The model is coming

A quick update on plans for a busy political week.

Hello, readers. I mostly try to avoid signposting-type newsletters, but there’s enough traffic ahead next week that I figure it’s worth making an exception.

First, let me use this as an excuse to tout the latest episode of the Risky Business podcast with Maria Konnikova. We had some fun this week, discussing the “snap election” in France, risk communication around global warming, and — most importantly — the Sriracha Crisis (although as a spice addict I have to warn you that Maria overrates the piquancy of sriracha).

Next, work on the presidential election model is about 90 percent done. It’s very, very dangerous to make any sort of commitment on a programming-related task, but with the help of new Silver Bulletin elections analyst Eli McKown-Dawson, we’re in relatively good shape and mostly down to edge-case stuff like handling ranked choice voting in Maine. The rough target is to publish the model on Wednesday, but that’s plus-or-minus a day, and depends on me having a reasonably productive weekend.

Although we’ll release polling averages that will be available for everyone, I’m rather stubbornly determined that the forecast component of the model and the associated probabilities will be paywalled. I deliberately want a smaller, self-selected audience and to avoid too many “model wars”-type dynamics (plus, the economics of this figure to be better, if we’re being honest). The idea is to take more of a “slow food” approach, with updates once a week or so initially before accelerating as the election approaches. Building a model is tough, but I think this is the best model out there and it’s the only one that has any sort of long-term track record. However, I also want to make sure that I leave plenty of time so that the model doesn’t swallow everything else, including the other topics I’ll want to write about for the newsletter. If you are interested in the model, you can sign up here:

There’s also a presidential debate (yes, weirdly, in June?!?) on Thursday next week. The tentative plan is to have some sort of preview/expectations-setting post, and then to use the “isolation chamber” method of reacting to the debate without looking at social media so that you’ll get an independent perspective — although surely one influenced by my own biases — on Thursday night/Friday morning.

Finally, we’re also approaching the deadline to submit queries for the June paid subscriber questions post. This may turn into an election model Q&A — if so, I’ll pick up any stray non-elections questions in July — so I’d encourage questions along those lines, especially once the model publishes.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll be back in touch soon.