My view is that this is a bet we’d take again. Copied from my twitter:
Sam Bankman-Fried et al spent $13 million on an I’d estimate an additional 25% chance for Carrick Flynn to win. Assuming an 80% chance to win in the national, that’s $60 million to win house seat on expectation for someone who cares deeply about pandemic prevention + great record + all the information learned in the campaign. My 25% comes from the metaculus estimate of 30% (which I think we should accept as a reasonable guess) assuming a 5% chance of him winning without the money.
Should Sam spend that much to increase the chances on many house seats? I don’t know, probably? How many seats do you need to pass pandemic bills? Also the first person has much higher marginal value. This looks like a choice that those involved would make again.
Also, this has great signalling value. If I were in a tough race in the next 2 years, I’d be pushing for Pandemic Legislation and negotiating for some money. “If he’s willing to blow $13 mill on a nobody, if I back this legislation, maybe he’ll back me”
(In this case, given the crypto backlash, it’s surely possible SBF’s donations hurt Carrick’s election chances. I don’t want to suggest this was actually the case, just noting that the confidence interval should include the possibility of a negative effect, here.)
Signaling is a more interesting idea, but raises more questions about effectiveness. How much is it worth spending to get someone elected on the basis that they’ve endorsed pandemic prevention for self-interested reasons?
Fundraising is particularly effective in open primaries, such as this one. From the linked article:
But in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. That matches up with other research suggesting that advertising can have a serious effect on how people vote if the candidate buying the ads is not already well-known and if the election at hand is less predetermined along partisan lines.
Basically, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, advertising is useful for making voters aware that a candidate or an issue exists at all. Once you’ve established that you’re real and that enough people are paying attention to you to give you a decent chunk of money, you reach a point of diminishing returns (i.e., Paul Ryan did not have to spend $13 million to earn his seat). But a congressperson running in a close race, with no incumbent — or someone running for small-potatoes local offices that voters often just skip on the ballot — is probably getting a lot more bang for their buck.
Although early fundraising could be correlational with success rather than causal, if it’s an indicator of who can generate support from the electorate.
(I’d be pretty confident there’s an effect like this but don’t know how strong, and haven’t tried to understand if the article you’re quoting from tries to correct for it.)
Yeah good question, but maybe 25%. So overall it’s about $60M for a seat. I really think Carrick had no chance without this money (there were several other crypto people + conventional candidates)
I believe there might have been too many mail shots, say, but I don’t beleive Carrick was hurt overall, because without SBF noone woudl know who he was.
I think your cost-effectiveness analysis is a little bit misleading: You’re assuming there was a binary choice between spending $0 and having a 5% chance of a seat or spending $13mn and having a 30% chance*. This is not the case, though, as they could have spent anything between those two amounts. It is quite reasonable that spending say $3mn would have led to something between 25-28% chance of winning and spending $10mn probably to something like 29.9%, so the effectiveness of most of the $13mn spent is much lower than you are suggesting.
*I’m much more sceptical than you though that the Metaculus estimate is a reasonable guess: It seems plausible to me that there could be a significant overlap between people highly excited about Flynn and people estimating on this question, which could very well have biased the estimate in Flynn’s favour.
It might be cheaper than this because perhaps most of the value was created by some small proportion of the money. Perhaps if you spent 60 million across 60 races, you’d expect more than 1 pro pandemic preparedness seat.
It might be more costly than this because metaculus was miscalibrated. I find this a little frustrating because “maybe the well-calibrated forecasters were wrong” is an exceptionally cheap attack against the best forecasting we had ahead of time. That said, we’ll find out in future races anyway.
On balance I reckon the first bullet point dominates the second, so I reckon this is an overestimate of costs. It probably costs less than $60 mil to campaign on expectation.
Perhaps it was reasonable in prospect, but not in retrospect. He lost by a lot. So we can see now that the chance of winning was more like 10%. Whereas, if someone does a (generally two-year) stint in the state house, they can build up the resources required for a run that is credible, with a >30% chance of success. It will almost always make sense to build a public persona beforehand, in that manner, or another, rather than running “out of nowhere” again. Also, you didn’t take into account the diminishing returns of funding, and I think in future, folks will not need to spend as much per constituent.
Yglesias is more the expert here, but I would question whether boldpac explains Carrick being outvoted by 2x. Also, presumably there are only like 50 competitive primaries each cycle (with new seat, no incumbent), and many of them will include an opponent who is as strong as Salinas for one reason or another.
A number of people have downvote this, and while I now think my number was a little low, I don’t think it was really wrong. So I stick by my now edited number. If you downvoted, what do you think was wrong?
Also, this feels a little arbitrary? Do people not think that lots of money was thrown at a race to try and win it and that whatever we call that it is what it is? Are we arguing over the behaviour or what I called the behaviour?)
Thank you for this statement. I am including the current results from FEC filings here. It is clear that there was not only a lot of money spent to buy the election, but there was a good deal of subterfuge. Contributions to other PACs from Protect our Future were made just late enough to escape reporting until after the election.
One of the mysteries about this election was what the Justice Unites US Pac was. It spent almost $850,000 on canvassers for Flynn and touted itself as an AAPI led and run organization. Campaign filings now show that money for the PAC came exclusively from Protect our Future and supported only one candidate. Protect our Future spent over $10 million supporting Flynn and almost a million dollars against Andrea Salinas, the victor in this race.
These current filings also confirm that Bankman-Fried donated $6 million to the House Democratic Majority PAC just before that PAC gave an inexplicable $1 million to Flynn.
This was neither effective nor altruistic. It was an experiment in whether big money could overcome the unquestionable advantages of other candidates.
edited a lot due to comments
My view is that this is a bet we’d take again. Copied from my twitter:
Sam Bankman-Fried et al spent $13 million on an I’d estimate an additional 25% chance for Carrick Flynn to win. Assuming an 80% chance to win in the national, that’s $60 million to win house seat on expectation for someone who cares deeply about pandemic prevention + great record + all the information learned in the campaign. My 25% comes from the metaculus estimate of 30% (which I think we should accept as a reasonable guess) assuming a 5% chance of him winning without the money.
Should Sam spend that much to increase the chances on many house seats? I don’t know, probably? How many seats do you need to pass pandemic bills? Also the first person has much higher marginal value. This looks like a choice that those involved would make again.
Also, this has great signalling value. If I were in a tough race in the next 2 years, I’d be pushing for Pandemic Legislation and negotiating for some money. “If he’s willing to blow $13 mill on a nobody, if I back this legislation, maybe he’ll back me”
correct me if I’m wrong
How much did the $13 million shift the odds? That’s the key question. The conventional political science on this is skeptical that donations have much of an effect on outcomes (albeit it’s a bit more positive about lower profile candidates like Carrick) https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/
(In this case, given the crypto backlash, it’s surely possible SBF’s donations hurt Carrick’s election chances. I don’t want to suggest this was actually the case, just noting that the confidence interval should include the possibility of a negative effect, here.)
Signaling is a more interesting idea, but raises more questions about effectiveness. How much is it worth spending to get someone elected on the basis that they’ve endorsed pandemic prevention for self-interested reasons?
Fundraising is particularly effective in open primaries, such as this one. From the linked article:
Although early fundraising could be correlational with success rather than causal, if it’s an indicator of who can generate support from the electorate.
(I’d be pretty confident there’s an effect like this but don’t know how strong, and haven’t tried to understand if the article you’re quoting from tries to correct for it.)
Yeah good question, but maybe 25%. So overall it’s about $60M for a seat. I really think Carrick had no chance without this money (there were several other crypto people + conventional candidates)
I believe there might have been too many mail shots, say, but I don’t beleive Carrick was hurt overall, because without SBF noone woudl know who he was.
I think your cost-effectiveness analysis is a little bit misleading: You’re assuming there was a binary choice between spending $0 and having a 5% chance of a seat or spending $13mn and having a 30% chance*. This is not the case, though, as they could have spent anything between those two amounts. It is quite reasonable that spending say $3mn would have led to something between 25-28% chance of winning and spending $10mn probably to something like 29.9%, so the effectiveness of most of the $13mn spent is much lower than you are suggesting.
*I’m much more sceptical than you though that the Metaculus estimate is a reasonable guess: It seems plausible to me that there could be a significant overlap between people highly excited about Flynn and people estimating on this question, which could very well have biased the estimate in Flynn’s favour.
So I’m hearing the following:
It might be cheaper than this because perhaps most of the value was created by some small proportion of the money. Perhaps if you spent 60 million across 60 races, you’d expect more than 1 pro pandemic preparedness seat.
It might be more costly than this because metaculus was miscalibrated. I find this a little frustrating because “maybe the well-calibrated forecasters were wrong” is an exceptionally cheap attack against the best forecasting we had ahead of time. That said, we’ll find out in future races anyway.
On balance I reckon the first bullet point dominates the second, so I reckon this is an overestimate of costs. It probably costs less than $60 mil to campaign on expectation.
What cost effectiveness guesses would you give?
What do you think the cost-effectiveness was?
Perhaps it was reasonable in prospect, but not in retrospect. He lost by a lot. So we can see now that the chance of winning was more like 10%. Whereas, if someone does a (generally two-year) stint in the state house, they can build up the resources required for a run that is credible, with a >30% chance of success. It will almost always make sense to build a public persona beforehand, in that manner, or another, rather than running “out of nowhere” again. Also, you didn’t take into account the diminishing returns of funding, and I think in future, folks will not need to spend as much per constituent.
Yglesias argues in a different thread that Salinas was more competitive than expected for fairly arbitrary reasons.
Yglesias is more the expert here, but I would question whether boldpac explains Carrick being outvoted by 2x. Also, presumably there are only like 50 competitive primaries each cycle (with new seat, no incumbent), and many of them will include an opponent who is as strong as Salinas for one reason or another.
A number of people have downvote this, and while I now think my number was a little low, I don’t think it was really wrong. So I stick by my now edited number. If you downvoted, what do you think was wrong?
You might want to use more political sensitivity re the perception of “buying” a seat.
Do you prefer the current wording?
Also, this feels a little arbitrary? Do people not think that lots of money was thrown at a race to try and win it and that whatever we call that it is what it is? Are we arguing over the behaviour or what I called the behaviour?)
I think it’s immoral to (attempt to) buy seats in a democracy; it goes against my values.
Fundraising in order to try to make sure voters are aware of your candidate and his message is fine, but “buying seats” isn’t.
Thank you for this statement. I am including the current results from FEC filings here. It is clear that there was not only a lot of money spent to buy the election, but there was a good deal of subterfuge. Contributions to other PACs from Protect our Future were made just late enough to escape reporting until after the election.
One of the mysteries about this election was what the Justice Unites US Pac was. It spent almost $850,000 on canvassers for Flynn and touted itself as an AAPI led and run organization. Campaign filings now show that money for the PAC came exclusively from Protect our Future and supported only one candidate. Protect our Future spent over $10 million supporting Flynn and almost a million dollars against Andrea Salinas, the victor in this race.
These current filings also confirm that Bankman-Fried donated $6 million to the House Democratic Majority PAC just before that PAC gave an inexplicable $1 million to Flynn.
This was neither effective nor altruistic. It was an experiment in whether big money could overcome the unquestionable advantages of other candidates.