Episode 143 - One Last Episode Before the US Presidential Election
As the US presidential election comes to a close, several worst-case scenarios have been drawn about how this will all end. Both sides forecast gloom and doom if the other camp wins, but the situation may not be as bad as it seems on the surface.
In this episode, Aaron and Max discuss why they think the world won’t end on Election Day and how presidents may have less power than you think. They explore potential scenarios of how power dynamics will shift at the Senate and the House if Trump or Biden wins. Lastly, Max outlines some paths to victory at the Electoral College.
Listen to the full episode to learn why the US presidential election is just the beginning of a long, winding road ahead.
Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Discover the potential scenarios that may play out with either a Democrat or Republican victory.
Get a bigger picture of the US presidential election and know why you should vote and not panic.
Learn some key states that Biden or Trump needs to win in the Electoral College.
Resources
Expensify CEO urges millions of users to vote for Biden in email blast on New York Post
Dear @Jack: It’s Time To Suspend Donald Trump From Twitter by Ellen Pao
Donald Trump on Twitter
POTUS on Twitter
2020 Presidential Election Interactive Map on 270toWin.com
Related Episodes
Episode 140 with Alex Andorra to talk about the challenges in polling this election
Episode 136 on the mathematics of probability and betting on the election
Episode 125 with Tara Ross on the Electoral College
Episode 72 on Shapley values (in relation to the tipping point state)
Episode 39 on the Twitter fight between Nassim Taleb and Nate Silver in 2018
Episode Highlights
Coinbase vs. Expensify
While Coinbase decided to keep out of politics, Expensify went the other way and instead urged its employees to vote for Biden to “preserve democracy and prevent a civil war.”
Expensify CEO David Barrett also expressed in the letter that civil wars will affect his business because expense reports hardly get filed in civil war. Max thinks otherwise.
Aaron feels that Poe’s Law is being invoked as the line between satire and reality starts to blur. Nonetheless, he thinks that Barrett meant what he said.
Aaron thinks that the Expensify CEO felt he had unanimous consent to release the statement, unlike Coinbase, who acknowledged that there might be dissent within its ranks.
Banning Trump from Twitter
Ellen Pao, the former CEO of Reddit, wrote to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to ban Trump from Twitter.
Aaron explores possible scenarios about how this might happen: would @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS be banned? Would they ban his entire campaign team?
If Trump were banned from Twitter, what if he turned the White House briefing room into his personal platform?
No Reason to Panic
Max and Aaron remind us to stay calm and assess the worst-case scenarios during the elections. They also encourage everyone to vote
Going into a panic is not a good idea. Emotions cloud your ability to make rational decisions.
Max cites previous episodes explaining the complex math of predicting elections.
Aaron believes that oscillating predictions are a sign of a brittle predictive model.
There’s a strong financial incentive for pollsters to be as accurate as possible. They hedge their bets ahead of the results, to sound rational.
Why It’s Not the Final Election
There are some predictions about how a Republican win may spell the end of democracy or how a Democrat victory sets the ground for an authoritarian dictatorship.
There’s little chance of those worst-case scenarios happening in real life.
Things may get worse before they get better, but there’s hope.
We may have an exaggerated idea of presidential powers, but the President cannot achieve much on his own.
History will tell you that no period stays the same. We’re not stuck in time.
What Happens If Trump Wins?
If Trump wins, he won’t have Congress. He will have to contend with a Democrat majority in at least one House.
Voter suppression happens at the state level.
Democrats, Liberals, and the Left will still control major societal institutions and the flow of information.
Although it’s widely believed that big business backs Republicans (Koch Brothers), most corporations support both sides to mitigate their risk.
There’s no second Trump. Although Mike Pence may be nominated next time, he can’t fill the big shoes of Trump.
What Happens If Biden Wins?
If Biden wins, there’s a risk that his coalition falls apart since his backers have no other shared interest than defeating Trump.
People are concerned that Biden will win the presidency, maintain his hold on the House, and flip the Senate, cementing his dominance.
However, it's not as easy as it looks. There's bound to be some pushback, and by 2022, the Senate might flip back to Republican.
A power vacuum may happen if Biden wins as interest groups fight for control.
There's a short window of opportunity to unite both Houses for one major policy program like Obama did for Obamacare. Will Biden burn through his political capital on another healthcare reform at the expense of other policy priorities?
Biden’s Electoral College Strategies
Biden can try to mimic Trump’s 2016 strategy of winning the Rust Belt states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Biden can also try flipping Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida so that he only has to focus on the two Rust Belt states.
These are not independent probabilities. What happens to one state may influence another.
Trump’s Electoral College Strategies
Trump can try to defend his Rust Belt territory.
Aaron cites that there are three emerging voter groups to focus on: Republicans flipping Democrat, independents that are not backing Trump anymore, and individuals that didn’t vote in 2016 but are now leaning Democrat.
Trump can also pick up Minnesota to make it harder for Biden.
Trump can also explore a “slash path” strategy, a line that runs southwest to northeast. If he loses all three Rust Belt states but manages to secure New Hampshire, Maine, Arizona, and Nevada, he could still win.
All eyes are on Pennsylvania, this year's tipping point state.
5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode
“We are saying that maybe some of these worst case scenarios that people are throwing about are a little far-fetched, and we need to kind of reel back the panic a little bit.”
“There's a popular over-perception of the actual power of the President, that there's a lot that people think the President can or should do that they simply, on their own, don't have the ability to make happen. And we've maybe psychologically put too many of our eggs in this one basket.”
“Look, if your candidate wins, you don't run away with this thing. If your candidate wins, you still have the other half of the country to contend with. And they're not going away, no matter what.”
“I feel like historically, you know, there's a window when you have control of both houses and the presidency that you can push through one major program before everything starts to fall apart. For Obama, that was the ACA.”
“The world doesn't end on the day after election day and you know – whether it's gonna be four more years of hardship or something else – whatever your outlook here is pace yourself, because there's a long future ahead of us no matter what happens on election day.”
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To expanding perspectives,
Max
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum Episode 143.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome everyone. You have reached another local maximum. Joining me again today. Aaron, how you doing today?
Aaron Bell: I'm doing pretty well. You know, the snow is pretty much all melted. So it feels like autumn again, instead of the middle of winter.
Max: We went from autumn to winter to autumn.
Aaron: Yes. Yes, everything else feels normal. Everything is completely normal. There's nothing unusual at all about the weather or anything else going on in the world around us today.
Max: So okay, we have, this is the last— well, okay, I'm not gonna promise this is the last like pod episode about elections. But it's going to be the last episode about the election. And after this, we're going to have a whole bunch of episodes that are not about elections, or the election, or anything. No matter what happens after tomorrow, after the election, or probably today for those of you who are listening to this, I'm not going to talk about it.
So next week, when we do The Local Maximum, whatever crazy crap is going on, I am going to pretend that's not happening and cover a different topic. So how does that sound?
Aaron: That sounds good to me. A collective sigh of relief, I think.
Max: Okay. Okay, so last one. So let's do this. Yes, I'm gonna play, we're gonna play political pundit today. I know some of you out there don't like this here on The Local Maximum. But two reasons. First of all, this only happens once every four years. The next— I don't know what episode number will be on for the election of 2024. But it will be a high number. And also, two, I think I could do a better job of the pundits on TV because they're total idiots. Okay? And let's just get that out of the way.
Okay, so first story I want to cover. We now have a kind of counterbalance to the Coinbase company. So as you know, we talked about Coinbase last— I don't— did we talk about it when you were here or was that a solo?
Aaron: Yes. Yes, we talked about it.
Max: Right. So Coinbase said they're going to keep out of politics. Expensify is doing the opposite. They are going all in. So I got this email, was from the CEO of Expensify. And Foursquare is, you know, Foursquare uses Expensify. A lot of companies use Expensify. So the CEO of Expensify sent a letter—not to like Foursquare, the people they work with at Foursquare, but all employees at all their companies that they work with and do expense reports for—basically saying, “You must vote for Biden to preserve democracy and prevent a civil war.” So that's some fighting words for a CEO to come in and tell you that. He also wrote, you know, “This is directly affecting my business, because not many expense reports get filed in a civil war.” That literally was in the article and that letter. That one I was kind of like incredulous about. You know, like, I don't know, a lot of expense reports do get filed in any war. That’s my impression of how...
Aaron: To be fair, it sounds like Expensify does not have the Defense Department as an account, as one of their client accounts.
Max: Yes, but they are going, they're probably going to be on the side of the army that they think is going against the US Army. I don't think, I don't understand what army that would be that they are imagining.
Aaron: Before we dive too deep into this, I just want to say that this is Poe's Law being invoked already in the first couple of minutes of the podcast here because...
Max: Explain.
Aaron: So I believe Poe’s Law is the one that when satire and reality become indistinguishable, that if I would have assumed that he was using hyperbole here. Maybe he was saying that, “Yo, this is serious. You really should get out and vote.” But they talk of civil war and expense reports in the context of a civil war with him being a little jokey like, “Oh, it's so bad. Can you imagine if it was actually this bad? But seriously, get out and vote.”
But no. My read of it was he was being 100% serial here. And he really believes exactly what he said. There's no hyperbole. No exaggeration going on there.
Max: Well, it sounds like...
Aaron: It could have been straight out of The Onion back when The Onion was not basically reality.
Max: Well just show us how— I mean yes, I don't think anyone is gonna object how crazy, what crazy times we live in. Even if you agree with him, it's like what, you know, yes, we live in such crazy times that we have to send this out. You know, it's just like— another thing he said was, “Hey, my entire company, all my employees are onboard because we sent this around to all the employees of Expensify and we asked, ‘Does anyone object to sending this out?’” And what do you know? Nobody objected. They're pretty much unanimous there.
Aaron: This is why we don't do Election Day by a voice vote with everybody show up in the town square and raise your hand.
Max: But that happens at the town we grew up in?
Aaron: Well, yes. Well, not for elections, but for voting on perhaps proposals.
Max: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Aaron: Like the local equivalent of like ballot initiatives.
Max: People were not shy there to raise their hands.
Aaron: It's very different. Well, granted, our town had about 10,000 people. So it wasn't just the monkey sphere, but things, you can do things in a small town where you could conceivably know most, if not all of the folks that you live around.
Max: People got intense, but nobody punched anyone else in the face. So I think that, that I know of. But so I think it was all right. Okay...
Aaron: When was the last time there was a literal fistfight in Congress? I feel like it's been a while.
Max: I mean, there was one during the Civil War when that...
Aaron: Yes, but nothing in recent memory, which given the level of discourse occurring in the streets, I'm kind of surprised.
Max: Yes, I mean, we might get there at some point.
Aaron: I don't want to give our congress people any credit for being, you know, civilized, upstanding individuals, but somehow they've managed to at least maintain that veneer of civilization.
Max: Yes. Right. So along the— so okay, so first of all...
Aaron: Back to Coinbase and Expensify.
Max: Yes. Expensify versus Coinbase. I think this is gonna be fascinating. I definitely want to come back, you know, in a year or so, and see where both companies are in terms of the decisions they made, because it's gonna be a fascinating experiment. And I think it will tell us a lot about what's really going to win out here.
Aaron: And interestingly, and this perhaps, is my bias on the situation shining through. But— they clearly think that they have unanimous consent internally to do this. They have not put their money where their mouth is like Coinbase did and offered anyone who disagrees with this action. You know, “Here's the door. And here's a severance package.” They simply said, “Everybody's on board. This is what we're doing.”
Max: So you're saying I mean, I don't want to put it. Well, I know you don't want to put it quite like this, but let me put it more extreme. Like, if you're voting for Trump, “Here's the door. We'll give you a bunch of money. You're not welcome here.” I'm surprised no one's done that.
Aaron: I mean, they've— if they really thought that they had unanimous consent on this, then they shouldn't be afraid of doing that. But maybe the reason they're not doing that is because they think, “Well, obviously everyone's onboard. Why would we even have to?” That’s some sort of drinking their own Kool Aid going on here.
Max: I actually think that's what they believe. Another one that I see is from Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, big player in the tech industry. And she has a post on Medium pleading with Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, to ban Trump from Twitter before the election, saying, you know, “He’s spreading hate speech and he's destroying democracy. You must get him off your platform now. It is an imperative. And if you don't do it, you, Jack Dorsey, will be responsible for the downfall of democracy.”
Man, that gives you a sense of—and I believe that his employees are telling him the same thing—it gives you a sense of the kind of pressure he's under. You know, people look at him when he's in front of Congress and he gives those crazy non-answers. I think he's being shouted out by his employees on one hand. I think, you know, on the other side, he's being shouted at in Congress, and I think he's broken man. I feel bad for him.
Aaron: I'm just curious on how the mechanics of that would work in actuality. So let's say he did give the green light. He said, “Okay. Ban Trump.” So do they just ban the you know, what is it? @realDonaldTrump?
Max: Yes.
Aaron: Do they ban @POTUS? Do they ban all the accounts of his entire reelection campaign? Because they can act as surrogates for him?
Max: Why not?
Aaron: Can he create a new account? And as long as, you know, he can't pour it over his followers. Can he just start tweeting as you know, new Donald Trump?
Max: I don't see why... Well, look, there are certain people who if they got— who if they were in charge of Twitter would ban all of them. And I don't think it's people who are that far down from Jack Dorsey. I think the people right below him maybe would not do go quite that far. But maybe there are people who are too below him that totally would.
Aaron: I wouldn't put it past Trump that if he was banned from Twitter, that he would schedule a 24/7 news conference and just say, “Okay, all news outlets, you need to be sitting in the White House briefing room. You have to have someone there around the clock, and I'll come down maybe every 30 minutes or so throughout the day, and I'm going to put out one tweet’s worth of information and then drop the mic and walk away. And just whenever I feel like it, and because you're now going to be my Twitter, because I'm working around the system.”
Max: Yes.
Aaron: It's a stupid idea, but I wouldn't put it past them to do something like that if a stupid idea was used against him here.
Max: Yes. So I— we are kind of laughing at this I know and probably the people who believe we're headed for a civil war of some sort. Well, they probably turn this off by now. But I do want to talk to people today who are concerned in either direction and maybe kind of zoom out a little bit. Give people a little bit of perspective. So I'm not here— so I just want to say where this is going. I'm not trying to, you know, I feel like I don't want to belittle people. I want you to listen to the end, because I think we have some important things to say about that.
Aaron: There’s a very important caveat. It’s not the right term, but important thing to get out in front of us here, that we're not saying that everything is going to be 100% okay, and there's no reason for concern.
Max: Oh, no.
Aaron: But we are saying that maybe some of these worst case scenarios that people are throwing about are a little far fetched, and we need to kind of reel back the panic a little bit and say, “Yes. Absolutely. If you haven't voted yet, pause this podcast, go vote and then come back and listen.” But...
Max: Maybe you're listening. I think a lot of people are online voting right now. Like they're listening to the podcast. They're probably waiting for two hours. And they're like, what's the best thing I could do to fill up that time?
Aaron: If you're doing that, then you can continue to listen. Don't immediately, on November 4, decide, “Well, things have gone to shit. Time to strap on the suicide vest and go all in.” As bad as things might be, it's not going to be that bad. And I think you've got some very convincing reasons for why we should be pulling ourselves from the brink, psychologically, a little bit here.
Max: And I'll get to that in a little bit. But also, you know, going into total panic is never a good idea, even if you are facing something like that you know. So I also want to tell people that.
Aaron: It adversely affects your ability to make rational decisions. And I'm not saying your emotions are wrong, but you don't want to let them push you into positions that are worse off for you than you would have otherwise done.
Max: Yes. Okay. So let's— so I have three parts left. First, I'm going to talk a little bit about what we've said before on election predictions, then why it's not the end of the world. And then we're going to go back into how to think about this election as the results come in.
So first of all, we've had a bunch of episodes on election prediction. Actually, one of the first ones we did was Episode 39, which is mostly a mathematical episode. That was on mathematical paradoxes, but that was the episode that came out on Election Day during the midterm elections. And I talked about, you know, a fight between Nassim Taleb and Nate Silver. And Taleb had some pretty, you know, choice words for Nate Silver on how his predictions keep swaying back and forth before the election happens. And how, you know, that is not very sound, mathematically.
And I went into that more mathematically in Episode 136 where I talked about martingale, which is essentially like, “Hey, if I have uncertainty tomorrow, then when I backed out today, I have to average all those uncertainties,” and usually that ends up putting you near 50%. Or, you know, you're never going to go to like 90/10 on something that has so much uncertainty like this.
And I also talked about a couple episodes ago in Episode 140 with Alex Andorra, who is a poller, who does...
Aaron: Pollster?
Max: He's not a pollster. He analyzes polls—I should be very careful at—in France, so we talked about that process a little bit. But it's interesting about how, you know, yes, pollsters are like, “Trump has 10%. Now he has 30%. Now he's 10%.” Predictive, which is the prediction market has had Trump at 40%. And it's been pretty consistent until today, which is the day before election day. That's going to change a lot. And I'll tell you when I think it's going to change, but that's going to change a lot on election day. So, but it's very interesting how they're not willing to sway from it that much. Sometimes it goes a little below, sometimes it goes a little above.
Aaron: We’ve started to see maybe not in the numerical predictions, but well, so before I get to that, two things I want to mention. One is that, yes that kind of oscillating predictions. It's a sign of a kind of a brittle model that ideally you would expect as time proceeds, you know, closer and closer to Election Day, that your numbers should converge to a final result, not ping pong back and forth, right? Unless there's a dramatic change in ground truth. So like, for example, when the Comey Letter came out. I would reasonably expect that that could have a pretty dramatic ping pong effect on some poll numbers.
Max: On poll numbers, but not on percentages. Like if you could trade on their percentages like it were a prediction market, and you're like, “Oh, if Nate Silver's percentages were prediction market, I could make so much money.” That means...
Aaron: Ride those waves.
Max: Right, that means that you're probably not giving— there’s probably a problem with the predictions he's making. I'm not saying that he's wrong here, but we'll see. I mean, you know, yes again, we'll see what happens. And, again, if something crazy does happen with the polls, I won't be talking about it next week, because we're not talking about that, but we’ll get to it eventually.
Aaron: So the other thing we've seen is there's a strong incentive for pollsters, and for those coming up with these prediction models, to get the answer right. Because when the midterms come around in two years, you're gonna want to hire the folks who got it right, not the folks who got it wrong. And so there's, as you move out of the pre-election season and into the homestretch here in the last week or two, there's an incentive to move for maybe wishful analysis into got-to-get-it-right analysis.
And I don't think we've seen a big move in the numbers. But we've seen a number of talking heads start to throw out things that, “Well, my numbers still say x. But if it doesn't work out that way, if it goes the other direction, it would because of this reason, this reason, and this reason.” And so they're starting to rationalize so that if they—they're hedging their bets—so that if it goes the opposite direction on election day, they can point back and say, “Well, I got it wrong, but I told you 2,3,5 days ago that if it went wrong, it would be because of this. So I'm not completely off my rocker and you should still believe what I say, that I'm a worthwhile pundit.”
Max: So how is that different from like a conman who doesn't, like, who's making you think he's right, no matter what happens?
Aaron: I didn't say it was.
Max: Okay. Well, look. Alright.
Aaron: There's a financial incentive to have a leg for them to stand on when it's over.
Max: Right.
Aaron: I think this election, we were talking in the pre show about how there are dramatically divergent outcomes here, which both seem likely in non-negligible odds. And so it's real difficult for them to hedge. They can't just put, you know, none of them are really putting 50/50 splits out there and saying that that's reasonably, you know. People are talking about landslides in both directions potentially, and you can't straddle that gap and have your predictions be meaningful. So they're trying their best to hedge it in a way that'll let them sound intelligent in the aftermath.
Max: There aren't any pollsters who are saying landslide Trump. There are people who are saying it, but there's the pollster saying Trump is gonna win. He’s going to win by a very small margin on the, you know, in the popular— well, you know, very small margin of the popular vote or maybe lose the popular vote a little bit, but a win in the Electoral College.
Aaron: Yes. And that certainly seems more likely. But again, nonzero chances of other things happening.
Max: Yes. Okay. Yes. And then and there are people saying, “Oh, Biden's gonna win Texas,” or whatever. It could happen. You know, we don't know. But he doesn't have to. We'll get into that a minute. He doesn't have to win Texas. We'll get into the states in a minute to look for because people are going to go all out on TV and, “Look at this state, look at this state, look at this state.” So I'm going to kind of simplify it for you a little.
Aaron: Do we know what the new cool thing is going to be this year? Like the new election night hologram? Have they announced what their cool tech innovation is going to be?
Max: No, I have not heard about that. But given the year 2020 it's not gonna be that cool. It's gonna be socially distant...
Aaron: They're all gonna be on Zoom and nobody's going to be wearing pants.
Max: And they're gonna have like, really bad sounds. So I want to talk about you know, why it's not the end of the world from both ends. Because a lot of pundits I see out there saying this election is essentially the final election. Do you know what that means? The final election?
Aaron: I assume that they're talking about how this is the end of democracy, that we're going to slide into an authoritarian dictatorship. And that either, there will never again be a free and fair election, or this will allow the Republican party to restructure American politics such that, you know, between redistricting and whatever else, that they never run the risk of losing the presidency.
Max: Right, right. Or either side. I don't think that, well, some panic pundits are cynically trying to get more people listening and scare people. But I do think that a lot of people feel this way. Who knows? Maybe it is this way. But the more I look at it, the more I implore you to calm down because there really is very little chance of that happening. You know, so I say, you know, “Yes, still cast your ballot, if that's what you want to do.” But I don't think this is the end of the Republic or the start of a one-party system. And I have a number, because I've been thinking about this. And I've been looking at all the pieces, and I just, it's really not possible.
Aaron: I think it's entirely possible that things could get worse before they get better. But I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel here and you've got some pretty logical explanations for a few scenarios for why that is.
Max: Yes, and I'm gonna go through a couple of them. But you know, the bad news is, it's gonna be a rough few years, no matter what happens, in my opinion. I don't think that our problems go away. I don't think presidents solve or cause a lot of the problems that we're having. And unfortunately, you know, we're going to have a lot of problems and polarization no matter what. You know, we're going to have, you know, the virus is gonna come and go, no matter what.
Aaron: There's a popular overperception of the actual power of the President. There's a lot that people think the President can or should do that they simply, on their own, don't have the ability to make happen. And we've maybe psychologically put too many of our eggs in this one basket.
Max: Yes. So the good news is that, you know, the saying, “This too shall pass.” If you look at American history, there is no period that lasts, you know, for that long. Particularly when it comes to like political polarization, or what the major issues are, or, you know. Even in the last five years, things have changed quite a bit. You're never stuck in time. We're not stuck. I truly believe that.
So let's go through a couple scenarios. You want to do the scenario if Donald Trump wins first or the scenario of Joe Biden wins? And unfortunately, I'm also going to say, look, if your candidate wins, you don't run away with this thing. If your candidate wins, you still have the other half of the country to contend with. And they're not going away, no matter what.
So, for each scenario, I'm going to tell you why if your candidate wins, you're not going to get what you want. But also for the other side, if the other candidate wins, you know, they're not going to get what they want, either. So, all right, so which ones we want to start with?
Aaron: The sign of a true compromise is that both parties walk away upset.
Max: Yes.
Aaron: I'm, well, I'm shocked and disappointed that there's not a scenario here for what happens if Jo Jorgensen wins. Let's tackle Trump first, because I feel like that's what a lot of people are most concerned about.
Max: Yes, the third party candidates this year have not had much traction, interestingly enough compared to most years. Okay, so if Donald Trump wins, first of all, he won't have Congress. I can't see any scenario where they win back the House of Representatives. He might have the Senate, but he’ll...
Aaron: It's even possible that he might win and still lose the Senate.
Max: Sure, sure.
Aaron: But yes, I agree that the odds of the Republicans taking back the House in this election are minuscule.
Max: Right. So the arguments I hear is that they're just gonna suppress votes forever. But what people need to understand is all of that happens at the state level. So you have Democratic governors in a lot of these swing states. And there's no reason why you can't continue to have Democratic governors in these swing states. They're not going to suppress democratic votes. So that really, you know, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense that you could lose the country that way. I'm not saying it can't happen at all. But it really is not something that the President can do.
It's not something— now the Congress can set rules. They might be able to say there can be a national like voter ID, which is not the end of the world. But you know, first of all, he's not going to have Congress. And secondly, it's going to be mostly run at the state levels. And it should be pointed out and I don't, I haven't met any people who have confronted me on this, although there might be people who disagree, but Democrats and Liberals, or the Left still control the major institutions to society. You know, when it comes to academia, corporations, I mean, notice like Coinbase versus Expensify right? It’s whether we want to go all in on Joe Biden or we're going to go all in on neutral? Those are the two options.
Aaron: You don't hear many. Certainly not in the text here.
Max: Yes. Yes, they don't...
Aaron: And not very much outside of that either. Talking about throwing their support behind Trump and the Republicans here. I think you would certainly find people left of center who believe that well, you know, evil capitalist corporations, they're all binding up behind the Republicans because they'll scratch each other's backs.
Max: They used to.
Aaron: And there might be a element of truth to that. But I think that grossly exaggerates the reality of the situation.
Max: There was a time when many of the corporations were on the side of the Republicans, but you're like 100 years out of date on that one?
Aaron: Maybe, you know, the whatever the name of the Koch brothers’ petroleum enterprises...
Max: Oh, sure, yes.
Aaron: ...would be on one side of that equation. But most big, big corporations are either giving to both sides so that they don't have to pick a favorite and they've got investment no matter what the outcome, or they've shifted to the left, because certainly in the post-2016 political atmosphere, if you're not advocating for some of these social causes, then you're going to see a public backlash, right?
Max: But so, but the interesting thing is all of the companies and organizations that control the flow of information and ideas that are tasked with that, those lean Democrat, which is interesting. And so, you know, you can't— the Republicans can't control the society if the other side has the control of the flow of information.
Aaron: I guess the only counter examples I can think of are, you know, Elon Musk is kind of libertarian. And Peter Thiel is known as somewhat conservative, but neither of them are heading you know, a Google, or Twitter, or Facebook.
Max: Right. Right. It doesn't matter if they’re saying the wrong...
Aaron: They’re in the tech sphere, but they don't have a direct finger in that aspect of it.
Max: So look, Trump wins, Democrats get all of Congress in two years, and probably all of Congress and the presidency in four. We’ll be talking about who replaces Trump in like, two-and-a-half years from now if he wins. And there's no Trump 2. It's not like there's going to be the next guy there is going to be anything like Trump. So I mean, look...
Aaron: Yes, I mean, I think it's not inconceivable that Pence would be the nominee on the ticket the next time around, but it's not like he's a shoo-in by any means.
Max: Right? And he’ll be nothing like Trump. He won't have the personality, right. I don't know. You know, what kind of candidate he might…
Aaron: He might become more Trumpian than he currently is. But that's a long walk for him to take. Yes. No one out trumps Trump yet.
Max: Everyone's always looking at... I don't know, my whole— every time, as long as I've been looking at this, at least this century, people are always looking for the next Bush. They're looking for the next Obama and it never happens. Now, we just talked about that scenario. Now, if you're voting for Donald Trump, that doesn't sound that great, does it? Maybe Trump does some things you like in that meantime. But that doesn't sound so great in the long run.
And if you're voting for Joe Biden, that whole scenario, you know, it doesn't sound like the end of the world. Sounds like you have to put up with this for, you know, another two years, and then you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel is really what's going to happen.
Aaron: A Trump presidency would certainly have to fight a Democrat majority in at least one, if not both, houses for the next four years. There would be a severe limit to what he can get done that's on his wish list. And most— anything that he does, without, you know, the cooperation of a Democrat majority in at least the House is going to be something that could be, on day one, rolled back by the Democrat who replaces him in the White House in four years most likely.
Again, I'm not saying that there's zero consequences, zero repercussions. But the, you know, fundamental remaking of the nation is not within his grasp, even if he manages to hold on to the White House for four more years.
Max: Yes. Okay. So let's do the scenario if Joe Biden wins. Does this create a Democrat, leftist, authoritarian dictatorship? I would say, nope, that's not going to happen either. Many Republicans are scared of this scenario, because as I said, you know, Democrats can dominate media, tech, schools, university, corporate boardrooms. So they're saying, “Man, everyone's gonna get banned from Twitter. Everyone's gonna get banned from Facebook. We'll never have power again. Are they going to be able to create a one-party state?”
So I thought about this and I think, no, that is also pretty much impossible. I think that the coalition for Biden, all, like there's a lot of different groups coming together to get rid of Trump, but it's only to get rid of Trump and they don't really have a lot in common. You know, think about it. Like anywhere from like, you know, people who were supporting Bernie ,to like democratic insiders, to like some of the Republican insiders who are for Bush and now they're—and then like, you know, some of the tech companies. A lot of these people really have nothing in common.
And so I think that—and this is kind of bad news—if Biden wins, I think his coalition is going to fall apart pretty quickly. You know, if they talk, go on one extreme and talk about packing the court, some people might object. There's going to be a big fight. You know, if he does something like for the never Trump Republicans, you know, for them to like, maybe he'll say, “Okay, I'm just gonna keep the tax cut.” Then some other people are gonna hate it. He's gonna have a really tough time holding that coalition together.
Aaron: The same reasons, we said for a second term of a Trump presidency. I guess the biggest concern for people on the right is that if Biden wins, not only does Biden win the presidency, but they're going to hold on to the House, and they could very likely flip the Senate. And now you have a scenario where...
Max: But they're not as unified as they think.
Aaron: Right. Well, on paper, it looks like they control both houses and the presidency. They can push through whatever legislation they want. And for some things they might be able to come together on that. But I agree that there's probably going to be some divisions in there that they can't whip up party unity, to push through some of the more extreme things.
And then in two years, you're going to see at least some pushback or swing back of the pendulum in the other direction. And it is extremely unlikely that in 2022, the Democrats would be able to hold both the House and the Senate, that one of those—most likely the Senate is going to flip back to Republican.
Max: No, I mean, yes, I wrote this one down, too. But I actually think it's worse than that. Like, look what happens in Obama's first term and look what happened in Clinton's first term. And then also consider now, you know, it's going to be worse. There's not going to be a very strong leader at the top of the ticket.
I mean, I hate to say it, but there's gonna be a little bit of a power vacuum when Joe Biden wins. You know, because he's not very hands on, and I think the people below him are gonna be really fighting very hard for power. There's gonna be a lot of groups trying to try to take control there. And given what happened to Obama and to Clinton, I see the most likely scenarios: Congress goes violently Republican in 2022.
And for another reason that all of these organizations are really, you know, really spending enormous amounts of money and energy trying to get Biden election. They're just going to be pooped by the time we get to 2022. They're gonna be on top of things. So it doesn't look good. It's not gonna look good.
Aaron: And agenda wise, and—I don't know, what would be the number one thing on Biden's agenda—but I feel like historically, you know, there's a window when you have control of both houses and the presidency that you can push through one major program before everything starts to fall apart. For Obama, that was the ACA.
Max: Yes, they might try to do a healthcare thing this time again, but yes, I mean, look…
Aaron: But is that where he really wants to burn his political capital? And once he does, then it's gonna be a lot harder to do the second thing on that list.
Max: Yes, I mean, it's, let's be realistic, that's gonna be very hard to do. And, you know, they might say, and I don't think anybody is going to object to saying like, “Oh, no, that's going to be easy to do.” It's not going to be easy to do. And I think that, you know, whether we should do a different thing. But like, it's yes, when they realize it's going to be a lot of work, they might be like, “Do we really want to do all this work?” And I hate to say it, but come on. Think about it. Are they going to? I don't think so.
Okay, so now that we talked about some realist— I mean, maybe we made people feel even worse that there's not a whole lot of upside to their candidate. But on the other hand, there's not a whole lot of downsides to the other candidate. Look, there are checks and balances here. There's not a whole lot that we could do. But you know, the good news is we're not going to fall into a dictatorship. So how do you like that?
Aaron: Thank goodness for little things.
Max: Yes. Okay. So now let's talk about what's happening Tuesday night. And this is going to be— I put this at the end, because this is going to be out of date pretty quickly. But I'm just going to talk about paths to victory in the Electoral College. Like when the math of the states adds up, because there are going to be all these pundits out there with their calculators and scenarios. So I just want to go with a few simple ones to help us think about this, okay. So that way, we don't have to go crazy with like 50 states trying to figure all that out, because that's kind of overwhelming.
So let me talk about the obvious path because when Trump won, back in 2016, he won by winning the states in the Rust Belt. Now, yes, he won back Iowa and Ohio, but those were kind of expected. Those are like, you know, those were kind of Republican leaning states. But the states that really won that really put him over the top on that election, were the three Rust Belt states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, right? Because those hadn't gone Republican for many, many years.
So okay. One obvious thing that Biden can do is to just win back those three states. And so that's sort of, that's why, you know, they've both been campaigning very heavily in those three states. And so, he has to win all three back, you know, which sounds bad, but he could make changes in other areas where he only needs to win two or one. So for example, some people think maybe he could flip Arizona, or maybe North Carolina, and Florida. Probably of those three, Arizona is the one to be looking at. And so if he wins Arizona, then he only has to win two of those three Rust Belt states. So that's the thing to look for.
If he wins North Carolina and Arizona, but loses all of the Rust Belt, I don't really see that happening. And I think if he wins Florida, that just means that Biden's running away with it. So it doesn't matter.
Aaron: As much as you can do it on the 270towin.com map or whatever, these are not independent probabilities. Where one is flipped, that's saying a significant amount about what's likely to happen in these other states.
Max: Right. So the way I'm looking at it is he's got to win those three states. Otherwise, he's got to pull out an extra one, of which there are a few possibilities. Right. Okay, so that's, I think Biden's path. It's pretty clear. And I think his strategy has reflected that.
Trump's path is the opposite. So one, he could defend the Rust Belt. Get those three states back, and he's been campaigning heavily in those three states, not to get them back, but keep them there. But you know, he might not be able to do it, and he might lose some other states in other parts of the country.
Aaron: There's a lot of concern about Republicans flipping Democrat, about independents who broke for Trump last time not breaking for Trump, and about people who haven't voted previously who are highly motivated to vote Democrat now showing up to the polls. So all three of those things can make it difficult for him to hold those states.
Max: Right, right. And the polls particularly don't look as good in Wisconsin this time. But you never know. So what can he do? He has an alternative path. And one of them is to pick up Minnesota, the state next door. So that, you know, now he's telling Biden, “You don't have to win all three. You now have to win all four of these because I'm about to flip this one as well.” So that's one thing he could do. And then he can afford to lose Arizona and things like that.
There's another path that is a little more unlikely that I call the slash path. Because I'm thinking of it, you know, you can make a slash from the southwest of the country to the north east of the country, make your forward slash, right? So this is how I'm thinking about it.
Let's say he loses the Rust Belt. He loses all three. That's you know, the Biden win. He can still eke out a win if he wins in the northeast, so he picks up New Hampshire, and that one in Maine, Maine splits their votes so he gets one in Maine. And if he goes down to the southwest, and he keeps Arizona, and he picks up Nevada, which is also a swing state that he lost last time, but by very little. So if he does those two on those separate parts of the country, he could win it.
Now, that feels less likely, because it's sort of, you know, they haven't been campaigning there as much. But the polls show that those are very close states. So that's still a possibility. So I think what will happen is the election won't come down to one state. It will go all one way or the other way, even if it's very close. But yes, we'll see what happens there.
Aaron: From a local perspective here, it's...
Max: So you’re in Massachusetts, but you're talking about New Hampshire?
Aaron: Right. Yes. So I'm not far from the border. I haven't been into New Hampshire. In fact, I'm not even sure if I would have to quarantine if I did. But the odds on New Hampshire are heavily tilted towards Biden. However, you know, there have been several Trump rallies in Southern New Hampshire in the not-so-distant past. And I've heard of a bunch of people from Massachusetts going up there to participate. And you know, these are traditional big Trump rallies. So there is a— I wouldn't be shocked to see it flip. I'm not expecting it. But it wouldn't be that shocking to see.
Max: Yes, it would be shocking if that makes the difference if like, Biden does so well in the Rust Belt, but then Trump takes the New Hampshire.
Aaron: Yes, we're starting from an unlikely scenario if you're looking at all the possible outcomes here to begin with, but not impossible, for sure.
Max: Yes. So let's talk about that. Let's say what if it is close in the electoral college? What do we look at? And so this is where you come up with the idea of a tipping point state. It's a very interesting concept, even mathematically. It's even related to like the Shapley value that you know, we talked about in social choice theory earlier.
But the idea is you're going to want to order every state from reddest to bluest. And so you assume that you could make a state— you could make that assumption that one state is the most democratic. I would say that's not a state, but it would be Washington, DC. And then you go to the state that you think is going to be the most Republican, which I think is probably, I think last time was Wyoming. So let's say maybe it's still Wyoming.
Aaron: I was gonna say, maybe Alaska, but you're probably right that Wyoming is...
Max: Yes. Yes. So okay, so the assumption is, when you order all these states, you make a cut point. And you assume that every state above that cut point is going to go red, and every state below is going to go blue, or however you want to do it.
So you know, basically, if Trump wants to win Florida, you're going to assume that well, first, he has to win Wyoming. You know, and then he has to win Alaska, and then finally, after a bunch of states, then he gets to Florida, and then he gets to Pennsylvania, right? You know, as you go more and more in Biden territory. And then if he's really winning, you know, he's gonna start to win Oregon, and then he's gonna start to win Massachusetts. You know, then it's just gonna get crazy, and back and forth, back and forth. So you just have to create this.
So the assumption is that the election is going to happen at one of these cut points. And the tipping point state is where the cut point is, where if the cut point is just before that state, one person wins. And then if I flip that state, the other person wins. So I hope that's clear.
Aaron: Yes, and I don't know if anyone else displays it this way. But I know like, over on 538, they have the snake...
Max: Ah, the snake.
Aaron: Kind of winding back and forth. And so they have a nice clean line, you know, 270 electoral votes. This is where the divide is. And then they, you know, kind of color code it with intensity based on their polling weighted results. It's a good way of visualizing it. It doesn't necessarily tell you what the outcome is, but for example, they have Pennsylvania sitting on that 270 threshold.
Max: Yes, no, I was gonna say, so we don't know what the ordering of the states is going to be. It's only an assumption. But it's interesting, because I think, even if the polls are wrong, very wrong, I think the ordering might be better than the numbers. But let's— most projections that I've seen, including predicted, including 538, I think including Trafalgar which thinks Trump is going to win, I think they all think it's going to come down to Pennsylvania as the tipping point state. So whether you're a pollster saying Trump's gonna win, or a pollster’s saying Biden's gonna win or a prediction market, the signs are pointing to Pennsylvania. And it's a big state, so it's likely to determine the election.
Aaron: And that makes sense, because the differences between these polling outfits mostly have to do with some methodology and some weighting. So it would make sense that they might all have different results, but they're all going to be, you know, relatively ordered in a much very similar fashion.
Max: Yes. So just to put that in perspective, in 2016, that tipping point state was actually Wisconsin, but kind of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because it would have been tied if the cutoff point were between them. So Pennsylvania was already getting towards the middle. It was actually Colorado for Obama, because that was when Colorado was flipping from being a solid red state to a solid blue state. And for Bush in ‘04, it was Ohio. And in 2000, obviously, it was Florida, but that played out, you know, as a very obvious tipping point state.
Okay, so here's my take, given I looked at like, you know, what happened last year? And what might happen last year? When are we going to start to know what's going on? I mean, there's some people are saying, we won't know for a long time. But if we're gonna know that night. Look, Pennsylvania's polls closed at 8pm, on Tuesday, and the first polls of some states close at seven. Now, the big calls won't be made until 10pm. But I think you'll start seeing very big movements in the prediction markets, if we're going to get an answer from 7:30 to 8:30. From when you get some of those first polls to when you start getting some Pennsylvania coming in. And the reason is because people have very good models that they could tell from some of the first few counties where it's going to go, like which demographics are turning out, which demographics aren't. And you know, where the polls are.
Aaron: Not to mention that they'll be looking at exit polling in parallel with this as well.
Max: Right, right. But once you have some real results, that changes the game. That's some ground truth there. So that really is going to go quickly. And that's why last time, you know, I remember sitting down at the bar in East Village, which, unfortunately that's probably not going to happen this time. But, you know, which was fun. But I remember not knowing who would win. And I saw the New York Times prediction meter at 90% Trump, and I actually kind of assumed it was broken. But, you know, no. I realized after the fact that no, they have actually really good models on this stuff, that from some of the early results, people can figure it out very quickly.
Aaron: I've heard someone make the comment that we poll all year long. But there's only one poll that counts. And it's the one that you do in the voting booth on election day.
Max: Yes, yes. All right. So with that, I mean, that's kind of out of date. But we'll see how we do. And okay, maybe I can't— I have to say like one or two things next time. But actually, I want to tell you about some of the episodes coming up because I have some pretty cool episodes coming up.
So the first one is I'm talking to Brian McMahon, who runs a tech startup business and helps all these startups. And he talked to me about, you know, all the companies he's working with, doing business in Africa. And I asked him about the process of doing a startup. And he was just a really good speaker. And I know a few of my listeners brought me questions, and I asked them. So that is going to be a lot of fun. And so, you know, for those of you who are interested in tech startups, and I know there are a lot of you out there, definitely look out for that episode.
Another interview that I did was Tai-Danae Bradley and she is a really cool mathematician. And she wrote a textbook on topology. I talked to her about that and I talked to her about some of her ideas and papers on machine learning. And they're actually using ideas from quantum probability in machine learning. And do you believe that Aaron?
Aaron: Yes, quantum computing is one of those things that I haven’t fully wrapped my head around.
Max: Not quantum computing. Not quantum computing.
Aaron: Quantum probability?
Max: Yes, yes the idea of complex probability. And so that was really interesting to me. And she just does all sorts of interesting stuff. Like she's on YouTube. And so I really...
Aaron: I’m definitely looking forward to that one.
Max: Yes, I really enjoyed that interview. And another one I did for a conference recently was, I gave a talk on a virtual conference on PyMC Con or PyMCon about the, you know, what is probability and I know, we've talked about it on the program before. That's why I chose the topic for the conference, because it would be easy. But I basically summarized all the episodes we've done on Local Maximum, and kind of put them together and talked about what I think. And so I think that would be a good one too. A good talk to kind of share with listeners here on The Local Maximum. So those are three that I'm excited to share with you. And so there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of stuff coming up. I'm very excited about it.
Aaron: Awesome. So a lot to look forward to in November.
Max: Yes, that's not election related. If we're not in a civil war, it's gonna be great. You know, what, even if we are in the civil war, if something you know, if you need a break, listen to these great episodes. All right. I can't believe I made that joke. That's not cool, Max. Not cool.
Aaron: We'll see how well that one ages.
Max: Yes. All right. You know what? Our stuff ages surprisingly well. Like I looked at the stuff that we talked about COVID at the beginning of the year in early February. And obviously, we didn't know exactly what that meant. But it's not like, you listened to that and you were like, “Oh, these guys just totally had the wrong...” It aged fine.
Aaron: Not too cringe-worthy. That's always good to hear.
Max: Yes, maybe we'll go back to it one day. And I'll summarize what we said. All right.
Aaron: Are you going to be watching returns live and obsessively? Or do you have an alternate plan for how you're spending the evening of the election?
Max: I'm going to play it by ear. I have not voted early yet. I'm probably going to try to go early in the morning in New York. And I might try to come back to Connecticut, in which case I'll be on the train during that 7:30 to 8:30 timeslot, or I'll stay in New York and see what happens. But I don't know. There doesn't seem to be much to do. I'm not gonna go to a bar, you know, and there's not— yes, so we'll see what happens. Okay, yes, any last thoughts on what we talked about today, Aaron?
Aaron: Well, you know, everyone take a deep breath. It's not— the world doesn't end on the day after election day. And you know, whether it's gonna be four more years of hardship or something else, whatever your outlook here is pace yourself, because there's a long future ahead of us no matter what happens on election day.
Max: Yes, seriously. Good idea. No, I really—well, we talked about this before—I really wanted to get, have people thinking about that as we go into 2021.
Aaron: Maybe on the day after election day’s a good day to think about something, not politically related that you could talk to some of your friends, you know, in person or in Zoom or on Facebook or whatever you know. Maybe consciously changed the subject for a change, because I think we're all looking for a way to kind of get that stuff out of our system and find some common ground even if it's not on the political side.
Max: Yes, and look, it's gonna be in the 50s in the northeast. That means the rest of the country is probably gonna have good weather, too.
Aaron: T-shirt weather, right?
Max: Yes, well, no, but you know, put on a light jacket or, you know. If you're in California or whatever, you know, go for a walk. You know, have a— clear your head. Have a good time. I hate to see everyone with such mania.
Aaron: Yes, it's… We've said a number of times. It's not the end of the world. So, you know, take a deep breath, and we're gonna make the best of it one way or another. This is not the end. But certainly, not the end of The Local Maximum, because we've got all those exciting episodes coming up and more.
Max: It's not the end of The Local Maximum, but it is the end of Episode 143 unfortunately. So I think we're gonna wrap it up here, all right. Thanks for coming on today. Aaron.
Aaron: Pleasure as always.
Max: All right. Have a great week. Yes, have a great week, everyone.
That's the show. Remember to check out the website at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me the host or ask a question that I can answer on the show. Send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com. The show is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more. If you want to keep up, remember to subscribe to The Local Maximum on one of these platforms and follow my Twitter account @maxsklar. Have a great week.
