There are other events that may happen depending on the beliefs about this. It may rain or shine during the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics, but chances are it won’t be affected by whether or not people think it will happen.
Elections are different. If the perception begins to take hold that the candidate is losing performance, this will lower morale, fundraising, volunteer effort, and turnout among supporters, and thus increase the likelihood of the target losing. Desperation for a chosen one can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.1
That’s why campaigns tend to release internal polls selectively, circling those that show their candidate in advance or closing the gap and suppressing those that disrupt this narrative. This is also why observers are often skeptical of internal voting, even interpreting the failure of the campaign to liberalize voting for a long time as a sign of bad news.
When a campaign is facing an existential crisis, it is strategically important for the candidate and their aides to project a high level of confidence in the recovery. This is a script that we have seen play out over the past few days. In his letter to members of the congress, President Biden asserted that he cannot and will not step aside, that any “decline or lack of explanation” would benefit his opponent, and that it was time to end the speculation. He made similar claims in his phone calls with major sponsors and fundraisers, and in media appearances.
A number of other people echoed these sentiments, not surprisingly like attorney Ocasio-Cortez, who insisted the matter was closed (screenshot below, video link here):
This serious effort by the president and his allies did indeed change beliefs about his prospects, but only temporarily:
The above figure shows the daily closing prices of the Biden candidate contract on PredictIt over the past month. Four categories can be identified. Before the debate, the odds of Biden being the nominee hovered around 85 percent. This dropped to around 60 during the debate itself, and then dropped further to 40 over the next few days. An attempt to convince voters that there is no possibility of Biden stepping aside led to a return of the price to the stated probability of about 60, but this lasted for several days. As of this writing, the price is as low as it’s ever been:
So we are dealing with two conflicting narratives. The president and his devoted followers insist that there is no hope that he will step aside, the matter has been closed. Markets suggest that a change in the nominee is more likely than not, and that Kamala Harris has a better chance of running in the November election than Biden himself.
How do we make sense of this? Mathematical models can’t help us find probabilities, because they can’t deal with uncharted waters and still give out-of-the-box probabilities that someone other than Trump or Biden will win the November election.
It helps to realize that the president currently has only two options—he can start preparing for a retreat and show that he is doing it, or he can announce with great confidence that such a situation will not arise. It is amazing to me that his followers really believe that this matter is closed. But they have no choice. Leaving the door open even slightly can kill the campaign, as all-out war and chaos will ensue on the road ahead.
Therefore, the president and his supporters will continue to make great efforts to convince donors, delegates, and voters at large that there is absolutely no chance of him dropping out of the race. Maybe this will work, and the odds of winning will return to pre-controversy levels over time. But what the markets are saying right now is that the effort will probably fail.
In public-facing messages, the campaign must continue to project a high level of confidence. But behind closed doors, it would be wise for party leaders, starting with the president himself, to begin planning systematic reforms. This must be done even if they hope that the plans will never need to be made, and even if the plans must—for strategic reasons—be hidden from the public.
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