I'd like to talk to you about guys. You know, the guys that come in little plastic buckets, molded green plastic. The guys of Toy Story and Toy Story II.
That's just about all there were for boys in the "action figure" (read: doll) category when I was a kid with the exception of G.I. Joe.
When you played with guys, they were your guys. If you played against someone you had your guys and they had their guys. It didn't matter if the dog chewed one and it couldn't stand up any more. It didn't matter if you'd broken off the gun "on accident" (you know, by doing something predictably stupid but without bad intent). It just didn't matter. They were your guys.
I like to think of the Cubs as my guys. Sure, they choked. They choke like no team in history. I have lived my entire adult life knowing that the Cubs will let me down. It's one of the constants in my life, like my mother's mocha cake with coffee icing, like knowing my kids will ask me for money. But hey, what can I say? They are my guys.
So, as Obama starts into the 90% range at fivethirtyeight, I think it's important that we all take a moment to meditate on guys.
My high school paleocon friend will vote for McCain this year, not because he doesn't still have an IQ at the genius level, because he does. He'll vote for McCain, because frankly "...he's our guy."
While he and I might never agree on some issues, I don't dislike him. I just think he's wrong. He thinks I'm wrong. It's like we're playing an intellectual version of war with little green plastic men. We marshal our arguments like cheerleaders doing their game day yells. But at the end of the day he's a Republican and he's voting for McCain, though Palin gives him a pain.
My paleofriend believes that he's on the side of the figurative angels. He's listened to the arguments. He has a world view that is as clear to him as mine is to me. He will never vote for Obama. It may seem tribal or foolish, but what it really is...is human. After all, some of us call ourselves Yellow Dogs with the same whimsical shrug and half cocked head.
So, as you watch the mushy middle muddle their way through the last weeks of the election cycle in a completely irrational manner, try to keep in mind three things from Decision Theory.
- People making decisions tend to confrom
- Interviews(for jobs & school placements) have low validity, reliability, and are susceptible to bias and distortion
- The sophomore jinx is real
I see you're all scratching your heads. Let me explain. It's a given in Decision Theory that people will conform to the common vision. There's a pretty interesting experiment on easy judgements that shows the problem quite nicely.
Say you are shown a card with a picture of a line and then another card with three line lengths, one of which matches the length of the first line and the other two much longer and much shorter. Now, I'm going to put you in a room with seven other people sitting in a circle and have you each pick the right line from the second picture. You're last. Everyone else has been prepped. They pick the same wrong line. You know what? 37 times out of 50, even with this simple task, people will conform at least once and pick the line length they know is wrong.
Now consider that people people are really bad at interviewing. In fact, in a review of the literature, you'd be hard pressed to find any research that validates the interview as a tool for picking employees or students. What is the problem? The same problem that we have when judging candidates asking for our votes. Our opinion can be swayed by: nonverbal cues including attractiveness, smiling & eye contact; likeability; interview training; & first impressions. More over, once we've been swayed, we tend to look at other information in light of our first impression. It's why the media is so entranced by the beauty pageant aspect of a political race, because it does matter.
Okay -- what about the Sophomore Jinx? The sophomore jinx, in sports, refers to the tendency for a player to follow a good season in his rookie year with a disappointing season. Why would this be? From our friend Wikipedia:
If a first effort is particularly outstanding, statistically it is likely that the next will be closer to average. This is often cited as the reason why many Rookie of the Year athletes go on to have subsequently unremarkable careers.
This matters because after exceptionally high numbers, the trend for polls is to regress towards the mean (even when it makes us white knuckled).
Don't underestimate how many people are out there voting for "my guy," even if he's a jerk. Don't discount the number who will vote for "their guy," because of peer pressure. (Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?) Don't forget for a lot of people it is a beauty pageant (okay, I know...wrinkly white-haired dude), even though a beauty pageant isn't necessarily going to get them what they really want.
We may have different criteria for making our decision. We may overcome our biases and our tendency to conform. But in the end, they see Obama as our guy, just the way McCain might be their guy. We won't win them all in the end.
So if fivethirtyeight drops a couple of points, or the tracking polls tighten, keep your hat on. If you can't unstick your colleague, stop trying to win at all costs. If your mother sends you republican talking points, don't freak out. We're all doing the best we can with our very human imperfections.
We can get "our guy" into the White House without getting every vote. We just need to get all our votes to the polls.