538: You'll never know which candidate is electable

[Tiggeroshii]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/youll-never-know-which-candidate-is-electable/

In a beige reception hall in a Des Moines suburb, over paper plates piled with the remains of a Monday morning continental breakfast, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a packed house of Iowans to manifest their dreams. Imagine an America where cancer only kills you, rather than also rifling through your wallet. Visualize a future where no American child has to pay off her grandmother’s student loans. Cynicism is high and more than a quarter of us believe the American Dream is unattainable, but Sanders’s stump speech offered hope. “Everything is impossible until it’s not,” he said. The crowd went wild.

[DanTex]

1. Good article. I think there are reasons to believe Yang and Bernie are the most electable in

this particular election, but as the article points out, there's not really any data, and predictions about electability by pundits have been way, way off in the past.

[OliverQ]

18. I keep hearing a comparison

to the McGovern election if Bernie were the candidate, but I have no idea how to analyze that.

[guillaumeb]

2. Recommended.

This is what I say to those who insist that we cannot afford Medicare for All, or a living wage, and so many other things:

“Everything is impossible until it’s not,” he said. The crowd went wild.

[UniteFightBack]

6. When 75% of the American people don't want I'd say it's impossible. nt

[Tiggeroshii]

8. Literally every problem solved in America started out that way or worse

Desergregation, Gay marriage, Interracial marriage, Medicare, social security, welfare, public college all started out with little or no support. Hell even Medicaree for all had a vast majority of support until a propaganda campaign changed that. Saying it cannot happen isnt saying it cant actuallyhappen, it is only saying you wont try.

[guillaumeb]

11. Very well argued.

We can make it happen, or we can listen to those in power who do not want it to happen.

[Tiggeroshii]

20. Thanks! A lot of folks gave up on any semblance of hope or change

After Obama.

[Horizens]

3. And ...

trump winning in a landslide as the republicans sweep the house and senate because one party was dumb enough to run a socialist who was an anchor on the down ballot is "impossible until it's not".

[highplainsdem]

4. +1,000,000

[Tiggeroshii]

9. What are the winning lottery numbers for this saturday?

[UniteFightBack]

5. People are paying off their grandmothers student loans??? 75% of Americans don't want M4A.

Does that MEAN ANYTHING to you? It mean we lose the GE with anyone who advocates for that.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. People don't have to pay back their grandparents' federal student loans.

https://www.studentloanborrowerassistance.org/will-my-student-loan-be-discharged-if-i-die/

[UniteFightBack]

14. Yes Tiggeroshii should read your link............ nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

15. Even private loans don't become the personal debts of the heirs.

The lender can make a claim against the estate, but the heirs themselves don't have to pay the loan. In other words, if the estate can't satisfy the loan that's the end of it. The heirs don't inherit that (or any) debt; they are not personally responsible for it. Suggesting that people are having to pay off their grandparents' student loans is dishonest fearmongering.

[Kentonio]

17. That stat about people not wanting M4A is frankly bullshit

Every time you poll people about actual issues not just branding, they make absolutely clear that they want universal healthcare. The task for the general campaign is to make sure people actually understand what M4A actually is and what it isn’t.

[DanTex]

19. M4A polls at 53%. Don't know where your number came from.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-january-2020/

[thesquanderer]

7. Good article, especially this stuff...

The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy

...which of course I like because I've said the same. You ask about electability, and to some extent, you get a regurgitation of what people know about previous polls, which is not helpful.

But even more, I liked this...

Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be. Outsiders are elected more often, too. And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking, Utych said. So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable? Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or the partisan base. But that’s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are. “Which segment is bigger … there’s not great information on that,” Utych said. “Anything you say is just guessing.”

We really don't know which group gets us more votes. Biden and Sanders (as our two extremes) would both get the vote of virtually every true Dem (certainly when the alternative is Trump). But beyond that, what gets us more votes... appealing to the moderate middle and "reasonable" Republicans? or appealing to the more extreme left partisans and the anti-establishment outsiders who want to shake things up? In 2016, we attempted to appeal to the moderate middle, while Trump went for the highly partisan and anti-establishment group. We lost that one. Something to think about.

Also this...

Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail, said Elizabeth Simas, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the person they want to be elected. Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency. “But it’s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability, or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate,” Simas said.

I think we see a lot of that here, too.

[Tiggeroshii]

10. Thanks!

[Garrett78]

12. That and the piece about Bitecofer are far more reality-based than what passes...

...for conventional wisdom around here. As I posted yesterday:

The conventional assumptions about swing voters and so-called independents is wrong. True swing voters aren't nearly as great in number as some believe. And they aren't moderates or middle-of-the-road voters. They're fickle voters who tend to swing against the status quo or party that's been in power. Today's average independent, on the other hand, is more partisan (while claiming to dislike partisanship) than the average party-affiliated voter of the 1970s. There've been numerous studies confirming this.

Turn out the base, turn out the base, turn out the base. And get young people fired up.

The electorate has changed over the years. Bitecofer is right. Conventional wisdom no longer holds weight. We fail to recognize this at our peril. Selecting a candidate or running a campaign based on outdated notions, based on appealing to a small percentage of fickle and largely ignorant people spread out across 50 states, is the height of stupidity.

[JudyM]

16. Good perspective.

Needs to be posted more regularly in response to folks who think they’re more clever.