Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out

Re:Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out by nradov on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:53PM (#32181723)

It's kind of meaningless to look at popular vote numbers because presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to maximize electoral college votes. Hypothetically, if we picked presidents by popular vote then campaigns would look completely different. For example, there would be a much greater effort to get out the vote in states like Oklahoma and Maryland, which are currently non-competitive.

In the 2016 race, the Clinton campaign spent about twice as much per popular vote received than the Trump campaign. So by that metric, Democrat messaging wasn't successful.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out by dragonwriter on Thursday July 21, 2022 @01:22PM (#32182107)

> presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to maximize electoral college votes.

Well, no, they have numerous objectives, many of which are in tension. In rough order of priority for a typical Presidential general election campaign, though there is considerable variation from campaign to campaign:

(1) Maximizing the probability of at least 270 EC votes (this can be quite different, and conflict with, maximizing the expected total number of EC votes), because that’s how you win,

(2) Maximizing downballot coattails, because that’s how you get people in position to pass your agenda into place, and get the people that are in that position to see you as important to their position,

(3) Maximizing EC and Popular vote totals, both of which are important to the perception of a mandate, which helps your agenda.

[ Parent | on HN ]