Lockdown = Dem votes down?


If Ds are less likely to vote in-person this year than Rs due to COVID, and only (say) 80% of those would have voted in-person actually end up voting by mail, that could mean a big partisan swing to Republicans.

This *may* be what 538 is missing. 🧵
Put another way: whenever you convert from one channel to another, like going from in-person to mail, you will lose some fraction of people.

If a much larger share of Ds are doing that conversion this year than Rs, they lose more votes. That could be the big unmodeled factor.
I looked at how 538 modeled COVID's impact on turnout. It appears they model COVID’s impact solely as higher uncertainty. But not as a partisan factor that favors Rs who will vote in-person more than Ds because they are less concerned about COVID.
fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-f…
In-person attendance at rallies seems to support this hypothesis. Both Biden and Trump agree that Trump rallies are much more heavily attended than Biden rallies. So, COVID may be a large partisan factor on in-person turnout. archive.is/ep1vI
COVID may have a partisan impact on ground game too.

"Part of the problem, according to...a dozen Democratic elected officials and operatives, is the Biden campaign‘s decision to discourage field staff from knocking on doors during the pandemic" politico.com/news/2020/10/2…
Note that this is different from @mendelsohn’s model of mail-in ballots on vote totals, though you should look at that too if you're interested in this topic.
PS: I am expressly not taking any position on the US election. But I am interested in the gap between 538 and prediction markets, and the partisan impact of COVID on in-person turnout *may* be the factor that current models aren’t taking into account. Only a hypothesis, though.
Btw, studies seem to differ on whether mail-in voting boosts turnout or not. Interestingly, those who are *assigned* to vote by mail seem to have less turnout in one study, which is kind of like the COVID effect. cambridge.org/core/journals/…

pnas.org/content/117/25…

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More from @balajis

1 Nov
YIMBY: no point in reforming SF anymore, just go remote

Chinese FDI into the US: was rising fast, then fell off a cliff

International travel: 2019 may be generational high water mark

Restaurants, bars, concerts: the Western physical leisure economy was soaring, now hurting
Note that the FDI turnaround did start after 2016, but this year’s events have made it highly unlikely that it will bounce back in the same way.
One thing I’m reminded of is @benedictevans’ point that something reaches its final and perfect form right before it is completely disrupted.

Hard to top the options for fun, food, and travel for 2010s urban Americans. A giant amusement park of wine bars & fancy tacos.
Read 4 tweets
31 Oct
Want a totally fresh take on tech journalism?

Behold: an interviewer who knows enough about DNS to conduct an informative interview with the inventor of DNS. welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/bt…
Great work by @sarveshmathi on this interview.

Really illustrates some key concepts, including (a) that technically literate people should be writing & reporting on tech, (b) there’s plenty of talent out there internationally we haven’t tapped, and (c) we can do so much better.
This whole series of articles is some of the best tech journalism I’ve ever seen. Because it’s not all gossip columns and funding rounds. The reader actually learns something. It’s like @QuantaMagazine but for tech. welcometothejungle.com/en/collections…
Read 5 tweets
24 Oct
The future is Communist Capital vs Woke Capital vs Crypto Capital.
Each represents a left/right fusion that’s bizarre by the standards of the 1980s consensus.

It’s PRC vs MMT vs BTC.
Communist Capital is the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s capitalism checked by the centralized power of the Chinese state, as pithily summarized here. quillette.com/2020/10/10/is-…
Read 5 tweets
23 Oct
Media corporations are slowly realizing that leverage has shifted.

You don’t need to give free content to Bezos, Sulzberger, or Murdoch employees to get the word out anymore.

Just build your own audience, and go direct if you have something to say. cjr.org/public_editor/…
You no longer need to pay a toll to a media middleman to reach an audience. You don’t need them at all.

“The internet...destroyed one of the media’s most important sources of power: being the only place that could offer access to an audience.” cjr.org/public_editor/…
The new vanity metric is vanity media. You simply do not need legacy media coverage to reach an audience. It’s junk traffic.
Read 5 tweets
23 Oct
Absolutely agree that workers should share in the upside of these platforms.

But a state that fails at basic functions like police, fire, public health, education, sanitation isn’t capable of competent regulation. That’s why AB5 was a disaster.

There is a better way, though...
I’m very sympathetic to @ljin18 and @dumplicious’s points about making sure workers share upside.

Had Uber been able to give equity to all 1M drivers, perhaps they’d be a $100B company with $50B owned by drivers at ~$50k/driver.

A happier and economically aligned workforce.
So what eventually happens is that all these platforms get turned into crypto protocols.

Every rider and driver now share in the upside. And due to encryption, voluntary transactions between two parties can no longer be surveilled and interdicted by the state.
Read 4 tweets
11 Oct
The three most complex pieces of software are operating systems, web browsers, and blockchains.
These reflect the on-disk, online, and on-chain eras respectively. From desktop to internet to crypto.
A web browser is after all essentially an OS. It has an interpreter, you write apps for it, and so on. ChromeOS took this to its natural conclusion.

A blockchain is also an OS. It has a compiler, you write apps for it, and so on. What will take this to its natural conclusion?
Read 6 tweets

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