Voting costs time and attention, arguably the only resources everyone is short on. The compensation is implicit, ephemeral, and uncertain. Never make the mistake of thinking you can predict exactly how much other people will behave when the price is subjective and wrapped in uncertainty.
A democracy is an endless cascade of institutions designed to pick winners. Those winners are themselves a product of the rules as much, if not more, than the preferences of voters. Rules will inevitably be gamed, sometimes in manners that seem unfair at best, antithetical to the ambitions of democracy at their worst. A good rule of thumb, however, is that the more unfair an outcome seems, the more fragile it is. A minority party that has gerrymandered voting districts to the hilt might have disproportionate power one day, but they are exactly one exogenous shock away from a electoral cascade event. Any political party is never more than one election away from the dustbin of history.
Polling is increasingly challenging and it’s hard not to feel like they are always fighting the last war. How do you find out what people want in a world where, as previously mentioned, time and attention are scarce? How do you poll people who won’t answer the phone and, even worse, those who do answer phone are decidedly different from those who do? Same thing for people on Facebook. Same thing for people at the mall. Same thing for anyone who uses one tool or media instead of another. It’s never been easier to learn about an exact subset of people, while never harder to learn about everyone.
The electoral college is an extremely dumb peculiar institution. Tuesday could be a tie or a two point differential, but the most likely outcome is a roughly 80 point blowout. The catch being that the blowout could go either way.
I voted (early) for Harris/Walz. I hope they win, but not sure I can say much else for sure. Democracy is hard.
Economist Writing Every Day 