From my article from 2011 on the above topic:
Presidential general election campaigns have several distinct features that distinguish them from most other elections:
1. Two major candidates;
2. The candidates clearly differ in their political ideologies and in their positions on economic issues;
3. The two sides have roughly equal financial and organizational resources;
4. The current election is the latest in a long series of similar contests (every four years);
5. A long campaign, giving candidates a long time to present their case and giving voters a long time to make up their minds.. . .
And while presidential elections are predictable, the nominating contests that choose the candidates are not. Presidential primaries often have none of the five features I mentioned earlier. With three or more candidates, there is an incentive for strategic voting (not wanting to waste your vote on a candidate who doesn’t have a chance); this creates a positive feedback or “bandwagon” effect in which strong candidates get stronger and weak candidates disappear, an effect that we do not see in two-candidate contests.
The candidates in a primary election are of the same political party and typically differ in only minor ways in their political positions, so it is easier for voters to change their opinions. Primary election campaigns can be highly unequal too, with different candidates pouring their efforts into different states. And during the heat of primary season, voters may have only a week or two to make up their minds in light of the news from the most recent primaries elsewhere.
As a result, it’s no surprise that primaries are unpredictable. . . .
The NYC mayoral primary was different than a presidential primary, but it had many of the features leading to unpredictability.
I think you are missing the biggest problem: predicting likely voters is much harder for primaries, especially off season ones like the NYC primary.
1. The turnout is much lower (often 25%), so your likely voter weights are numerically more extreme and have more impact
2. Turnout is much more candidate dependant as many people think the election is less important and thus they need more motivation
3. RCV probably had an influence here, as it creates a different campaign environment and thus different turnout behavior
“The NYC mayoral primary was different than a presidential primary, but it had many of the features leading to unpredictability.”
I lived in NYC for over 20 years but possibly never voted there. My recollections are hazy, but I believe true New Yorkers would never have ever said, “The NYC mayoral primary was different than a presidential primary, but it had many of the features leading to unpredictability.” The locals would have said, “The NYC mayoral primary was different from a presidential primary, but it had many of the features leading to unpredictability.”
For the unbelievably picky, geographical and historical distinctions regarding “different from”, “different than”, and “different to”,
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/different-from-different-to-or-different-than
Isn’t there some evidence in the above post that the NYC “locals” would in fact use “different than” in that example?
Anonymous seems to feel that Andrew is a “NYC local” when in fact he was born far south of NYC in Philadelphia, PA and currently is residing in Paris.
He has lived primarily in New York for 25 years, though.
But he grew up in suburban Maryland, and he and I went to junior high and high school together…and where we grew up, it was “different from.”
“Different to”, ok, sure, those crazy Brits. But “different than…”, I didn’t know anyone says that anywhere!
The whole issue of strategic voting is changed exponentially with the RCV. There was a successful, widespread campaign around don’t rank Cuomo. That’s why he knows that he wouldn’t catch up with the ranking algorithm is run. Even if half of the remaining voters went for him he can’t get to 50.
This is making me think I will change part of my general education course to focus on voting systems.
Curious—should we expect an article on this?
https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/
I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on the methodology, sample, and the choice to release the paper publicly before peer review. It all stinks to me, though I don’t want to go any further off-topic. Apologies for that.
On topic: I agree that ideological differences between candidates are difficult to delineate in the minds of primary voters. That ambiguity might elevate the importance of interpersonal traits — warmth, trustworthiness, charisma, background, experience — and perceived extremity and electability, all of which are difficult to measure and valued differently by each voter. Add the fact that campaigns are not created equal — some candidates think they can message their way to victory, while others hustle by door-knocking and chasing earned media — and that evaluating campaign efficiency and quality is more art than science, and this makes the problem of forecasting primaries exponentially more difficult.
I was considering betting on Mamdani last week — when he was at 19% — but decided against it; maybe I should have trusted my intuition, and maybe that’s all we can rely on when forecasting primaries.
It’s not that primaries are difficult to predict, in the NYC race there were clear reasons why it went down the way it did.
1. an extremely unpopular candidate (Cuomo) who was perceived as the choice of the monied elite
2. a dynamic challenger who was hustling votes all over NYC with the promise of lots of free stuff which voters always like
3. ranked choice voting where almost everyone ganged up on #1
Regarding #2, I have written elsewhere “The key issue now is whether Mamdani can reject a lot of what I call souffle issues (things that look good but are largely hot air) that are generally unworkable in terms of solving problems. Just as with Andrew Yang’s UBI, voters love to get free stuff and don’t look under the hood to see what is there. To think that indebted and already overly taxed, NYC can load more taxes on their citizens to build city owned grocery stores and preserve rent control will always be a fool’s errand.”
This is probably a winning issue in NYC but unlikely in many other places.
Alan:
You write, “It’s not that primaries are difficult to predict.” But primaries are difficult to predict. Each election has its own story; this one can also be seen as a special case of the general problem. Regarding ranked choice voting: Mamdami also defeated Cuomo in first-choice votes. I don’t see that a plurality winner or plurality-followed-by-runoff would’ve given a different result.
Regarding policy: yeah, that’s another issue.