There’s a weird detail I see in this post that seems to overemphasize the campaign’s success:
Yes, Carrick lost. But he came in second out of nine, despite several factors pushing pretty strongly against him. Had things shaken out differently on a few key factors, he could have won.
and
So the fact that Carrick came in second, despite several (in the future, mostly avoidable) factors strongly pushing against him, and no comparable unique factors pushing in his favor, makes me more optimistic about the prospects of any future EAs who decide to run. To be concrete, my personal best guess is that >30% of American EAs would have at least a decent shot (say, >20%) of making it into Congress if they chose to dedicate themselves to their local community and spend time practicing the appropriate communication skills.
However, Carrick only received half as many votes as the winning candidate (results). Maybe this wasn’t immediately clear as the data was tentative, but I find it hard to update much on this data.
Hm… of 7.4% of students who are familiar with EA, only 17.6% of those students (1.3%/7.3%) are pro-EA and 82% are not. What fraction did we expect here?