The Hidden Factors Influencing The Election - Nate Silver

what is this period of the cycle like for you it's pretty insane I mean I liken it to if you're like running some Lobster stand in Maine then in August you're gonna be really busy day and night that's kind of your your busy season um I mean I try to stay relatively grounded it's not my first rodeo covering an election campaign not my first involving Trump oh I meant I I meant sh otani's current Run for the Dodgers I we can talk politics if you like perfect no all this crazy stuff's happening 5050 like but no I try to I try to watch little baseball and football and basketball and all that stuff and and stay sane but definitely I mean the compression of events we had in the summer with Biden dropping out and then the assassination attempt and then the conventions uh will maybe never be replicated in American political history again I was how much of an outlier is that do you think to have the the speed of news and incidents occurring so quickly I mean let's keep in mind that like two a lot of elections are crazy now right we have the recount in 2000 had the pandemic in 2020 but yeah nothing nothing quite like that I don't think yeah I heard that you've been limited on sports betting websites but maybe it's something in the teens 15 different sports betting Pages have stopped you from playing the game more like five or six yeah there are about like there nine or 10 legal ones in New York and I only have a clean bill of health at like two and a half of them anymore how do you I'm a a Brit which means that sort of sports betting is in our blood there's the High Street uh sports betting shops that you can go into and bet on horse races and everything else how do American sports betting organizations ensure that the house doesn't lose well that's by they do it by Banning players who are perceived winning players or not Banning they they'll say they're limiting players right so at DraftKings if I want to bet on um a random NBA game it might only let me bet 80 bucks or something whereas my friend who's considered a Deen degenerate Gambler or the term whale is sometimes used he's allowed to bet 25 ,000 in a random NBA game um and the reason is because DraftKings thinks I have the Hallmarks of a winning better um whether they're actually winning better or not they don't care they don't want to take that risk so if for example that you bet early um the lines are easier to beat early than late when everybody is weighed in um if you're giving big action on games that aren't very popular right I don't know if you're an NBA fan but like if you're betting like the Charlotte Hornets or waston Wizards game then that's a sign that you're trying to actually win and you're a sharp and not a dgen um yeah and so different sites have different levels of tolerance for this the old model used to be that hey let's say I'm a a reasonably sharp better when I bet and you're the house I'm giving you information right it's saying okay um I have this model and it's trustworthy and therefore yeah you have to give me a winning bet but now you can update your line and therefore you'll be sharper for when the recreational money pours in um but they've now moved away from that model toward uh saying they don't want action from perceived winners it's the most Stark reminder I think that uh betting is not a fair game that's supposed to give you a crack at winning money it's rigged as as as rigged as it can be and in the games where it isn't rigged and there isn't a house Edge where education or Insight or whatever can actually beat in in some ways uh the odds need to be stacked that the scale needs to be pressed in one form or another again yeah I I you know rigged is a certain term of art um you know it's not rigged in the sense that if you go and play in Las Vegas the games are scrupulously fair according to the rules of the state of Nevada they just have a negative expected value for you when you play um slots every dollar you put in a slot machine the housee keeps about 10 cents out of that and if you're pressing a slot machine hundreds of times in an hour then that really starts to add up spoken like a true stus I so you try to predict what's going to happen in elections just how complex are the models that you use behind the scenes now they are somewhat complex not so much because they account for all these different factors I mean it's basically just the polls and the economy um but because the way that we vote in this country is unusual um we have an electoral college so you have uh 50 states voting and figuring out how they all tie in together is challenging in right so certain Maps make more sense um if Michigan votes for Trump like in 201 then Wisconsin probably comes along with it they're similar States um Arizona and Nevada might vote together things like that if Texas were to turn blue another southern state like Florida or Arizona might also so figuring out all the correlations in the model is actually somewhat complicated and there's things like when there's a shift in the polls how aggressive should a polling average be about adjusting for it so not there is real Art and Science in this I guess I'd say yeah is it what is it behind the scenes is it just one huge [ __ ] off Excel spreadsheet like what is it it's not Excel it's in a programming language called sta or stata people say differently um yeah it's about 5,000 words of of code okay interesting okay so what is different about this election compared to past elections and how has the model had to change to account for that so in some ways it's not that different um this is a third election in a row with Donald Trump as a republican nominee um so far he's one for one or one for two rather one and one um one win one loss um you know so from my naive perspective you might say okay well the odds are probably about 50-50 again and and that's probably what we're getting I mean so it's not that the model changes so much is that the conditions change um one thing that we saw in 2016 obviously is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote that that year and lost the Electoral College um that is probably a persistent problem for Democrats in a world where they turn out the college educated Coalition in California New York places like that places where they wind up having a lot of wasted votes so the GOP more populist Coalition is more efficient so so therefore you bet on Harris to win the popular vote as Democrats usually do but the Electoral College is about 50-50 wow it's kind of a running meme that nobody knows anyone who's answered a political poll and yet the entire country seems to sort of hang on this kind of data what's going on here do you do you need to control for the kind of people who pick up unknown phone calls do do you decide on who to sample like do people sign up to get pulled do they did they pick up less calls than 10 years ago this whole sort of concept seems quite archaic given to how much weight we give to it which leads me to believe that we either shouldn't be giving so weight to it or there is a large misunderstanding about how it actually works no I don't think you're misunderstanding I mean so look um in principle if you pull 8800 people because of the magic of Statistics that can give you with a margin of error a good indication of how the whole country would vote the problem what you're getting as you're getting at is that a lot of people are not equally likely to respond to phone calls if you um just call people on landlines like you'll get a lot of old white women picking up and not not many other people women tend to answer the phone from strangers more than men do and older people more than younger people um so most calls now are either done on the Internet or excuse me are done to cell phones or pollsters have gone to various online methods um but that's harder in the Golden Age you could like literally ring someone's phone up be like I'm from the gallop agency I'd like to survey the next the woman with the next birthday in the household um and actually people would answer calls from strangers I'm like this just not really a thing anymore and so yeah the people that respond to polls are weird um and well it's kind of a weird thing to do uh and you have to make some sausage out of that mince meat basically yeah I understand what is the truth behind most people are just protest voting now that it's not a vote for love of one party it's a vote of hate for the other I think there's a lot of that there's a lot of negative polarization um you know politics in the United States operates a lot on grievance um and grievance goes a long way yeah you're not you're not telling people you're going to fulfill their Wildest Dream so much as saying the other guy is too scary and so it's moral imperative yeah the other guy's going to fulfill your nightmares not that we're going to with dis solution exactly yeah yeah it's very uh what's the implication for that around messaging do you think like what what's Downstream from that I mean the parties are a little bit different in the sense that like Democrats I think tend to if you look at the Big Five personality traits right they're sorted a little bit by party um so Democrats are higher on neuroticism or negative emotionality and so um a lot of themes in their commercials are trying to um touch on people's anxieties and say hey remember what happened in 2016 where you thought we're going to win and Hillary lost um whereas the GOP is more um is low on openness to experience so they might touch more an anti-immigration or hey change is scary you can't trust kamla Harris and so um so both campaign messages fit the party's respective personality types yeah what are the most important Battleground topics this year which issues the different cohorts of voters care about the most um for Democrats the single best issue is probably abortion um you know a lot of moderate voters especially younger women um did not approve the Supreme Court's decision to overturn roie Wade a couple of years ago um and for the GOP immigration is almost undoubtedly their best issue um they aren't necessarily always talking about it in um the most elevated ways necessarily but people are concerned about about uh influx of of immigrants into the United States so you know we're talking about uh you a very sophisticated highly credentialed very smart statistician but largely just some bloke right that's sort of out there in The Ether doing this thing and writing a great substack and and and also a fantastic new book how much or how sophisticated are the parties individually with can they do what you do or are they Downstream from you they they' subscribed to Silver bulletin as well and just like hoping for the best no look I'm sure they're doing their own modeling um you know in sports you have this kind of Moneyball story of where um where for a long time in sports you had outside authors using statistics and things like that um and the Insiders were very Vibes and field driven um in politics it's kind of the opposite the the media is very Vibes driven and the campaigns are more data driven so I'm sure they have versions of what I do that are are probably pretty similar so you mentioned there about uh jenz young women especially Trump is on every podcast every long form interview that he can ca Harris isn't doing any of this despite being sort of the queen of gen Z why what do you think's going on there I think because she's getting bad advice um so she inherited a lot of the people that um that ran the Biden campaign uh and Biden because of his age and inconsistent shall we say performance with improp to public speaking they became I think paranoid about the press and I I think I think it's stubborn and stupid um you know look because of the Electoral College she has to win a majority of the popular vote right she's got to get to 51 Trump's got to get to 49 and and if you're at 49 now and and you want to get to 51 then every every marginal vote matters yeah I think had seen you tweet that uh basically the uh Democratic campaign has PTSD from yeah the Biden performance and uh that's being rolled forward into a candidate that's very different yeah you know we all get into our filter Bubbles and and you have a lot of Democrats who believe that um oh the mainstream media is biased against against Democrats and I just do not I work in the mainstream media I just do not believe that's objectively accurate right I think I think they have different conflicting incentives and the media different types of mistakes but like you know if you're a Democrat who thinks the New York Times is biased against Democrats then I'm not sure what to tell you yeah it's it's very interesting you know it looks like uh it is an actual uh coin toss at the moment uh going into uh November I've heard you say it is sort of 50/50 I I imagine the least exciting of all of the uh sort of statistical predictions that you could make um but I wonder how much of an influence mainstream media has and given that we're talking about things being a tossup when it comes to November but that there is such a bias in mainstream media toward the Democratic uh talking points how different would things be if we had an equally represented uh uh mainstream media it's a great question and a complicated question and by the way I'd be happy if it's 5050 if it's 5050 then then the stakes are much lower for me personally I guess on Election Day um because you've got equal chance of right I understand you're going to time either um so it's a great question for one thing um like I think the mainstream media the New York Times the NBC ABC CBS News um is on balance Center left right that it does frame certain issues especially on culture War stuff um toward a more Progressive world view you know toward a more pro-democratic worldview you do however have some powerful our weights you have Fox News um you have Twitter where there's still a lot of liberal journalists including me on Twitter but um but the discourse has moved to the right you know you have things like Tik Tok potentially and Facebook um you know and also you have a lot of Republicans who are Republicans because they don't trust the mainstream media because they lost trust during covid or during the financial crisis or or whatever else um so yeah I'm not sure it it helps Democrats to have uh to have the media I mean I don't think it's in their pocket either I think it's complicated um but I'm not sure it's so you know people also are skeptical right there's this political operatives think that oh you just say something and people believe it and like belief is a complicated thing um you know most of the time people are reluctant to change their mind and pretty stubborn and so it's like not just because they hear something or read something the first time do they necessarily change their mind talking about that what is the legitimacy of saying that debates change people's minds it seems to me that they don't impact the polls uh immediately as much as people might think and it generates a lot of headlines but then it doesn't move stuff but then does it actually eventually so what's the truth when it comes to that um so um we're in an environment where moving the polls by a single point can matter a lot right Kamala Harris gained about a point after that first debate or actually the second debate her first second total a point I mean the last two elections came down to Point basically and so yeah if we're talking about like trying to find those 3% of Voters who are still undecided or the 3% who are considering both candidates um it's so efficient that like it's going to come down probably to a few tens of thousands of votes in the in the in the same States over and over again so can you find just that you know and this gets back to the question of like you know why wouldn't you want to do more media if you're Harris because you it's it's really a matter of of winning the vote on the on the margin but still just to sort of Linger on that point why aren't debates more uh persuasive apart from when you have a sort of seppuku uh self imulation that occurs cognitively um because people have thought about this question for a long time I mean look um in England they have these so-called snap elections that can start and finish in a period of five weeks um in the US our elections last for basically two years uh and Trump has been running for president or been president continuously since 2015 um so people don't need that much more information I guess the kind of flip question is like you know how are people still undecided is the opposite question for that yeah how how many people say that they are how many people say I'm not sure only about 3 or 4% now which is historically low it's it's often higher than at this point in the campaign wow okay getting into the uh constitution of the the different sides was not picking Josh Shapiro a mistake I think if you're playing the percentages it's probably a mistake um just because Pennsylvania winds up being the most important state in our model about a third of the time um you know that is a state where Harris has gotten some better polling lately she's maybe ahead by a point or two um but yeah and to explicitly signal that you're playing for the center um this is one of the cliches and I think has gotten underrated actually but it used to be seen as hey you want to win independence you want to play to the middle I think that's still actually correct if you look at the long term that um that the candidate who has seen is more moderate I mean this is why Harris for example is trying to moderate or if you prefer flip-flopping on issues like fracking or policing or now taking a much harder line on the border and things like that is she recognizes that um that elections are usually won in the center whereas Trump Maybe doesn't agree with that I mean although although Trump is also on particular issues on abortion Trump has tried to moderate everything else not really that's been an interesting change and and and you're right there that I think um people on the right accuse CA Harris of of flip-flopping or not holding to her principles or not having any principles in the first place or hypocrisy or whatever uh for holding quite different opinions to those that they have video footage of from a few years ago um I don't know if the same criticisms are being leveled at Trump uh and JD Vance for a what seems to be moved toward the Middle With regards to abortion given how important it is well and JD Vance was formerly anti-trump an antitrump intellectual um so he's flip-flopped too I mean you know Trump has always been someone willing to say a lot of different things depending on who the audience is in front of him but yeah look it's it's uh it's a legitimate concern that um that we're a little bit less sure what we' be getting with Harris in my view um you know I mean the funny thing is the fact that we have um a sitting president who's 81 is he 81 or 82 now 81 years old um and by his own advisor admission like only has like four to six good hours a day right and the fact that the country is running well depends on who you asked I guess but the fact that these decisions are being being made anyway it's it's a little bit interesting um but no I think I think there are legitimate questions about like whether Harris is the more pragmatic version we've seen this year or the more Progressive version that we saw in 20 2019 in the primaries yeah that's a really interesting question this sort of uh when does hypocrisy or when does saying what needs to be said in order to win the vote discourage or degrade faith that you are anything because it seems you know you mentioned before was not picking Josh Shapiro a mistake well if we're going to go by the Numbers if we're just looking to improve the chances in Pennsylvania then perhaps that's the case but that's not actually really what you're supposed to be picking somebody for it's for their capacity to be able to run the country and help you run the country when you hopefully get into power so there is this sort of weird balancing game in terms of Optics in terms of what you're talking about in terms of the promises that you're making to people on the campaign Trail can we deliver on them when we get into uh office and then what what what does this mean for me and and my sort of overall Arc so yeah I think blowing With the Wind um it seems like the public has quite a strong tolerance for uh politicians that flip-flop left them right look in some ways it's a representative democracy um and so like I don't necessarily mind if a politician is instrumental and trying to trying to affect public popularity into into different laws and things like that so I I'm probably like less bothered by that than the average person I think I'd rather have that um we get closer to direct democracy than to have a bunch of Ideal logs I suppose um but if you don't know what you're getting then that can be a challenge that uh holding those two things um in the same reality the cognitive superp position is fascinating to me so people that are able to say well it doesn't actually matter who gets into Power because ultimately it's run there's this whole big team of people and they don't actually do all that much in the and then also saying well if my person doesn't get into Power this is the end of the world and it's this uh it sort of seems to move between the two uh sometimes on the internet yeah look I mean I think I think most people are not sitting down and working in a spreadsheet to calculate who they think will be the best party for their country or even for their lives necessarily um I think they feel like either some parties they feel excluded and some parties they feel part of the Coalition right um you know one I think problem that the left had during um the kind of summer is that you know you were seen as very like the wrong type of person if you weren't wearing your mask or if you're going out to restaurants or if you were you know not vaccinated and things like that and we can debate whether those are good policies or not I'm Pro vaccine myself um but uh but they were saying hey you're not part of our our little circle anymore um so I think somehow sometimes Trump despite having many problems of his own being very unappealing to many people younger people especially um um he is at least trying to like expand the circle a little bit when he goes on these different podcasts or goes to communities that Republicans typically don't go to um you know he's trying to expand that Circle what about picking JD Vans do you think that was a mistake I think it was a mistake if you read the reporting on on why the pick was made um so for one thing he uh Trump was influenced by um by the advice of his sons apparent Don and and Eric Jr um and they made this pick at a time when it looked like Trump was just going to win um so this had been while Biden was still running and way behind in the polls and also just after there had been the assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania uh so the calculation was that well we're gonna win so let's get a big uh young smart guy who can extend Trump's Legacy for many years to come um and I think that was a mistake he he is in the polls negative favorability ratings he's net underwater in those categories I think somebody who had you know more than two years of experience in the Senate um might have sold better to the public who would have been a better pick in your opinion I mean the boring answers are you know Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley or things like that um you know there could have been people who are more explicitly moderate um but a more kind of establishment Republican yeah what was the result of trump being shot at once and in the vicinity of a guy that wanted to shoot at him a second time what's that done cuz I'm very surprised I would have thought when that happened by doesn't matter about Biden Cara whatever it is slam dunk this guy's taking a bullet for democracy or for the country or whatever you want to call it I would have just thought wow game over yeah so it's hard to know because all these different things were happening at once right this is also in the period when Joe Biden's campaign is imploding you have the Republican National Convention you have the Vance pick um you know by the time left Trump was ahead by four points in the popular vote which is actually actually quite a lot given that Trump has lost a popular vote twice before um so I think there was some impact but but yeah you're right I mean and um you know and the assassinations have kind of fallen off um the map a little bit they haven't gotten a ton of of media coverage I mean this is why when I hear my liberal friends complaining about kind of the media I'm like I don't know um you know another thing that hasn't got much coverage lately is uh is again is Joe Biden's performance or Fitness for office it's not just an election story it's also a governance story and things like that he's making high level decisions um so yeah I you know the the polls did move some but again if 90 5% of people are locked in then they're only going to move so much does it kind of show that there's such a recency bias now on the internet uh 24 hours is basically the longest memory that anyone if if it's older than the duration of an Instagram story we can't recall what happened and if you supplant a trump assassination with a camela brat girl cat eating Haitian summer uh before you know it it's the the memes have just kept meing and and now we're on to something new yeah it's I mean it's hard to sustain any momentum in politics for that reason that these events might have a duration of a week or two some of that by the way is potentially bias season who the polls that when a party is having like an upcycle then their voters get more excited and are more likely to respond to surveys imp posters you know try but aren't always successful in trying to avoid that response bias imp po oh there's like a desirability effect oh my side's winning I'm going to talk mole yeah I mean you know if uh I'll put it like this right if you're talking to a poker player and that poker player had a winning night they're much more likely on the car ride home to talk about the glory of the big Bluff they made or or or making a full house or whatever else how masterful was the pivot to kamla Harris because before it happened I think everybody was up in the air This Woman's kind of unknown she was a bit of a meme everyone was sort of laughing at the this silly laugh and she hadn't done anything she was the most invisible vice president and then in retrospect it seems like oh my God absolute slam dunk why wouldn't they have done this sooner so she's been a much more capable politician than than I would have thought I mean partly though was that you know there are some natural politicians but most politicians are not Naturals um if you look at kind of like the um great politicians of our era Barack Obama lost his first race for congress Bill Clinton was almost laughed off the stage um at his first Democratic National Convention where he gave a keynote speech uh So like um Harris goinging all around the world for four years giving speeches and rubber chicken dinners and whatnot I think she got a lot better at the art of retail politics she also is not running I mean 2019 was a strange time for Democrats when she ran in the primary this is kind of like during the peak of of what is sometimes called wokeness everyone was running way to the left they thought Bernie Sanders had proven that was the way to beat the establishment um and so I think she was Ill served by that by that period She was not known as being so necessarily so Progressive for example as a DA in in San Francisco but she got very carried away with with moving to the left what do you think of the impact of this discussion around wokeness and it sort of capturing of both the left and the right as signal counter signal reaction proaction uh how's that sort of changed the landscape look I I think it's very unappealing messaging just from the standpoint of like if you were to try to survey it um you know messaging that makes people feel guilty for uh for their race or their other identity characteristics is Ming that tends to exclude people from your Coalition um but I also think there were always like a lot of people on the center and on the left who were never really on board with wokeness and just felt like they couldn't say anything about it until maybe a couple of years ago um you know in particular during 2020 when it's an election year in the middle of a pandemic and you have these protests that sometimes turn violent um people understandably were afraid to speak up I think and so I think you've seen pretty big shifts away from that particular movement and this happened in the past I mean we had like I'm a little bit too young to have experienced his firstand but you had political correctness in the late 80s and early 90s that had a shelf life of a couple of years because it was easily easily mockable um so I I think some of this has has peaked what's different about Trump's Coalition of Voters than past Republicans and and the same for CA so what's interesting is that we actually have some degree of racial depolarization in the electorate meaning that um white voters are getting more democratic whereas voters of color especially younger ones younger black voters younger Hispanics younger Asians are getting more Republican um so in one sense that's good you know other things being equal I'd rather not have a a vote that you can strictly determine by who's in what racial group in the United States but it does lead to some counterintuitive things on on the map um you know if you're doing better with white voters if Harris is doing better with white voters than Biden was four years ago that's why you can keep like the whiter Pennsylvania Wisconsin Michigan States even if her polling is not as strong in say North Carolina or Arizona it's so fascinating how all of this stuff breaks down what do you think that we need to know about the seven and a half states that are likely going to determine this election um You probably don't want to turn on a TV in one of those States from about now onward you'll literally see I spent time in Las Vegas yeah you'll see every single commercial as a campaign commercial by the time you get into September October November um but yeah obviously look if you are interested in the outcome of the election I think it's a important election then then vote you know donate by the way you might want to donate um not to Trump or heris who have lots of money but um to your favorite down ballot candidates things like state supreme court races matter a lot and get far less attention or even city council and things like that um but yeah I mean you know some people enjoy like the scoreboard watching element of Elections where they leing the numbers go up and down um but you're not gonna really learn anything new from from the polls between now and November not that you should read my newsletter but like but it's very likely to be close we have a very good idea of which states are likely to be most important and if you're in one of those States then you should probably vote which are those States um so Pennsylvania Wisconsin Michigan are like the northern Midwestern group and then Arizona Georgia Nevada North Carolina I'm surprised by Nevada I'm I have to admit that I'm a total like Noob to to this this is my first election being in the US I'm not used to this sort of set set of insights if you gave me most of the states except for Nevada on a map I wouldn't be able to put a pin on them um but it's surprises me that Nevada would have been one of those uh that being a swing state is kind of cult toly surprising to me yeah so if you go to Nevada and uh spend time in the casino settings there um you'll see why it's a swing state because you have this um very working class Workforce that is often people who are um who are minorities you know Hispanic Asian black it's a diverse Workforce diverse working-class Workforce Casino industry um and that's the group that has shifted more toward Trump um if Democrats are in on these like college educated knowledge sector workers um that's not the typical blackjack dealer although it does require quite a bit of skill frankly um that's not the typical person working in in food service at a big Resort or room service in a big Resort in in Las Vegas so that population has been uh risky for Democrats would a viable third option ever be able to get in you know we saw RFK junr give it as good of a crack I think as as uh could have been expected this year or is this essentially just impossible right now uh I don't think it's impossible but the issue is that the parties are pretty clever at adapting to the changing political Tides right so like in some ways in some ways Donald Trump was like a third- Party candidate um he disagreed in 2016 with George Bush and and Mitt Romney and criticized John McCain and was moving toward a much more culturally conservative but fiscally maybe less conservative actually policy than you had like under Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney for example or Bernie Sanders who is technically an independent he ran for the Democratic nomination and he produced change on things like the minimum wage and stuff like that but like so I think the risk is that um third party votes get co-opted by the two major parties yeah that is uh it's interesting to consider Trump as kind of like an outside option previously this is what people are saying when they're shouting about drain the swamp and he's not one of the globalist elite lizard people whatever uh this is what they it's kind of how they see him right yeah and you know keep in mind that um there was a whole GOP autopsy hey they have to move to the center on on immigration um and he had the foresight I guess to kind of Zig where other people zagged and and you know whatever else you say about Trump he's a former real estate guy and so he can kind of like maybe has some suc sense for when there's a a underpriced piece of political real estate somewhere yeah why did the polls lowball Trump in the past is there a risk of that happening again there's a risk in fact there's probably a risk of both directions in 2022 you had po balls polls underestimate Democrats in some big races in 2012 they underestimated Obama a little bit um so pulsers offer two basic excuses and you know I say excuses because how valid they are we can I mean I don't think they're I think the poers would love to have unbiased results but It's Tricky um one problem is that people who are more politically engaged in college educated are more likely to respond to polls and also more likely to be Democrats um you know your typical MSNBC watching New York Times whatever you know Starbucks drinking liberals is pretty likely to respond to a poll but we'll and we'll vote Democrat in November um that's one issue there were also issues in 2020 potentially related to co um where Democrats were much more likely to socially dist so they're sitting around without much to do and you know I probably made more phone calls during Co than I ever have in my life right um so Democrats were more likely to respond to surveys during covid and that may have caused issues in 2020 um but yeah these are legitimate reasons to to worry um the reason why I would say maybe I'd expect less of a polling ERA this year it's just because like what the polls are saying is that it's 5050 which is like a very reasonable suggestion I think right they're saying we're going to be somewhere in between 2016 and 2020 most likely comes down to a photo finish again the Electoral College and that's like not exactly going out on a limb is there a social desirability thing still with Trump I I walk around my uh very white very uh three and a half kids in a golden retriever neighborhood here in Austin Texas and I see a whole host of blue signs for Harris Waltz and I don't see a single one for Trump uh something tells me that people in $2 and3 million houses on all Democrats um I think there is some but maybe maybe less than people assume for a couple of reasons um one is that Americans tend to be pretty forthcoming when you ask them in surveys which is not true everywhere right um in India for example it's just considered kind of a bad idea to share your political opinion with a random stranger which in some ways maybe it is right um but Americans tend to answer polls pretty honestly the issue is more that you're not getting Trump supporters answering polls in the first place that um they're less likely to trust um trust a news outlet that calls and says do you want to take a survey um I would also say that the degree of social acceptability is wider now for Trump than it used to be um certainly on Silicon Valley and in Wall Street you have more explicit Trump support than you had four years ago or eight years ago um also in communities like like younger black men for example um or younger Hispanic men and things like that I I think I think the Social Circles expanded a little bit where you're where you're allowed to say you're you're a trump voter I would agree uh getting into your current uh thesis uh of choice how have you come to think about the sort of uh landscape of influential cultures in America The Village the river Etc yeah so the village and the river are terms from my book uh on the edge um The Village is kind of what it sounds like it's the East Coast establishment it's Harvard it's the New York Times it's a Washington Post it's Academia media government uh tends to be politically Progressive tends to be very collective in its orientation what you don't want to do in the village is be canceled or ostracized it's about kind of the group cohesion Plus winning elections for for Democrats um where as the river is my name for a community of like-minded Risk Takers so it's people in Silicon Valley and well street it's the casino business it's people trying to you know who are a very very competitive and B very analytics driven so they're smart about things they're trying to estimate and quantify things but they also they also really want to win what are the strengths and weaknesses of each of those groups um so as we kind of move into a world that's more algorith matized um and where like basically math and probability are becoming a more and more important skill than then that ravarian I call it you know someone from the ravarian that cluster of attributes is becoming more and more important right as like Tech and finance basically become a larger and larger share of the economy then that's kind of more emergent and important than maybe some of the more verbal skills we can we can we can't just Vibe our way through the future I think as the world gets more complicated and it gets harder to harder and harder to Vibe um or maybe I don't know about I'm vibing I've been throughout this whole conversation it's fun no having conversations is good and actually if you look at large language models like chat GPT um like language is actually more mathematical than people maybe assume you can kind of like transform it to vectors and do math on on language basically um but but yeah I look I think um you know it's also the fact is that we live in a very competitive world where the capitalist system and I'm for the most part pro- free market um is very efficient at producing winners and losers um and sorting through different ideas for better and for worse and so the people who are who are naturally competitive get ahead of course is the village not made up of a lot of people who are also competitive though they're highly decorated in terms of Academia uh they're still working in areas that are although uh internally they may try and sort of relabel it they're driven by capitalist uh sort of fundamentals is that not the case still for them I I mean I think they are very concerned with their social status right um that you want a certain credential I mean these are people where during covid um if you didn't have the right credential or even if you had the right credential and said the wrong thing then people say oh it's not that what he's saying is wrong it's that he's the wrong person to say it um or that's also adjacent to some of the wokeness stuff right where well as a person of X Y and Z then I have the right to say this but not the right to say talk about this other thing um so yeah whereas classically people in the river are more willing to be contrarian they uh don't care as much about offending Society um they just want to be right they just want their bets to win um and appearances sake don't matter as much what are the advantages of the village and disadvantages of the um so I think the village sometimes has its heart in the right place right I mean you know I I believe that climate change is a big issue and I believe that um you know we're very wealthy country that can afford to have some redistribution and things like that um you know I believe in expanding rights to lgbtq people so on that stuff I'm probably kind of culturally aligned with them um you know they certainly perceive Trump as being quite dangerous to democracy I think after January 6th then that argument becomes you know very credible frankly um yeah look I mean we have had historically in the US very competent institutions um although I know Americans are frustrated with the government you know you look at us compared to um you know these middle income country Greece or things like that like our economy is still growing when other economy aren't as much um but I worry that this is getting like swallowed by by partisanship um you know I think during covid that we saw that the expertise is kind of conditional on on the politics a little bit you know I media is complicated I mean media is a very Dynamic business but I think sometimes there are thumbs on the scales in different directions um so I worry that the river is going to kind of lose what or the village going to lose what make it what made it great um I mean the disadvantages to the Village or to the river rather is like I think you are getting um you are getting a lot of difficult people right if they want the once in a generation founder who breaks the mold well you're gonna have a lot of people like Sam bman freed or Elizabeth Holmes that um that do this in a destructive way potentially instead um you know I think it's uh it's there can be some selection bias and who they pick to be Founders I mean it's still very male um you know not very diverse in terms of Black Or Hispanic representation in the VC industry and so I think those things are valid critiques yeah the certainly one of the things I've noticed one of the reasons I think being left leaning is so seductive at the moment uh is that much communication is going on through social media and whoever sort of prioritizes for first order compassion sounds like somebody that cares more and it's all well and good being Tim Kennedy or Tucker Max and telling everyone to go [ __ ] themselves because I've got an AR-15 and a thousand like magazines of ammunition but it it's not as compelling at getting other people on board by definition it's exclusionary in a way that uh the sort of left leaning talking points also can be exclusionary but they're like inclusionary exclusionary yeah look and and I do think that you know it's inherently I like how you put it I think it's inherently like a more sympathetic argument that's a little bit more Humane and and that goes that goes a fairly long way I mean let's keep in mind that um even though there are excesses on the left uh Democrats win their fair share of elections they win the popular vote almost every night time now in in the presidency um they uh control the Senate they might win back the house later this year um so it's a message that actually is maybe more broadly appealing than people might assume talking about some of the more risky people uh Elizabeth Holmes sentenced recently Caroline Ellison uh in court recently uh sha Diddy comes and S bankman freed in the same Brooklyn Jail unit at the moment apparently uh what did you learn from being around SBF and and can you sort of tell that story of how that happened so I spent a lot of time with with um SPF I first talked to him in I think January 2022 which is during one of the early um Bitcoin Peaks um and he's riding high he can't seem to imagine that you'd ever have a sustained decline in crypto or at least it's kind of like what he's telling me right um and was insanely tolerant for risk I mean it's a book about people who are Risk Takers but so he told me that if you're not willing to risk ruining your life that you're doing something wrong that you're not accepting enough risk um which seems crazy right if you're worth a lot of money what you should be doing to some degree or another is hedging your risk um that you can make these very big bets because if you lose a bets well you still have a billion dollars left over if your SPF or $5 billion or 1010 billion um you know he was not doing that whatsoever and I think was like enabled by a lot of people who who ought to have asked more questions you had I think you know in New York we have the bystander effect where you see like somebody like bleeding out on the street or something and everyone walks by they figure someone else has called 911 well sometimes nobody called 911 and did the due diligence and that person winds up you know dying or being Gravely injured because of the bystander effect there were so many people who are vouching for Sam you know he is on stage to the world economic Forum with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and and he's hanging out with these like Oxford philosophers um but he the whole time he was giving very dangerous signals is he actually smart or is he just a [ __ ] that was able to tolerate more risk than everyone else and get first mover Advantage I think he's smart but I think he's like um you know 99.5 percentile smart and not like 99.95 percentile smart like one in a th and not one in in 10,000 um I think he's also somebody who um is overconfident I mean this is a big problem that actually people in the river can have in theory they're supposed to be probabilistic and and cautious and learn how to make well-calibrated bets in practice that can lead itself to overconfidence and so um you know he I think overestimated his ability to navigate these various Rapids that we have with um crypto prices and nfts and so forth going up and down I think he was over optimistic about his persuasive ability when I talked to him and I went down eventually to the Bahamas and talked him a couple of days there uh he seemed to think that he could charm his way into a very sympathetic jury verdict um you know I asked him last time I met with him he was in paloalto California at his parents place where he's under house arrest has an ankle bracelet and I said what if you just got um two years in jail and then some some light after that would you take that deal and he said I'd have to think about it when it would have been a great deal he wound up getting 20 years instead which is I think a fairly predictable outcome not just 20 years Nate 20 years in the same jail as P Diddy which I think is the the the same functioning as 10,000 years actually yeah know it is it there's some riddle I think about like forever being trapped in a jail and that's going to be I don't know I'm although I'm sure I'm sure SPF will find ways to have little schemes and so forth in in jail I'm sure he'll have an interesting time well look to sort of tie the two big topics that we've been talking about today together uh presidential candidates and High Risk Takers Caroline Ellison spf's girlfriend managed to finesse an entire Army of nerds into being some weird inverted Haram and then managed to finesse her way into 107y year discount on her jail sentence she went from 110 year potential maximum to three years of you can kind of go around just don't don't go near the internet or something for a while she is the person that we should be looking to for president she can the Ukraine sorted the Middle East is sorted I'm Caroline Ellison for president that's me that's my vote it's probably her versus Mr Beast next time around I oh man so you looked at um the sort of sociology psychology of crypto investors why they were so prone to being scammed what what did you learn that uh I think part of it is the kind of time of human history when this is happening um you know if you read Matt LaVine from Bloomberg he's fond of talking about something called the boredom Market hypothesis which is that people are lockedown I know it's not a formal lockdown but people's social lives are radically curtailed during Co they're spending a lot of time on the internet meanwhile the government is pumping a lot of money into the economy so there's a lot of cash and so I I think it was just like you know look I think the blockchain is a really interesting technology so I'm not trying to demean it um but I think you had kind of a that you know that nft era I mean most bubbles people kind of they kind of almost know they're in a bubble and they kind of can't help themselves anyway sometimes because it's fun and also there are times if you if your timing is perfect then you can come out ahead very few people do but I I think it's this boredom and anxiety of the pandemic is producing you know producing a lot of speculative assets and although you know this is amazing people forget like how annoying like the GameStop how amazing rather not annoying how amazing like the GameStop story is right that basically keep people ban together on the internet to severely disrupt stock prices I'm not sure that it's good for the economy but like it's amazing that people are able to to to do that for sustained periods of time yeah uh two thoughts on that first one being I have asked a lot of my friends who are into crypto if there was no potential to make a profit from your trading in it and your investment in it would you still put your money in it and the number of people you 95% of people I think if you ask them like carefully and get their real opinion doesn't I'm like dude you don't love the blockchain this isn't about somebody in Zambia being able to send money back home safely and securely it's because it's [ __ ] highrisk Ling with massive upside that's why you love it uh second thing do you read much Morgan howel you subscribed to collaborative fund his his blog I have I have not no dude so he put a post up that is very similar to what you're talking about I read it this morning so I'm gonna I'm G to tell you about it um uh compounded knowledge versus cyclical knowledge so he starts off with this story of germ disease so before uh germ diseases were understood and that these surgeons used to think that a crusty blood-filled puss soaked uh operating room was kind of like uh it was evidence of all of the work that you'd done that they they thought they basically mocked the first um proposers of germ disease and said this is the same as relying on Spirits there's no way that this could be the case like this is so tiny invisible little things that get it's not it's the my Asma you know they were putting cman into people's wounds they were injecting cow milk into people's veins in the hope that the fat would turn into white blood cells like just like really really out there stuff and then uh Morgan's Point is that as soon as you learn about a germ theory of disease that knowledge is locked in so it compounds over time and yet he has you know maybe 10 different examples 10 different uh quotes from senica 2000 years ago to the Great Depression to the Florida housing prices in the 1900s all over the place and everybody is saying the same thing that anytime that you get some money one of the primary problems is that it makes you want to protect your money which makes you actually more uh skewed in weird directions you become sort of more illogical the Richer you are as opposed to uh being more rational with it and he talks about that being cyclical knowledge that each time that a situation comes back around this time it's different this time the market conditions are Al altered uh people always are going to be driven by this desire for more it's got this built-in h adaptation thing and this sort of dissatisfaction that humans have uh his point being that he can can see a time in future where maybe all cancers are solved uh we don't have to deal with with death and disease in the same way as we do now we basically sort of conquered human health but there is no time in future when he doesn't see that greed and envy and the desire for more will not be a fundamental driving force I thought that was a really nice uh a really nice concept yeah look I mean one thing I worry about again I'm pretty Pro capitalist for the most part but I worry about um where we are giving all our data to these big powerful companies and potentially AI systems um and they know more about us than than we know about them and that if you're not smart that you wind up getting taking advantage of and and exploited if the if the economy becomes more Casino like um that seems probably pretty bad for for human wellbe what are some of the most interesting insights or lessons that you learned from researching Vegas and casinos and stuff like that I think one thing that's a little bit counterintuitive is you know people don't understand how important regulation actually is to having a functional Casino industry at all because for years um casinos just cheated their patrons right and they kind of competed to see who could play better tricks on their patrons there was like no real way to establish credibility and then on top of that you have um the mob skimming profits off the top before the era of all these big entrepreneurs and so um the fact that like Casino industry is now this respectable business um is actually kind of an Underdog Story I mean there's nothing else to do in Nevada right it's beautiful land but like it's not very hospitable to the population um it's surrounded by mountains in all directions and so yeah let's build a whole bunch of casinos and you know and Vegas is an incredible success story in certain ways but it's you know partly because of the you know the visions of the Steve Winds of the world these are the big Casino magnates um who was like we can make Casino a luxury destination item um and they made that big bet and they were and they were right was it not always no I mean it was kind of very much you know you read the mobile travel guide I'm dating myself but no the casino industry was seen as like maybe cheap lower middle brow fun I mean there were some things I there was like The Rat Pack era of course um but you go into like uh the old school casinos on in Downtown Las Vegas some of which are a lot of fun it's a good thing to do to get off the strip sometimes um but they're yeah there show girls kind of Vibes and maybe a little bit of a Speak Easy Vibe but it's not it's not highbrow luxury right you get a $20 room that they give you for free so you'll so you'll gamble more you get a coupon for a free steak dinner but it's not you know Michelin Star Award winning three star chefs next to the poker room kind of thing going back to the uh High Risk Takers uh and the the people from the village that you were talking about before what are what are the big lessons that you want people to understand about the sort of psychological makeup of these people and and sort of how they can use those lessons the best the best of each of them to sort of uh embody them themselves yeah even though it's a cliche it's extremely important to be cool under pressure and to understand that that when you're facing high stress situations that involve physical risk or real Financial Risk that your body has a reaction to them um that if I'm playing a $12 poker game just nothing is going to phase me um if I'm playing a $100 $200 poker game where pots could get into the five figures easily then the fact is that your body will intuitively recognize that this is a fight ORF flight moment where you have more on the line and there are other moments like that um if you do are into public speaking and you walk out on a stage in front of a couple of thousands of people you're you're naturally going to get butterflies because that's an important moment compared to when you're just walking down the street to catch your airport or catch the cab to the airport or something um so understanding that when that's happening you're actually on a different operating system I've talked to guys who study the Neuroscience of all of this um and understanding that when you're under pressure that you have to slow down and simplify things sometimes people want to be a hero to make some really exotic play in poker if you can just kind of execute and stick to your training when other people are losing their [ __ ] then that's a really powerful Advantage how do you step in to do that functionally or practically yourself I think I saw somewhere in uh the release about the book that you've made uh not insignificant amount of sum of money while writing the book in poker so it it seems that you must have sort of been around around some of these high stress situations someone has got a presentation to do at work or they've got a job interview or they're for some reason playing in a poker game that's got you on the other side of the table what should they do to uh regulate themselves in that moment or what do you do so one thing it's you know it's recognizing that having a physical stress response isn't necessarily a bad thing um so for example I when I talk to a professional golf trainer he's a guy who trains golfers and poker players can both get both get The Yips both get nerves um a professional golfer who is a fit athlete uh maybe not as fit as like a basketball player or something but these guys are pretty fit um will have his resting heart rate at like 90 or 100 beats per minute just from walking around the golf course at a major tournament um because it's a it's the body is correctly saying this needs to have I need to have an increase in my performance and so understanding that if you feel nervous that it isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're doing public speaking what you don't want to do is kind of what Joe Biden did in the first debate and began to freeze um usually if you just kind of say the words that are coming out of your mouth then they will work perfectly fine and you and you can't be as cerebral about things as you would be ordinarily however it also means that you're actually intaking more information if you've ever heard the phrase being um in the zone like Michael Jordan would describe where I'm seeing things as though they're in freeze frame or slow motion right and I'm able to anticipate my opponent's moves before they make them and things like that like that's it's actually a real thing you can experience like when you're when you're under stress and being able to get used to that is is helpful I had a an incident on a podcast a few years ago where I'd decided to fast before I did it and uh that's good because it meant I was super aroused and had all of this you know adrenaline csing through me but I went hypo during the middle of the episode which caused my brain to just go compl completely blank so I'm sat there watching this person go and listening back to the episode now in retrospect there was some bit of me cruise control Governor that was just saying things but my mind was captured with me going oh my God I can't believe that I've got nothing to say how am I going to get some BL is that is that chocolate Over The Far Side can ask for some chocolate do you think that I could get get a break and get a Gatorade but my brain was just going looping around in this and my mouth was just feeding stuff out of it that was totally cogent I was like uh okay that's interesting that's getting out of your own way and sort of using experience now people's ability to go on autopilot and the amazing like plasticity we have with how we direct our attention to I mean you know imagine that you're in this crowded restaurant in the middle of Manhattan and there's bad Acoustics and 500 conversations you're able to like attune to the conversation with your friend most of the time I mean our our minds are quite are quite amazing in that respect although I would recommend against fasting and poker like don't go well together um I don't like to be super SED when I play um but I don't want to be totally famished either because your body will find ways to make you lose to feed you that your friend like Hey we're going out to get dinner at that Japanese place later uh we know you're still in the game right you you'll always find a way to like bust out when that if you're if you're starving yes what are the disadvantages of being a person who lives life with the worldview and perspective and predilection and disposition that you have um I think sometimes you rub certain people the wrong way I mean I don't know I mean um I mean I've always felt kind of arranged in in politics because I'm concerned with this question of like who's gonna win and what's the optimal strategy and and the kind of game theory of politics um and most people are into politics because they um are on one team and they want that team to win the reasons for being on that team might differ from Identity stuff to to more high-minded policy stuff or thinking you know and that's and that's fine but like that's like not my people so I kind of wind up getting thrust into environments where the thing I'm best known for politics is is not the thing I that's my most natural interest is that something you're worried about as a legac uh type picture being the political forecast guy I mean it's probably irreparable at this at this although I could you know I thought about not running an election forecast publicly this cycle I thought about just doing some Consulting we had um we had with several different firms different discussions about just taking the forecast totally private um I decided in the end that like so I'm building a business I have this newsletter silver bulletin which is subscriber newsletter on substack and everyone should go and subscribe I love it I appreciate it um and that's doing really well right and so now all of a sudden half my burnout about the election stuff was working for a giant Corporation Called the Walt Disney corporation that owned 538 before and so um so yeah I don't know I mean we'll see I I I was having a lot of fun I will say I know you're not allowed to say you're not supposed to have fun when you cover politics so having a lot of fun until about like two weeks ago where you know after Labor Day people just kind of lose their minds they get very mad at any pollster or forecaster who doesn't say good news for their candidate um but we're in the stretch front here now we only have what is it 44 more days to go or something not that you're counting down obviously no not I mean I've got a trip to Korea planned for December uh got some poker stuff planned for earlier December so I have I have some things to look forward to oh you absolutely deserve it um one of the words that me and a bunch of my friends are massive massive fans of is agency and you've got agency plurality and reciprocity as three sort of very important traits you just explain what those mean to you and and and why they're so crucial yeah so these are kind of my core values that I think we need in a more in a more datadriven risk on World um agency means having good choices is how I Define it right so Liberty is great but like you know we want you to able to have two or more real choices for how you lead your life um where you're well informed about those choices it's not coercive I worry for example that with algorithms you have people who are manipulated into making kind of false choices um plurality just means that I don't want any dominant group or faction to dominate I want to have this is why I like democracy still is that um is that you have to have agreement between different perspectives or different people I think that's very important um and reciprocity is kind of a form of fairness but in a more complicated way that gets derived from Game Theory um this is about not exploiting people right in Game Theory you adopt a strategy say in poker that assumes that you're playing perfectly and we are playing against one another and trying to balance our strategies out with one another so that neither of us lose in the long run um I know it's a complicated metaphor but it's basically saying you know treat others how how you want to be treated what about what is sort of when it comes to a personal level you know you're not just this uh nameless faceless data inputter that's writing words and and trying to predict elections you've got the stuff that you do with poker private life all the rest of it what are the traits or habits that you rely on yourself personally the most I think there's a lot of people certainly myself I want to become better uh with dealing with risk I want to I I would say I'm the uh sort of opposite in terms of risk-taking to S bankman freed that um my my my required barometer needs to hit an unreasonable level for me to make a decision so what are some of the uh traits that you rely on or that you value most in yourself when it comes to your ability to sort of deal with risk and and move forward um you know look I think I understand that we live in a world where there's a lot of abundance at least if you're person like I am um so you know I think people who I mean I grew up middle class basically right I think a lot of people like that don't realize that sometimes it's worth it to um to pay to make your life easier and more convenient I think so not feeling guilty or Shame about that I mean I work really hard um and I have a lot like getting a gardener or a maid or something like that yeah things like that or or you know or staying in a nicer Hotel well you'll sleep better because if you do the math and you have these election years where that's where most of your income is made then like you know one hour of extra sleep is worth quite a bit in terms of productivity if you can write another newsletter posts and get more subscribers and things like that um you know I think I'm very good at like intense focused work I mean if you ask me I'd probably say that like I worked more hours 10 years ago when I was a little younger but like I I work much more focused now right if you're working for yourself and there are no like pointless meetings to take um then if you don't have any busy time and it's all real work then doing like than doing six to eight hours of real work in a day is a lot of real intellectual work and kind of recognizing that you have to like pace yourself a little bit um and also if you're if you're a writer at least for me you're constantly writing in the background right like I'm writing like for blog post whenever I go to get coffee or something so you're uh optimizing for a maker schedule rather than a manager schedule in Paul grahe language AB absolutely you know the the manager schedule you know when I have more than three scheduled commitments in a day right even three is pushing it then I'm like okay the day is kind of ruined we uh the founder mode uh versus manager mode uh blog post that Paul put up the other week me and my housemate have been talking about that a lot uh really interesting little pivot that he found with that which is if the beginning of his day gets sideswiped by something which puts him into uh manager mode uh or manager schedule I guess technically he just commits the rest of the day he's like right okay I'm going to commit that the rest of this is [ __ ] ruined I'm not going to get anything sort of meaningful or deep done so he then just starts messaging all of the outstanding meetings that he knows he's got I guess it's kind of like uh I don't know uh you're firsthand going really badly uh around the poker table and go okay I'm I'm just going to adapt the rest of my game to this and maybe I'm going to just try and learn stuff and then I'll come back to the table a better way tomorrow I think that's smart I think and I think batching your work like that is smart too right um like I'm not really a clothes fiend but you know you have to go shopping to look nice sometimes and like I will just go [ __ ] balls out and be like I'm just gonna spend six hours shopping today and then not do it again for six months or something I think that's more that's more efficient than doing a little bit at a time agreed I'm currently testing trying to have Wednesday as uh meeting day and then the rest of the week is nothing as opposed to this sort of weird like distribution of seeds on an open field that I had previously on my calendar no I think that's I think that's much better because I you know you really do need like especially writing a book you really do need these times of like three hours minimum to get totally immersed in it I think heck yeah Nate Silva ladies and gentlemen Nate I love your work the book's fantastic it's really story driven which I I appreciate from someone that uh has the seduction of numbers I guess in front of them all the time why should people go they want to keep up to date with with all the stuff you're doing um so silver bulletin is my newsletter and risky business is my podcast that I co-host with another poker player Maria kova heck yeah Nate I appreciate you thank you of course thanks so much if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give them a watch