This isn’t quite relevant, but I think the election cycle was sort of mishandled by the EA community.
It was mostly sort of ignored, except for some last minute stuff with people trying to put together efforts to fight Trump. Some people jumped quickly on bandwagons and picked a side. Other people just took a blank “politics is the mindkiller!!” stance and refused to care.
Ideally, we should have a rational and serious approach from the outset, looking at the candidates and seeing if there is anything that EA philosophy decisively says that we should do. And when the window opens, then we come together and say “hey, here’s our analysis, here’s our thoughts, this is what effective altruism says about the election.” And push that message as far as we can.
I don’t think a rationalist message/meme would have been successful at convincing hundreds of thousands of working class whites not to vote for Trump. Rationalism has it’s place in deciding what to do about an election, but I don’t think EA messaging is at all useful in influencing a mass audience.
We didn’t need to convince hundreds of thousands of working class whites. Just increase turnout among Berners or change the primary outcomes or show Thiel the error of his ways. There’s lots of avenues to do things.
Thiel had essentially nothing to do with the outcome of this election.
This was not primarily a turnout issue. Black turnout was down, but Hispanic turnout was up. White turnout appears relatively flat (both Democratic and Republican white turnout), but we’ll know more when actual person level vote history is released. Regardless, EA messaging is not the right way to appeal to Berners.
The easiest way to shift the outcome of the election would have been to change public opinion by a point or two by shifting the narrative of the race in the final week. Comey was successful at doing this.
Thiel had essentially nothing to do with the outcome of this election.
Well he gave about 0.15% of their money, and campaign funding is fairly important. The important thing is that in future campaigns, funding may influence the outcome of elections.
This was not primarily a turnout issue. Black turnout was down, but Hispanic turnout was up. White turnout appears relatively flat (both Democratic and Republican white turnout), but we’ll know more when actual person level vote history is released.
It was all about turnout, fewer people voted Democrat than in 2012 and 2008. Trump won just by holding onto similar GOP vote totals from previous elections while people dropped Clinton.
Regardless, EA messaging is not the right way to appeal to Berners.
I don’t know what the right type of messaging is and I don’t know who we will need to appeal to in 4 or 8 years. My point is that there are probably bigger things to be done besides phone banking.
The easiest way to shift the outcome of the election would have been to change public opinion by a point or two by shifting the narrative of the race in the final week. Comey was successful at doing this.
That’s a good point but I think it was an exceptional case as the email story had been unfolding for many months and people were already primed to watch for news about it. It’s also very hard to actually do it intentionally if you don’t have some big news you can release.
At most, campaign funds would have moved this a point or two. Campaign funding has little impact on presidential elections; Clinton far outspent Trump and Trump was far outspent in the primary election. If we assume an effective size of 5% for all of Trump’s money and assume no diminishing marginal return (both very generous assumptions), that 0.15% is 0.0075 percentage points in movement. The outcome was decided by 1, so that’s over two orders of magnitude lower than what was needed under generous assumptions. It was probably more orders of magnitude lower.
That’s not true at all.Trump gained substantially in rural areas with mostly white people where Obama had won or performed substantially better. I mean, if turnout had magically been higher among Democrats but not Republicans, we would have won, but you don’t get to do that. The composition of the electorate was roughly the same (minus some black people plus some Hispanics) as 2012. It’s conceivably possible that without the drop in black turnout, we would have won, but this was inevitable without the first black president running. There is overwhelming evidence that attitudes among the white working class moved against us. Hence our drop in the midwest.
I agree on the point that phone banking does not make much of a difference.
There were several instances that fall under the same pattern: the email story, the hollywood access tapes, the debates, probably the apprentice tapes if they had appeared, and potentially the wikileak emails, though it’s much harder to gauge their effect size.
It is true. Romney got 61 million votes and McCain got 60 million. Obama got 69 million and 66 million in 2008 and 2012 respectively. This year, Trump got 60 million votes and Hillary got 61 million.
There were several instances that fall under the same pattern: the email story, the hollywood access tapes, the debates, probably the apprentice tapes if they had appeared, and potentially the wikileak emails, though it’s much harder to gauge their effect size.
Well, depending on how early before the election you want to consider. The debates for instance were all more than a week before the election. Again, it’s basically impossible to put effort into making things like this happen, and the best way to do so might simply be conventional ways of building political clout and awareness.
You can’t look at aggregate turnout numbers being different and assume the composition of turnout was different. You’re making the assumption that there was 0 movement from Obama to Trump or from Romney to Clinton; both of which are definitely incorrect as evidenced by polling.
Secondly, turnout is much higher than that appears; much more will come in from California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado. It always takes these states forever to report. So the turnout numbers now are misleading.
This isn’t quite relevant, but I think the election cycle was sort of mishandled by the EA community.
It was mostly sort of ignored, except for some last minute stuff with people trying to put together efforts to fight Trump. Some people jumped quickly on bandwagons and picked a side. Other people just took a blank “politics is the mindkiller!!” stance and refused to care.
Ideally, we should have a rational and serious approach from the outset, looking at the candidates and seeing if there is anything that EA philosophy decisively says that we should do. And when the window opens, then we come together and say “hey, here’s our analysis, here’s our thoughts, this is what effective altruism says about the election.” And push that message as far as we can.
I don’t think a rationalist message/meme would have been successful at convincing hundreds of thousands of working class whites not to vote for Trump. Rationalism has it’s place in deciding what to do about an election, but I don’t think EA messaging is at all useful in influencing a mass audience.
We didn’t need to convince hundreds of thousands of working class whites. Just increase turnout among Berners or change the primary outcomes or show Thiel the error of his ways. There’s lots of avenues to do things.
Thiel had essentially nothing to do with the outcome of this election.
This was not primarily a turnout issue. Black turnout was down, but Hispanic turnout was up. White turnout appears relatively flat (both Democratic and Republican white turnout), but we’ll know more when actual person level vote history is released. Regardless, EA messaging is not the right way to appeal to Berners.
The easiest way to shift the outcome of the election would have been to change public opinion by a point or two by shifting the narrative of the race in the final week. Comey was successful at doing this.
Well he gave about 0.15% of their money, and campaign funding is fairly important. The important thing is that in future campaigns, funding may influence the outcome of elections.
It was all about turnout, fewer people voted Democrat than in 2012 and 2008. Trump won just by holding onto similar GOP vote totals from previous elections while people dropped Clinton.
I don’t know what the right type of messaging is and I don’t know who we will need to appeal to in 4 or 8 years. My point is that there are probably bigger things to be done besides phone banking.
That’s a good point but I think it was an exceptional case as the email story had been unfolding for many months and people were already primed to watch for news about it. It’s also very hard to actually do it intentionally if you don’t have some big news you can release.
At most, campaign funds would have moved this a point or two. Campaign funding has little impact on presidential elections; Clinton far outspent Trump and Trump was far outspent in the primary election. If we assume an effective size of 5% for all of Trump’s money and assume no diminishing marginal return (both very generous assumptions), that 0.15% is 0.0075 percentage points in movement. The outcome was decided by 1, so that’s over two orders of magnitude lower than what was needed under generous assumptions. It was probably more orders of magnitude lower.
That’s not true at all.Trump gained substantially in rural areas with mostly white people where Obama had won or performed substantially better. I mean, if turnout had magically been higher among Democrats but not Republicans, we would have won, but you don’t get to do that. The composition of the electorate was roughly the same (minus some black people plus some Hispanics) as 2012. It’s conceivably possible that without the drop in black turnout, we would have won, but this was inevitable without the first black president running. There is overwhelming evidence that attitudes among the white working class moved against us. Hence our drop in the midwest.
I agree on the point that phone banking does not make much of a difference.
There were several instances that fall under the same pattern: the email story, the hollywood access tapes, the debates, probably the apprentice tapes if they had appeared, and potentially the wikileak emails, though it’s much harder to gauge their effect size.
It is true. Romney got 61 million votes and McCain got 60 million. Obama got 69 million and 66 million in 2008 and 2012 respectively. This year, Trump got 60 million votes and Hillary got 61 million.
Well, depending on how early before the election you want to consider. The debates for instance were all more than a week before the election. Again, it’s basically impossible to put effort into making things like this happen, and the best way to do so might simply be conventional ways of building political clout and awareness.
You can’t look at aggregate turnout numbers being different and assume the composition of turnout was different. You’re making the assumption that there was 0 movement from Obama to Trump or from Romney to Clinton; both of which are definitely incorrect as evidenced by polling.
Secondly, turnout is much higher than that appears; much more will come in from California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado. It always takes these states forever to report. So the turnout numbers now are misleading.