Dan Lavoie: The problem with horse race political coverage isn't the horse race itself, per se. It's the opportunity costs of not covering a million other stories of actual import to the job of being president.

The problem with horse race political coverage isn't the horse race itself, per se. It's the opportunity costs of not covering a million other stories of actual import to the job of being president.

Anyone read anything in the last month about how one of the Presidential candidates stole nuclear secrets, absconded with them to New Jersey and then met with the Saudi government there? Sounds like a big campaign story.

Recently read about some of the history of election polling, and how from 1936–52, it was kinda taken for granted among both pollsters & journalists that election polling was unhealthy for democracy, and pretty much everything they said then is what's happened now (lolsob) bsky.app/profile/saba...

when opinion polling started becoming big in the late 1930s, there was a ton of writing about how harmful it is to democracy, and even George Gallup thought he'd use 1936 election as a promotional tool for his product but didn't think it was a good idea per se onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Huh, I didn't know they foresaw these issues. That's.....distressing.

These are interesting reads There were "polls" before Gallup, but they were by magazines, done by mailer, usually for entertainment Gallup's whole thing was to run syndicated full-time phone polling, but his model was borrowed from market research firms onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

“A gold mine and a tool for democracy”: George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and the business of scientific polling, 1935–1955onlinelibrary.wiley.com Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences is an international journal focused on the scientific, institutional & cultural history of the social & behavioral sciences

We're so used to horserace coverage and how institutions respond to public opinion, it's hard to believe the SCOTUS ultra-conservatives in 1936 were caught by surprise that FDR won reelection bsky.app/profile/saba...

It's been several years since I've read a history of the period. Polling was really nascent in those days, and the VanDevanter & McReynolds really thought they had public opinion on their side and Alf Landon would win in 1936, and the FDR landslide came as a big shock, which did influence Roberts

Huh, that's really interesting

Yes! And the implication that the coverage differential reflects relative importance.

It also washes your hands of digging into an actual story of what reality actually is. Just stenograph talking points from your interested stakeholders and publish a “competing claims” piece.

Right?! Like a lot of people have no idea about Trump's crimes (several of which are pretty treason-y), it might be a good idea to INFORM THEM. Seems like a good thing to know about a potential President.

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