2016 only one candidate had any sort of policy at all about farmed animals, so it didn’t require a very extensive policy analysis to figure out who is preferable.
Beware of unintended consequences, though. The path from “Nice things are written about X on a candidate’s promotional materials” to “Overall, X improved” is a very circuitous one in human politics.
The same is true for other EA focus areas.
A lot of people in EA seem to assume, without a thorough argument, that direct support for certain political tribes is good for all EA causes. I would like to see some effort put into something like a quasi realistic simulation of human political processes to back up claims like this. (Not that I am demanding specific evidence before I will believe these claims—just that it would be a good idea). Real-world human politicking seems to be full of crucial considerations.
I also feel like when we talk about human political issues, we lack an understanding of, or don’t bother to think about, the causal dynamics behind how politics works in humans. I am specifically talking about things like signalling
I think there’s a lot of improvement to be had in the area of “refining which direction we are pushing in”.
Was there ever a well-prosecuted debate about whether EA should support Clinton over Trump, or did we just sort of stumble into it because the correct side is so obvious?