this.
Now, if I had ever been allowed to vote absentee in Texas, I would be very worried about the state of Texas getting people the relevant information in time.
They should just drop their ballots off then. If you can't put something in the mail a week before the election when mail is picked up daily *or* drive 15 minutes to drop your ballot off, you didn't care much.
I think the issue is more so getting the word about the deadline out to people, who aren’t as plugged in as Slow Borers and frequently procrastinate. I mean I’ve had our ballots for a couple of weeks and didn’t get around to filling them out until yesterday. But I have a car and can go drop it off easy peasy while others can’t. I just think it’s actually better for results everywhere to trickle in over days rather than get immediate, inaccurate results from many places that then change as provisionals and ballots in more generous or less fast places get counted. I think *predicting* results in the media before every last vote is counted should be banned, and that the country should abandon the unrealistic expectation that results will be fast and accurate (unless early results swing for Kamala in which case we should stop counting)
The solution is just to require ballots to arrive by election day. (This is what Colorado law requires and we somehow manage to still have a Democratic governor, a Democratic majority state house, a Democratic majority state senate, two Democratic US Senators, and a Democratic majority federal house delegation, notwithstanding that anything less than allowing ballots to be postmarked on election day and be counted so long as they arrive within 30 days is "revenant fascism.")
My state allows ballots postmarked by election day to count if they arrive up to 2 weeks later, and I don't see the problem with that. Because ballots must still be postmarked by election day to count, the number of valid ballots arriving more than a day or two after is exceedingly small.
Requiring mail ballots to actually arrive by election day is simply a way of saying "Gotcha" to people who wait until the last day or two to mail their vote.
I think it’s best not to require them to arrive by Election Day, but require them to be postmarked by three days before Election Day and still count the ones with early postmarks and late arrival (which will be too few to matter unless there’s a recount anyway).
"Requiring mail ballots to actually arrive by election day is simply a way of saying 'Gotcha' to people who wait until the last day or two to mail their vote."
No, it's a way of saying, "Voting by mail is a convenience, not a right, so either mail your ballot promptly or go drop it off at any of hundreds of convenient 24/7 drop box locations if you want to wait or can't get around to it soon enough." I don't know if there's any polling on the subject, but I strongly suspect that situations where votes keep dribbling in long after election day is a major contributing factor to eroding confidence in the integrity of elections even amongst "normies."
Seconded. There is a tradeoff between convenience and getting vote counts resolved quickly, and I think Colorado does it well.
I would add to this that Colorado allows in-person voting also, so even someone who waits until the last second and has lost their mail ballot can just go vote in-person.
Ah Election Day. For as long as I live I will associate Election Day with being a high school senior in 2000 and before class hearing on radio the singer of Lit say that voting doesn’t really matter & that people shouldn’t bother.
THE NEEDLE IS BACK!
Fukuyama remains right about everything: https://x.com/gideonrachman/status/1853838042194235420
Is there any evidence that a "ground game" matters in a presidential race? I am seeing a lot of backslapping on professional Democratic party-type X about how well the Harris campaign was run but having a sloppy and disorganized campaign doesn't really seem to have held back trump in the past...
I think it matters a little. There are some people who truly need that extra push. On the margin of 0.5% or something maybe? Which could be the difference, but usually is irrelevant.
One bit of hope I'm allowing myself is the fact that Trump has gone all in on mobilizing low propensity voters with an incompetent ground game. Not a great strategic play.
i even hesitat to think that much. And the importance is inverse to the importance of the election.
So far in Ohio, the early vote has seen very large numbers of unaffiliated voters cast their ballots, and around 55% of early voters are women, both groups that appear to be favoring Harris. I don't think Harris takes Ohio, but it could help Sherrod Brown and our redistricting ballot measure.
54% of voters are usually women as noted by Matt above, so 55% is basically normal. Not a bad sign for Brown but nothing worth getting excited about.
I, for one, wouldn't mind a post on the Franco-Prussian War or something.
Agreed. Also the people want more posts about the Habsburgs! Tomas Pueyo punted his to next year. It’s time for patriots to stand up.
Probably just a coincidence but I opened YouTube and this was in the top row: [History of the Habsburgs: The Powerful Rulers of Europe
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGSfk_K64OU).
My new favorite "not very predictive but fun" site: https://sixtysixwards.com/turnout-tracker/
Harris is doing well in Philly, guess that means she wins!
Hey Ben, time to declare it Beer O'Clock
Hi everyone!
Let's have a Slow Boring SoCal meetup on Saturday, November 16, at 1 pm in Shoreline Aquatic Park in Long Beach (next to the Aquarium of the Pacific). We can either rejoice in a Harris victory or freak out over the return of Agent Orange together! I'll have a stuffed toy octopus with me so you can recognize me.
Bo, Lisa C, and Tom Hitchner, does it work for all of you?
Any other local Slow Borers who are interested in joining?
I’m there with bells on!
Ooh exciting! I’m not going to the two conferences I want to go to that are both in New Orleans at the same time (philosophy politics and economics society, or philosophy of science association) so maybe I can convince my partner this is a good idea. Or drop him off with our friends in Long Beach while I come to this!
Very jealous, great group you’re putting together.
If “we” includes innocent Ukrainians slaughtered by Putin’s troops and women who bleed to death due to complications of pregnancy/miscarriages, then no, “we” won’t “get through “ this.
I am hoping that this cycle the smart folks can do a hard double check on betting markets here... election prediction when the race is super close is not a great place for betting markets to add value. It makes no sense to build a great gambling model for an event that's so infrequent.
In sports, gamblers make money by hammering small but reliable edges repeatedly so a small statistical advantage can tell. So one example of this is the style of officiating changed last year to make scoring harder, smart gamblers made some money for a few weeks betting the unders until the books caught up. But of course it would be hard to make this advantage tell if it was just a single game...
The election markets are not large, meaning that if a wealthy person wanted to buy out positions simply as a marketing tactic (not caring about whether the bet is +EV on its own or not), in order to influence public opinion, they can easily do so.
Noah Smith this morning: Here are four good reasons to vote against Trump AND four good reasons to vote for Harris: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/four-reasons-not-to-vote-for-trump
Freddie de Boer this morning: I voted for Jill Stein because the Democrats suck ass, they're soulless corporate shills who stand for nothing and are further right than they were back when I voted for Nader in 2000, all you assholes gotta convince me why I should have voted for Harris and not just against Trump.
Ladies and gentlemen, the reason why I continue to subscribe to Noah and not to Freddie.
The Democratic party has to pick between the far left and moderates who believe in a market based economy. Right now, it's trying to straddle both boats and doing a terrible job.
I honestly believe that every moron who votes for Stein is just a voter who would abstain anyway if she weren't on the ballot. Everyone that is worried she is helping Trump win is extremely misinformed.
Stein voters are have no more influence on the outcome than the idiots who do write in votes for "Free Palestine" or whatever. They are just abstainers.
I don't think is true. I have a relative who voted Nader in 2000 (in a blue state) and has voted Dem every election since.
I’ll read about the election tomorrow morning. And then I’ll get on with my life no matter which deeply-flawed candidate won. The new president will, in some manner, attempt to don the mantle of mandate, despite the polity’s noticeably deep and abiding divides. There will be some violence. There will be some tears. There will be some catastrophism. There will be some public recriminations. There will be takes of all sorts and of all temperatures, mostly dumb. The new president will quickly issue a slew of executive orders; half the county will disapprove.
The new president will do and say some outrageous things. The new president will favor economically ignorant policies. The new president will criticize the federal government. The new president will blunder on the international stage, perhaps dangerously so. The new president’s policies will be challenged in the courts, and will be occasionally struck down. The new president will attempt to define (or declare) a new zeitgeist, but that will utterly fail because our volksgeist, while genuine, is very, very narrow.
None of this will amount to much in the long run.
I mean a Trump presidency with a Dem Congress/Senate/SC would be fine for the most part. Problem is, that’s really unlikely. Whereas a President Harris is unlikely to be empowered to do anything, good or bad.
I certainly hope for a deadlocked government.
Which is perfectly reasonable
But what if Trump actually means what he says about what he wants to do? And what if he surrounded by willing acolytes intent on carrying out his vision in the Executive Branch? And what if a supine Republican Congress, seeing the election results, refuses to stand in the way?
Reflecting on Trump 1.0, you can play Russian roulette, hold the gun to your head, pull the trigger once and nothing fatally bad happens. But you still need to read the Surgeon General's warning on the side of your "Russian Roulette: The Game" box where it says, "past performance is no guarantee of future results."
I’m far more worried about what Harris would do with a compliant Congress. Though I’m not sure what it is you believe Trump wants to do that he actually can do.
Well yes, because slightly higher tax rates on rich people, a modest expansion of the welfare state, and people living in territories becoming full and equal members of the United States are terrible terrible things.
Maybe you missed Harris’s court-packing fantasy.
Yes, I realize you prefer a Supreme Court chosen by President's who never earned a majority put on the Court by Senator's from 9 people each imposing their will on the population.
I simply think the party that wins more votes in 6 out of 7 elections should probably have a majority of Supreme Court Justices, just like while it sucked incredibly for my own views, it made sense, the Supreme Court was majority Republican by time H.W. Bush's term ended.
Our current system has worked pretty well. I doubt you could come up with a better one.
Wow, Ken, this entire comment deserves to be in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Equivalency, False."
"None of this will amount to much in the long run."
I dearly hope you're right, but if Trump wins... I mean, MAYBE it won't amount to much, but how reassuring is that? Say, the risk of Trump destroying American democracy if he wins is "only" 5%. Would you feel comfortable with surgery that has a 5% risk of death?
“Say, the risk of Trump destroying American democracy if he wins is ‘only’ 5%”
Ok, suppose that. (Though I think that unjustifiably pessimistic.)
How should I react if that came to pass?
I mean, preferably with more of a "Trump is a f*cking disaster who should be losing by double digits" and not what you've written above, which is a "meh, both candidates bad" with zero indication that one of them is, yanno, a sh*t-ton worse than the other.
How to prevent Agent Orange from *actually* destroying democracy if he wins? Hell if I know. That's the key question, and it's way above my paygrade. I was going to brainstorm with my fellow Slow Boring and The Bulwark subscribers.
That one is worse than the other is obviously a matter where opinions differ, or polls wouldn’t be so close. Put another way, the judgement of the American people says they’re both about as bad.
Trump tried to overturn a free election. He deliberately spread lies and tried to pressure an elected official (Raffensberger) into "finding" him extra votes in Georgia. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a fact.
Whether or not you think this should be disqualifying is a matter of opinion I guess, in the same way as "should we have denied women the right to vote" is a matter of opinion, but seeing almost half of Americans agree with this opinion is goddamn depressing.
“Whether or not you think this should be disqualifying is a matter of opinion…”
Oh, I think he should have been impeached on January 6th, and convicted the same day. Congress disagreed.
That half the country reasonably sees Trump as the preferable alternative to Democratic Party control of the Executive is a fact that seems to be lost on most Democrats. If Trump wins this election I do not expect the Democratic Party to learn the lesson.
"Please, for the love of God, do not draw strong inferences about American society based on exit poll cross tabs"
Too late, Matt! One of the three Dixville Notch Trump voters was a Mexican-American lesbian -- Harris' support among women, Hispanics, AND the LGBTQ community has clearly imploded and the only question now is whether Trump carries the District of Columbia since a meltdown of this magnitude necessarily presages Trump exceeding 75% of the vote in every state.
But one of the four Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for Harris. In catering to these special interest groups, Trump has suffered a catastrophic implosion among his base! It’s still 50/50 if you ask me.
Interesting. I would not have thought the lesbian population of Dixville to be so high! 😂
I have procured a bottle of bubbly. All that remains to be determined is the mood in which I drink it.
This is why I chose whiskey instead. Feels like it can fit more moods.
Tonight I’d love a post on 25 things any new president can do to unlock housing growth.
Not as ambitious as what you're asking for, but you might like this: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/11/4/5-things-for-the-next-president-to-do
And FB, IG, etc. Seeing this meme with the red & blue hearts asking which you choose 🤦♀️
One other plea: don’t make inferences about whether this was a high or low turnout election until all votes are counted in all states. Often elections appear to be low turnout at first because vote by mail states, including California, take over a week (or more) to have their ballots received and counted. I remember many people falsely stating 2016 was low turnout in the immediate aftermath.
Yeah, I would be in favor of mandating that all ballots need to be in by election day to allow for much faster counting
Better to mandate a precise date of postmark, ideally four days before Election Day or something, so that people don’t get paranoid about whether the post office will delay their ballot so it doesn’t count. With a good postmark deadline, well over 90% of postal ballots will be in before Election Day, and the few stragglers will still get counted but only matter in cases where there will be a recount anyway.
Having a required postmark date *before election day* would have lots of folks who didn’t get the memo and wouldn’t have their votes counted.
Better to just prohibit exit polling or announcing any results until all the votes are counted, even if it takes a week. I know we’re a country with a short attention span, but fuck accommodating it
The absentee ballots themselves would say the relevant deadline all over them. Based on the amount of mail I got in California informing me about my ballot and deadlines and such, I am not worried about the ability of California to inform people of this.
Now, if I had ever been allowed to vote absentee in Texas, I would be very worried about the state of Texas getting people the relevant information in time.
Yeah I mean it would be very hit or miss. Probably not a huge problem in WA either
They should just drop their ballots off then. If you can't put something in the mail a week before the election when mail is picked up daily *or* drive 15 minutes to drop your ballot off, you didn't care much.
I think the issue is more so getting the word about the deadline out to people, who aren’t as plugged in as Slow Borers and frequently procrastinate. I mean I’ve had our ballots for a couple of weeks and didn’t get around to filling them out until yesterday. But I have a car and can go drop it off easy peasy while others can’t. I just think it’s actually better for results everywhere to trickle in over days rather than get immediate, inaccurate results from many places that then change as provisionals and ballots in more generous or less fast places get counted. I think *predicting* results in the media before every last vote is counted should be banned, and that the country should abandon the unrealistic expectation that results will be fast and accurate (unless early results swing for Kamala in which case we should stop counting)
Interesting to note that the WSJ says over 83 million voted already!
But that's down from 2020's 101 million, though many states had exceptional voting rules in 2020.
Yet another example of why de rigueur vote-by-mail states are bad.
In Wisconsin, you absolutely can get a no-reason absentee trivially. Our results will be d-o-n-e done, absent provisionals, by 10pm tonight.
The solution is just to require ballots to arrive by election day. (This is what Colorado law requires and we somehow manage to still have a Democratic governor, a Democratic majority state house, a Democratic majority state senate, two Democratic US Senators, and a Democratic majority federal house delegation, notwithstanding that anything less than allowing ballots to be postmarked on election day and be counted so long as they arrive within 30 days is "revenant fascism.")
My state allows ballots postmarked by election day to count if they arrive up to 2 weeks later, and I don't see the problem with that. Because ballots must still be postmarked by election day to count, the number of valid ballots arriving more than a day or two after is exceedingly small.
Requiring mail ballots to actually arrive by election day is simply a way of saying "Gotcha" to people who wait until the last day or two to mail their vote.
I think it’s best not to require them to arrive by Election Day, but require them to be postmarked by three days before Election Day and still count the ones with early postmarks and late arrival (which will be too few to matter unless there’s a recount anyway).
"Requiring mail ballots to actually arrive by election day is simply a way of saying 'Gotcha' to people who wait until the last day or two to mail their vote."
No, it's a way of saying, "Voting by mail is a convenience, not a right, so either mail your ballot promptly or go drop it off at any of hundreds of convenient 24/7 drop box locations if you want to wait or can't get around to it soon enough." I don't know if there's any polling on the subject, but I strongly suspect that situations where votes keep dribbling in long after election day is a major contributing factor to eroding confidence in the integrity of elections even amongst "normies."
yep I'm in one of those 100% vote by mail states, and I'm fine with requiring them all to be received by election day.
My only concern would be what about overseas military.
My understanding from my mil partner is that overseas military can fax in many states.
Seconded. There is a tradeoff between convenience and getting vote counts resolved quickly, and I think Colorado does it well.
I would add to this that Colorado allows in-person voting also, so even someone who waits until the last second and has lost their mail ballot can just go vote in-person.
In retrospect, my "why" should have been "where". I'm at home before going to work the polls and thus severely uncaffeinated.
Ah Election Day. For as long as I live I will associate Election Day with being a high school senior in 2000 and before class hearing on radio the singer of Lit say that voting doesn’t really matter & that people shouldn’t bother.
You had me for the first half…
He was indeed his own worst enemy