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Last night, Republican Greg Gianforte won a special election for Montana’s sole Congressional seat. How do we interpret this event? Here’s how the NYT approaches the question:
Voters here shrugged off the episode and handed Republicans a convincing victory. Mr. Gianforte took slightly more than 50 percent of the vote to about 44 percent for Mr. Quist. (President Trump won Montana by about 20 percentage points.) Mr. Gianforte’s success underscored the limitations of the Democrats’ strategy of highlighting the House’s health insurance overhaul and relying on liberal anger toward the president, at least in red-leaning states.
I believe this interpretation is incredibly misleading and reflects a larger problem with how we make sense of binary outcomes in the presence of more information.
As the NYT notes, in 2016, Trump carried Montana 56-36. The House race in 2016 was a similar 56-40. Gianforte here won 50-44. That’s a 10 point shift. In a special election. In Montana. And with something like 70% of votes being cast before the assault that brought national attention. Turnout was about as high in the special election as in the 2014 general. That’s wild. Yes, Gianforte’s awful, and yes that he will be a congressman is depressing. But framing this outcome as having “underscored the limitation of the Democrats’ strategy” or as a big loss for Democrats strikes me as absurd. If you are a GOP rep who won by say 10 in 2016 (55-45), this result should terrify you. And if you’re a Democrat looking at an even marginally competitive district, this should embolden you.
That’s most of what I wanted to say; the rest of this post is an aside about learning, probabilities, continuous information, and contract bridge.
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