In this life, there are generally two types of problems that we have control over: problems of knowledge and problems of the heart.
If you don’t know why your dishwasher keeps flashing “F2” at you when you press the start button instead of the satisfying suck and buzz that means it’s wiping away the manicotti bits from your plates, then you have a knowledge problem.
If you see the error message, turn off the machine and calmly walk away, leaving the food to freeze on the dishes until your partner or someone else comes along to repeat your discovery. Then you, and by extension your family, have a good heart. of problem.
People of all times, especially those blessed and cursed with strong opinions, have always been more willing to see problems of knowledge than problems of the heart: “If only those poor souls knew the truth! If only we could teach them!” Give a man a clean plate and he’ll stack it, teach a man to clean the filter on a Whirlpool 5100 and he’ll have clean plates for a lifetime.
But of course, 100,000 years of human experience tells us the painful truth. Knowledge is not only insufficient to solve our problems, it often makes them worse. Yes, if we have incorrect knowledge, it is worse than pure ignorance. But perhaps worst of all is partial knowledge.
Today we wrap up the casting and begin counting approximately 150 million votes, from Washington County, Maine to Adak Island, Alaska. And it’s fair to say that no one knows exactly what will happen. People may think they know and can gather facts and figures to support their beliefs, but that’s exactly what they do: beliefs.
Right now, many Americans are frustrated with people like me doing the job of predicting elections, because we’ve been telling you the same thing for weeks: It seems very close, but it may not be. are very close.
That’s because polls and elections do different things. Polls try to find out what people think, while elections reflect what people do. Polls strive for knowledge. Elections are competitions.
We spend an unhealthy amount of time talking about polls in American politics, and in a race as close as this one, the conversation often turns to election mistakes. Reasonable. Polls have failed to accurately predict the results of the past two presidential elections. But they have also failed to predict outcomes with any truly accurate degree of certainty each national elections. Because, again, polls and elections measure different things. But you might forget that, given the way politicians and us in the press talk about them.
Whoever wins this election will likely claim that “the American people have spoken” and claim a mandate for this or that policy or attitude. Barring a prediction error unprecedented in the history of data science, that will of course be absolute nonsense.
In an election that will likely tilt a little one way or another because of a gentle breeze of a few points in seven swing states, there is no mandate for anything. If you want a mandate, just look at the 1984 map, when the losing candidate lost every state except his own, holding on there only by his fingernails. Ronald Reagan could say that he had a mandate to stay the course for a second term. Somehow pushing Wisconsin or North Carolina by 15,000 votes in open-seat elections is, at best, a mandate not to be the other candidate.
In elections, especially close ones, we look for the will of the people but find unsatisfactory answers. Our binary system forces people into large, unwieldy electoral coalitions that, except in very rare cases, do not rally around one or two specific issues.
But I think, for whatever it’s worth, it’s a good thing.
I know well the limitations of public opinion research and how, even if you managed to guess and work your way to a perfectly representative sample, opinion polls would still turn out to be misleading. Take the withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the time of the debacle, public opinion was divided, with a narrow majority in favor of support. But before that, national opinion was squarely behind this move. In the aftermath, however, public judgment was just as sharp, but in the other direction.
The current and former presidents both hid behind polls that said Americans wanted us out of Afghanistan, defending their withdrawal policy as a response to public sentiment. But when the act went predictably wrong, voters had no qualms about returning. And that’s fine, because making foreign policy is not their job. It’s from the president.
Public opinion research is good for getting a general idea of attitudes toward unimportant issues. If Whirlpool executives want to know whether people know how to operate their appliances, a poll can tell them. A poll can’t tell them whether those people will actually heed the call of the flashing F2 and rip a slimy filter from the bowels of their 5100, or leave it to a more conscientious member of their family. Those who answered the survey wouldn’t really know themselves. They might like to think so, but the heart has its own ways, especially when confronted with manicotti slime.
The purpose of elections, especially for the presidency, is not to conduct a survey of the “will of the people.” We have elections to give legitimacy to the leaders of our government and to act as a check against their abuse or incompetence once they are in power. Our presidents are not representatives charged with carrying out the national will, but custodians of the power granted to them in our constitutional system.
It would be reassuring if government were a knowledge problem – to believe that if only data science could perfectly tell us what people want, we could be happy and well governed. The truth is that the ills that plague us are more problems of the heart – a reflection of the characters of our leaders and our people. Neither the results of any study nor the outcome of any competition will bring us any closer to the hard work these problems require.
What we hope above all this week, apart from a quick and decisive outcome, is that an adult will think about where our problems lie.
Read more at De Uitzending
The Dispatch is a new digital media company that provides engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary based on conservative principles. Sign up for free.
