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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26859 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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I Am Not Immune to Propaganda

I was wrong.

I'm bad with numbers, but it feels pretty likely to me. Is that 70%-80%? I don't think I'd say 90%, the electoral college situation does give me some hesitation. By "inevitable" I mean "I don't see anything short of a black swan event shifting the outcome from where it's currently headed," not "I'm 100% sure of this specific outcome."

I furthermore said:

Insofar as Harris has not (yet?) done anything blatantly unconstitutional, I also think it is a little more likely than not (55%? 60%?) that a true electoral win from Trump could still see his inauguration prevented by his opponents, hook or crook. This could potentially be done by preventing an apparent electoral victory simply by thumbing the scales in a few key states.

I rarely "put a number on it." If I had a head for numbers, I would probably have gone into tech instead of becoming a professional wordcel. I don't know what "80%" feels like, the way so many people seem to. But lately I have been trying to, if not quantify my predictions, at least hold myself more accountable for them. I would like to be better at predicting things, partly because I want to become a bit less risk-averse. That means hedging less, and stating more, and looking back at why I was right or wrong.

There is of course still time for Trump's opponents to prevent his inauguration, or try. The fact that the major news networks refused to certify his clear and overwhelming victory for many hours after it was obvious even to them, definitely made me worry that we were in for a repeat of 2020. Instead, we got a repeat of 2016. We do still have to make it two months without lawfare or rioting hindering the process, but the way things are looking this morning, I'm much less confident about this. (Probably my next substantive question is, "what will Jack Smith try next?")

So, what led me to these errors? I don't know! But I have some working theories.

Pessimism: I did not want Kamala Harris to become the President. Politically, my adult life has been a string of disappointments. So my priors on "the candidate I like least will win the election" are high, even though I know rationally that whether or not I like a candidate has very little to do with their electability. I also know many people who are in the habit of predicting that things will happen and, when pressed, will explain that they want those things to happen.

Insufficient Skepticism: Probably anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Motte knows that I mistrust corporate news media a lot. I am even aware that polls are politically slanted. And yet, somehow, every time I went looking into the polls behind the media's unapologetic shilling for Harris, I came away thinking, "even if that result is wrong, surely it's not so wrong that Trump could actually pull this off." And maybe this just goes back to my difficulty with numbers. But I am such a skeptical person by nature that it feels too convenient to conclude that, no, I need to be even more skeptical.

Superstition: Early yesterday evening, when it became apparent that the "blue wall" was nowhere to be seen, a family member said to me, "he might actually do this!" And I found myself reluctant to agree because I didn't want to jinx it. This is stupid, and I have a hard time seeing how it could have fed into my actual predictions, but combined with the pessimism (above) I apparently have a reflexive resistance to agreeing that something could actually come out the way I want it to.

But maybe you have some different theories? I'm open to suggestions!

Now--all of that said, I do have to congratulate myself on one (possibly ego-protective) thing:

I never did put any money on Harris.

Part of my process this time was telling myself: "you know she's going to win, so you can make some money on it. Plus, if she loses, you'll be happy, so you won't mind the pecuniary loss. Now is the perfect time to finally get into those prediction markets Scott Alexander is always talking about!"

But I couldn't do it. I had initially thought to make myself a killing by betting $10,000, but I found myself feeling too risk-averse. What about $1,000? Or $100? Every time I opened up the necessary apps to start the process, I talked myself out of it.

So did I really think Kamala was going to win? If I wasn't willing to put any skin in the game, did I really believe what I said I believed? I think I did! It feels like I did. But I can't dismiss the possibility that my instincts are better at math than my conscious thoughts. I saved myself thousands of dollars by being pessimistic, skeptical, maybe even a little superstitious. And I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Honestly, I was nonplussed at how convinced The Motte was about a Kamala victory in the predictions subthread. Most picked Harris, and even those who picked Trump expressed less confidence than the prediction markets, which were about 65% Trump at the time.

My guess? I don't think you guys are susceptible to propaganda so much as addicted to the black pill. This is a very dour message board. So I agree with the second half of your post more than the headline.

The prediction markets obviously had a mild bias in favour of Trump in that:

  • You needed crypto to use Polymarket, which means it has a more pro-Trump userbase who are vulnerable to wishcasting.
  • There was an identified French whale who did not appear an entirely rational actor betting on Trump. So the "trust prediction markets" view is slightly more pro-Harris than the actual market prices.

Remind me what the black pill is again ?

Capitalroom’s posts.

Red Pill and Blue pill originally derive from the matrix films. Red pill means accepting reality, blue pill means lying to yourself. People adapted this to other contexts, one of the prominent ones being the general anti-feminist backlash in the mid-2010s, with an additional resonance from "Red" being the conservative color and "Blue" being the Progressive color post-2000.

As the culture war heated up post 2014, and a lot of people perceived the world to be more or less falling apart around them, the "Black Pill" rose to prominence: Black in this case meaning despair, an acceptance of defeat, the belief that things can't get better, only worse. "Black Pilled" means you're despairing of the present situation and have little to no hope for the future. "White pilled" means the opposite.

Everything is as bad or worse than it seems, and there is no hope.

Internet speak for "self-indulgent extreme pessimism".

I never did put any money on Harris.

Part of my process this time was telling myself: "you know she's going to win, so you can make some money on it. Plus, if she loses, you'll be happy, so you won't mind the pecuniary loss. Now is the perfect time to finally get into those prediction markets Scott Alexander is always talking about!"

But I couldn't do it. I had initially thought to make myself a killing by betting $10,000, but I found myself feeling too risk-averse. What about $1,000? Or $100? Every time I opened up the necessary apps to start the process, I talked myself out of it.

So did I really think Kamala was going to win? If I wasn't willing to put any skin in the game, did I really believe what I said I believed? I think I did! It feels like I did. But I can't dismiss the possibility that my instincts are better at math than my conscious thoughts. I saved myself thousands of dollars by being pessimistic, skeptical, maybe even a little superstitious. And I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Long time reader, first-time poster. I'll spare everyone my political treatise as it's pretty indistinct from that of many people here (classical liberal/small-l libertarian, more anti-Trump's enemies than pro-Trump as such but still ultimately pulling for him, etc.), but I likewise thought Harris had it in the bag and emotionally hedged in her favor to the tune of a cool $1,000 — the largest bet of my life.

Attribute it to the lingering high after Trump's win if you must, but even after having an (admittedly abbreviated) night to sleep on it, I remain oddly unmoved about the loss. Given that I've been known to seethe over lost bets as low as $25 for the better part of an afternoon, that's saying something.

Probably anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Motte knows that I mistrust corporate news media a lot. I am even aware that polls are politically slanted. And yet, somehow, every time I went looking into the polls behind the media's unapologetic shilling for Harris, I came away thinking, "even if that result is wrong, surely it's not so wrong that Trump could actually pull this off." And maybe this just goes back to my difficulty with numbers. But I am such a skeptical person by nature that it feels too convenient to conclude that, no, I need to be even more skeptical.

Nara my friend. It was not that hard. Trump barely lost in 2020 in spite of terrible polls, and was tied in 2024. He was doing palpably better in both the polls and the vibes. Ergo.

The most accurate pollsters in 2020 were dead accurate in 2024. AtlasIntel wears the crown again. Their polls showed a Trump swing state sweep.

If you couldn’t see through the Selzer poll, I don’t know what to tell you. The sample was like, 50% college educated women over 65 in a state full of farmers. Your mistake was not putting enough weight on the obvious conclusion that the poll was just not a bad sample, but entirely fraudulent. In which case, it carries 0 information.

I will admit that poll kept me up at night. But it forced me to think through the obvious conclusions, and I became totally convinced Trump would win. I put money in PredictIt on Monday and bought TSLA calls on Tuesday. But it was only after I had convinced myself that the race was not even close to a toss up.

You know, a data point that made me skeptical was a "lesson" I kept hearing from the 2022 midterms that polls over estimated Republican turnout. That was supposed to be a red wave that kind of fizzled outside of Florida. So it was hard to apply the same "It's the economy stupid", "The polls are just as wrong as 2016 and 2020" rules to them for 2024. At least for me.

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