Two Mental Models of Elections

Posted 12/7/19

Since entering politics, I’ve updated in two ways how I think about elections and thus how I evaluate candidates.

Model 1

A great line I heard recently is that campaigns are exercises in mass emotional influence. This resonates with me; my rough sense is that this is the right lens through which to view most campaign activity, including policy proposals.

Model 2

I used to envision elections solely as being won by the candidate who could win over a pool of undecided moderate voters. In the jargon, this is called “persuasion.”

The alternate model I've come to appreciate is “turnout,” in which elections are won by the candidate who can best inspire their supporters to vote. Voting is costly (often deliberately so), this model posits that successful candidates motivate the most voters to incur these costs. (Turnout in 2016 and 2018 was only 60% and 50%, respectively.)

Our current era is one of hyper-partisanship (which is different from modern history, say political scientists). Therefore, most voters are already decided in highly salient elections (e.g. presidential), and so turnout likely plays a larger role than in the past.