Nobody Knows Anything
(Which has a fun upside)
I’m writing this brief post on the eve of the 2024 election, at a time when nobody knows what will happen. To me, the choice appears to be fairly obvious, but there’s very little I can say that will convince anyone who isn’t convinced already. Instead, I will use this moment of uncertainty to talk a little about the pressures uncertainty puts on us, and how our system responds to these pressures.
We will know, at some point in the future, perhaps very soon (perhaps not). Tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that, the political takes will come raining down in their multitudes. Scores will be settled. It will be immediately apparent why one side or another has lost…and I worry we’ll lose sight of how we feel right now, when the future and our place in the scrum of winners and losers isn’t quite so certain.
At present, Nate Silver’s aggregate polling model puts Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin within two percentage points, well within the margin of error of any poll. Of those states, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are less than a percentage point apart.
Broadly, this means one of two things are possible.
If Silver’s aggregator is completely correct: This could come down to a few thousand votes in one particular state, and we will have perhaps the closest election in US history, both in terms of total electoral votes and in terms of the margin within the particular decisive state.
If Silver’s aggregator is off by even 1% either way: One side or another will have a commanding victory.
Frustratingly, none of us know which of those two outcomes is correct, or which way direction the aggregator has failed, if it has. This means, right now, nobody knows anything.
Both outcomes have the potential to give rise to an interesting phenomenon, a kind of Grand Unified Theory of Political Takes. Ex post, as the election resolves, a very large number of political takes will be equally valid to explain why the winner won, and the loser lost. Let’s take Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, each currently hovering around half a percentage point apart in Silver’s model. Tomorrow, if Harris loses Pennsylvania by a few thousand votes, one obvious takeaway would be that she should have picked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for VP, instead of Walz. Given Walz’ mediocre debate performance and his dubious status as the governor of the state with the weirdest accent, picking Shapiro would surely have snagged Harris a few thousand votes on net.
…but here’s the thing: doing almost anything would have snagged Harris a few thousand votes on net. If the contest is really that close, you might as well ding her for alienating Talokan by embracing Wakanda or not aggressively courting the Magic the Gathering vote.
Likewise, practically any decision Trump has made in the last 20 years could explain his downfall, if the margin is close: Defending Tony Henchcliffe for calling Puerto Rico a “floating pile of garbage” probably cost the guy a few votes in Pennsylvania, but he only needs a few thousand votes. I’d be surprised if JD Vance’s offhand comments about Magic the Gathering didn’t cost him a few a few thousand votes.
When the margins are close, things get weird, and with margins this close, the causal explanation for who wins or loses is the weather or some random late-breaking news story, rather than anything a campaign chose to do.
What’s the Most You’ve Ever Lost on a Coin Toss
It’s scary to think that such a consequential election could come down to just a few thousand votes, just some static in the system. I won’t say this is the most important election of our lifetime, but it’s clear the choice is pretty stark. Why modulate national policy that way, so that a few thousand votes put this on two very different competing tracks?
The only respite I can offer is the cold, leaden comfort that comes from knowing the system wasn’t actually set up to work that way. Are we living in uniquely partisan times? I don’t think so. The founders clearly anticipated the kind of bitter rivalries that have riven the country this year:"
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man;
Federalist Number 10
However, the process they put in place for for mitigating this factionalism has changed somewhat: The constitution leaves federal voting largely up to the states. By design, it delegates legislative policymaking to two deliberative bodies that modulate the popular will in two different ways: votes in the House are apportioned by population, and votes in the Senate are apportioned by statehood alone. Under this model, it’s hard for any particular faction (even one with a substantial portion of either the popular vote or the geographic area of the country) to gain the ability to implement its complete agenda. In such a system, lawmaking requires considerable compromise, and you don’t stand to lose everything on a coin toss if you happen to be on the wrong side.
The founders likely did not contemplate the extraordinary delegation of policymaking from the legislative to the executive branch, likely because they assumed the legislative and executive branches would jealously safeguard their own power. They also assumed policymaking would be a collaborative enterprise among competing factions:
Alas, modern life doesn’t work that way: we can’t have Congress vote on every automobile milage standard and nuclear safety protocol. We probably don’t want our legislators wasting their time distinguishing bolts from screws.
…unfortunately, this blog has made clear that someone has to do that, and that somebody is going to have a lot of power. At present, we don’t know who that somebody is.
My take is the system only works if we respect the result. Indeed, the system evolved to create widespread brutality and misery if the result is not respected. First and foremost, we need a leader that can respect the process and understand when voters have chosen another way…even if that way appears to be fraught with death.
Perhaps that makes it clear who I’ll be voting for.
Perhaps not.