Conditional on the campaign not having major relevant private information (e.g., expecting major endorsements), my instinct is about 5% (and my off-the-cuff low-research median estimate of his vote share is 10%). However, there’s so little public information so far that (in a prediction market, very roughly) I probably wouldn’t buy above 1% or sell below 20%.
He has several times more funding and twitter followers then his next nearest rival. There’s more compelling media on his website and social media, including his video. His campaign team is unusually strong. Good credentials for congress (Yale Law, experience designing policy, grew up near the district) and a compelling life story. Also, good policies on pandemics and otherwise. So he’s got better than one in five.
See Peter Gebauer’s comment above — do you think Carrick has a better chance than these competitors? Two crypto millionaires, two state reps, and a county commissioner. The three candidates with publicly available fundraising info now have $129K, $600K, and $2M (see above for which is which).
Seems like a tough field where Carrick would not be the favorite, but I don’t know much about the base rates here. Does anybody know more about the outcomes of similar races, preferably for Congressional seats between state politicians and well-credentialed political outsiders?
I was looking at the finances here, rather than at the banks of the crypto self-funders, which are admittedly larger. Carrick’s ad is better than theirads. This one who has lent himself $2M has had like five previous failed runs, including runs with various minor parties—I don’t think he has a serious chance. Carrick’s funding position is much better than the two state reps. His story, team and social media presence is probably better than all opponents. He’s not some sort of dark horse candidate.
Based on what people have said here, I think Carrick sounds like a great candidate who would make a wonderful representative. However, my impression from loosely following primaries from time to time is that local reputation matters a lot. Self funders tend not to do well because they tend not to have real local support. Does Carrick have a strong base of support or message to compete against the likes of a popular progressive state rep like Salinas (I don’t believe we have fundraising numbers from her yet)? If anyone knows of a race where a similar candidate won in similar circumstances, I’d love to hear about it.
The first similar race that comes to mind for me is when Cenk Uygur ran in California in 2020. Cenk moved to the district to run for an open seat and had large financial support from his fanbase built running a progressive independent media outlet known as The Young Turks. But he only got around 6% of the vote with $1.7 million spent. Granted, there are a couple of differences here: California has Top Two/jungle primaries which means all candidates are on the same primary ballot; it was a special election which tends to have lower turnout; Cenk tends to be pretty abrasive; he never lived in the district before; the election was in a swing district; and Cenk had controversial misogynistic past blog posts from years ago when he identified as a conservative Republican and was hit hard in the media over it. He was running against a woman state rep with local party support who ultimately won the primary (although she ultimately lost the general election by a few hundred votes). I wasn’t able to find numbers for what she spent in the special election primary but she got over $5 million in all of 2020 so maybe less than half of that?
I agree that Carrick loses to Salinas on some dimensions. He also beats her on some dimensions, like story, ads and social media. I think both have reasonably good chances.
I was trying to quantify your verbal claims via my intuition of what people might mean when they say those words, and it turns out I did pretty well! ;)
Would you like to place numbers here? I’m at a pretty high probability personally, maybe more like 40% than your implied 5%.
Conditional on the campaign not having major relevant private information (e.g., expecting major endorsements), my instinct is about 5% (and my off-the-cuff low-research median estimate of his vote share is 10%). However, there’s so little public information so far that (in a prediction market, very roughly) I probably wouldn’t buy above 1% or sell below 20%.
(How did I imply 5%?)
He has several times more funding and twitter followers then his next nearest rival. There’s more compelling media on his website and social media, including his video. His campaign team is unusually strong. Good credentials for congress (Yale Law, experience designing policy, grew up near the district) and a compelling life story. Also, good policies on pandemics and otherwise. So he’s got better than one in five.
See Peter Gebauer’s comment above — do you think Carrick has a better chance than these competitors? Two crypto millionaires, two state reps, and a county commissioner. The three candidates with publicly available fundraising info now have $129K, $600K, and $2M (see above for which is which).
Seems like a tough field where Carrick would not be the favorite, but I don’t know much about the base rates here. Does anybody know more about the outcomes of similar races, preferably for Congressional seats between state politicians and well-credentialed political outsiders?
I was looking at the finances here, rather than at the banks of the crypto self-funders, which are admittedly larger. Carrick’s ad is better than their ads. This one who has lent himself $2M has had like five previous failed runs, including runs with various minor parties—I don’t think he has a serious chance. Carrick’s funding position is much better than the two state reps. His story, team and social media presence is probably better than all opponents. He’s not some sort of dark horse candidate.
Based on what people have said here, I think Carrick sounds like a great candidate who would make a wonderful representative. However, my impression from loosely following primaries from time to time is that local reputation matters a lot. Self funders tend not to do well because they tend not to have real local support. Does Carrick have a strong base of support or message to compete against the likes of a popular progressive state rep like Salinas (I don’t believe we have fundraising numbers from her yet)? If anyone knows of a race where a similar candidate won in similar circumstances, I’d love to hear about it.
The first similar race that comes to mind for me is when Cenk Uygur ran in California in 2020. Cenk moved to the district to run for an open seat and had large financial support from his fanbase built running a progressive independent media outlet known as The Young Turks. But he only got around 6% of the vote with $1.7 million spent. Granted, there are a couple of differences here: California has Top Two/jungle primaries which means all candidates are on the same primary ballot; it was a special election which tends to have lower turnout; Cenk tends to be pretty abrasive; he never lived in the district before; the election was in a swing district; and Cenk had controversial misogynistic past blog posts from years ago when he identified as a conservative Republican and was hit hard in the media over it. He was running against a woman state rep with local party support who ultimately won the primary (although she ultimately lost the general election by a few hundred votes). I wasn’t able to find numbers for what she spent in the special election primary but she got over $5 million in all of 2020 so maybe less than half of that?
I agree that Carrick loses to Salinas on some dimensions. He also beats her on some dimensions, like story, ads and social media. I think both have reasonably good chances.
I was trying to quantify your verbal claims via my intuition of what people might mean when they say those words, and it turns out I did pretty well! ;)