Mea Culpa

My election forecast wasn't good

I spent Election Day with sweet and adoptable Addy through the Hawaiian Humane Society’s ʻĪlio Explorers program.

My election forecast wasn’t good. I read the signs wrong and would have done better if I had just based my forecast on the polls.

My election forecast wasn’t good. I want to take responsibility for being wrong. I gave Donald Trump a 35% chance to win, but I was extremely skeptical he’d substantially improve upon his 2020 numbers across the board and potentially become the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11. Prediction markets and most election modelers were closer to the mark than I was. I still believe that what people dismiss as “vibes” can be predictive, but a lot of the things I thought were significant turned out not to be. There’s no question my forecast would have been better if I had based it just on the polls.

When I produce a forecast, my goal is always to help you the future before it happens. In this case, I clearly failed. If you read my posts you were probably more surprised by the outcome than you otherwise would have been. I don’t have the stomach to analyze the election at the moment—and probably have no business making claims about US politics for a while—but my initial read is that this election was part of a broad global rejection of incumbent parties by voters unhappy with the cost of living in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Trump was in a great position to take advantage of voter discontent because he has a rare gift for channeling anger at the political system.

My forecast was probably affected by my bias. I did find it difficult to imagine voters would choose to make Trump president again. I believed—and certainly hoped—that Trump’s deliberately extremist messaging would backfire. But in fact his victory demonstrates that racism, misogyny, and homophobia can be effective political messages in the US. They are in a real sense what voters wanted. Now more than ever we have to be kind to one another and stand up for those in our society who are vulnerable. Changing American culture will be the work not just of the next four years but of a generation. I’m personally devastated we chose Trump again in spite of all the compelling reasons not to; I hope I’m as wrong about what his presidency will mean as I was about whether he would win.

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