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The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election
Sides, John, Vavreck, Lynn
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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January 19, 2014
This is a FANTASTIC political science book! BECAUSE it's not written for political scientists. The authors wrote this book to basically tell a more general crowd what factors decide presidential elections. Economist Tyler Cowen wrote a one sentence review of the book that went something like this: Basically, the economy was good enough for the incumbent to keep his job. Republicans have a hard time believing that, just as Democrats did in 2004, but the case is strong. All of the "horse-race" issues, like "you didn't build that," and the "47%" comment, and the first debate in which the President bombed, didn't amount to much. This isn't to say that Obama made the economy stronger, and Lord knows that the country has a long way to go before people might start feeling good. It's just that, according to the authors, no matter the incumbent, that person would have won, whether he (or she) was a Republican, Democrat, or any such thing. More interestingly, the economy factor had nothing to do with the late lowering of the unemployment rate (conspiracy theorists be damned!). Also important to note that the authors do not dismiss the importance of campaigns. They DO matter! It's just that they tend to balance each other out. If one candidate ran hard, and the other sat it out, then we could see the real impact of campaigning versus not campaigning. But no one ever sits it out.
I have read a few books on 2008 and 2012, and this is probably the best. I figure that this is like reading Science magazine, Dan Balz's book is like reading Time magazine, and Game Change is like reading People magazine. All contribute something to the discussion. And there's nothing more fun than People magaine!
But "The Gamble" is a great bet!!
I have read a few books on 2008 and 2012, and this is probably the best. I figure that this is like reading Science magazine, Dan Balz's book is like reading Time magazine, and Game Change is like reading People magazine. All contribute something to the discussion. And there's nothing more fun than People magaine!
But "The Gamble" is a great bet!!
January 23, 2014
This is a really good political science book for a lay audience, but the only way it could be drier is if it were printed on rice cakes. If you want horse-race, read 'Double Down.'
Read
April 10, 2014From American Review Issue No. 15 (http://americanreviewmag.com/books/A-...)
At the tail end of the 2012 election campaign, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough let off some steam over stat-junkie wiseacres like the New York Times’s Nate Silver, who had aggregated a slew of electoral polls and declared President Barack Obama to have a 73.6 per cent shot at retaining the White House.
“Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 per cent chance — they think they have a 50.1 per cent chance of winning,” Scarborough scoffed. “Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next 10 days.”
Silver, on his FiveThirtyEight blog, ended up predicting not only the winner of the election, but the winner of all fifty states. He wasn’t the only one though; for a certain corner of the campaign coverage world, 2012 was the year of the numbers wonk, the polling aggregator, and, especially, the political scientist.
Other prognosticators who proved eerily clairvoyant include Stanford University’s Simon Jackman, Emory University’s Drew Linzer, and Princeton’s Sam Wang. And it wasn’t only in the realm of forecasting that academia began pushing back against the excitable tendencies of pundits and commentators. Political scientists like Seth Masket, Larry Bartels, and Jonathan Bernstein contributed regular commentary based on painstaking research rather than the traditional media’s mix of reportage and voodoo.
Perhaps the most comprehensive of these efforts was a blog called The Monkey Cage , which has made enough waves to have been bought by the Washington Post, where it is now published. Run by a cohort of political scientists, The Monkey Cage aimed to make accessible to the wider public political analysis based on solid academic research.
One of the blog’s founders was John Sides, whose book The Gamble, co-written with the University of California Los Angeles’s Lynn Vavreck, aims to bring the academic rigour of political scientists’ online commentary to the publishing industry’s regular cycle of campaign post-mortems.
In many ways, The Gamble acts as a counter to the addictive and gossipy Game Change series Washington journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have penned during the past two campaigns (see Nicole Hemmer’s review). The contrast might even be deliberate; The Gamble reveals in its opening line that 68 individual moments during the 2012 campaign were described as “game-changers” somewhere in the American media, and Sides and Vavreck have a decidedly more sober view of electoral politics. “The continual search for game-changers treats a campaign like a boxing match, where the momentum may be shifting back and forth with every punch and the knockout blow could come at any moment,” they write. “In reality, there are few knockout punches, and most game-changers do not really change the game that much.”
This means — as the authors demonstrate with exhaustive reference to polling, modelling, and charts aplenty — that such widely touted news events as Barack Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment or the “47% video” leaked to liberal website Mother Jones, which showed Mitt Romney dismissing close to half the American public as “dependent on the government,” had almost no impact on voters whatsoever.
Also meaningless in terms of shifting voter opinion: any of Romney’s widely reported “gaffes,” the Obama campaign’s summer advertising blitz hammering Romney for his connection to private equity firm Bain Capital, and the disruptive effects of Hurricane Sandy, which struck the east coast in the last week of October.
Part of the reason for this was summed up by Vavreck in an interview with the Post’s Ezra Klein: “We’re not normal,” she said of people who pay close attention to politics. Most voters simply aren’t paying close enough attention for these “game changers” to matter. “The 24-hour news cycle has not really affected the average American who isn’t into politics.” And the people who do pay attention are the type likely to have made up their mind about the candidates long before they saw any ads or heard about any indelicate statements.
So if much media-driven coverage of the campaign didn’t matter, what did? The economy, for a start. Although many observers were convinced the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession would weigh down the Obama presidency, the rate of growth in 2012 was strong enough in historical terms to make Obama the favourite. It helped also that Obama was an incumbent president, and that his favourability rating was slightly higher than expected.
As the authors summarise: “Presidents in their first term who were presiding over even modest improvement in the economy have been likely to win.” These “fundamentals” were all apparent even a year out from the election.
Nonetheless, Sides and Vavreck are careful to clarify that they do not consider campaigns to be meaningless. The importance of a strong campaign was particularly apparent during the primary season, when news events played a powerful role in bringing to prominence Republican candidates like Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. All of these politicians benefited from increased media attention, but none had the campaign infrastructure to capitalise on it. Similarly, although Rick Santorum found favour amongst socially conservative Republicans, he couldn’t turn his occasional victories into sustained successes the way the well-financed, well-organised Romney campaign could.
Even in the general election, the campaign played a crucial role, say Sides and Vavreck. But rather than a boxing match, Sides and Vavreck conceive of the 2012 contest as a political tug-of-war. Both the Democratic and Republican sides were well matched and although their advertising assaults and voter outreach efforts were able to move Americans, each could only do so temporarily, before his opponent would counter and neutralise his effort. “In a tug-of-war, the flag in the middle of the rope does not move if both sides pull with equal force,” the authors explain. If one side were to let go, however — to quit campaigning altogether — it would become immediately apparent how powerful all those speeches and 30-second spots really were. As it is, they’re mostly just fighting one another to a draw.
All of this is important stuff, if a bit drily presented. Sides and Vavreck are both capable communicators, but The Gamble is political science first, page-turner second. Indeed, some of the structural devices they use in their narrative are so perfunctory that their presence seems little more than window-dressing. The title’s “gamble” refers to the uncertain outlook the relevant players had of the election, but it provides more in the way of chapter headings (“Ante Up”; “High Rollers”) than overarching organising principle. The authors’ sojourns to a Santorum rally or an Obama field office are efforts at on-the-ground reporting so trivial to function almost as asides. And while a tight focus on what did and didn’t matter in the campaign is the book’s raison d’etre, without a reporter’s more impressionistic eye, the authors seem to forget that politics is bigger than a single election season. Careful analysis, for instance, might demonstrate that Latino voters did not respond to an Obama executive action ending the deportation of the children of illegal immigrants, but does it not seem reasonable to suppose that the tendency of Democrats to undertake such policy action is part of the reason the party has such high Latino support in the first place?
Ultimately, The Gamble functions as much an argument for punditry-driven journalism as it is against it. As misguided as the mainstream media can be, its take on politics, filled with personalities and storytelling and, yes, “game-changers” tells us much about how our politics operates. The true revolution in campaign coverage, then, might come not from the political scientists, but the yarn-spinning wordsmiths who read them and absorb their lessons.
At the tail end of the 2012 election campaign, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough let off some steam over stat-junkie wiseacres like the New York Times’s Nate Silver, who had aggregated a slew of electoral polls and declared President Barack Obama to have a 73.6 per cent shot at retaining the White House.
“Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 per cent chance — they think they have a 50.1 per cent chance of winning,” Scarborough scoffed. “Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next 10 days.”
Silver, on his FiveThirtyEight blog, ended up predicting not only the winner of the election, but the winner of all fifty states. He wasn’t the only one though; for a certain corner of the campaign coverage world, 2012 was the year of the numbers wonk, the polling aggregator, and, especially, the political scientist.
Other prognosticators who proved eerily clairvoyant include Stanford University’s Simon Jackman, Emory University’s Drew Linzer, and Princeton’s Sam Wang. And it wasn’t only in the realm of forecasting that academia began pushing back against the excitable tendencies of pundits and commentators. Political scientists like Seth Masket, Larry Bartels, and Jonathan Bernstein contributed regular commentary based on painstaking research rather than the traditional media’s mix of reportage and voodoo.
Perhaps the most comprehensive of these efforts was a blog called The Monkey Cage , which has made enough waves to have been bought by the Washington Post, where it is now published. Run by a cohort of political scientists, The Monkey Cage aimed to make accessible to the wider public political analysis based on solid academic research.
One of the blog’s founders was John Sides, whose book The Gamble, co-written with the University of California Los Angeles’s Lynn Vavreck, aims to bring the academic rigour of political scientists’ online commentary to the publishing industry’s regular cycle of campaign post-mortems.
In many ways, The Gamble acts as a counter to the addictive and gossipy Game Change series Washington journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have penned during the past two campaigns (see Nicole Hemmer’s review). The contrast might even be deliberate; The Gamble reveals in its opening line that 68 individual moments during the 2012 campaign were described as “game-changers” somewhere in the American media, and Sides and Vavreck have a decidedly more sober view of electoral politics. “The continual search for game-changers treats a campaign like a boxing match, where the momentum may be shifting back and forth with every punch and the knockout blow could come at any moment,” they write. “In reality, there are few knockout punches, and most game-changers do not really change the game that much.”
This means — as the authors demonstrate with exhaustive reference to polling, modelling, and charts aplenty — that such widely touted news events as Barack Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment or the “47% video” leaked to liberal website Mother Jones, which showed Mitt Romney dismissing close to half the American public as “dependent on the government,” had almost no impact on voters whatsoever.
Also meaningless in terms of shifting voter opinion: any of Romney’s widely reported “gaffes,” the Obama campaign’s summer advertising blitz hammering Romney for his connection to private equity firm Bain Capital, and the disruptive effects of Hurricane Sandy, which struck the east coast in the last week of October.
Part of the reason for this was summed up by Vavreck in an interview with the Post’s Ezra Klein: “We’re not normal,” she said of people who pay close attention to politics. Most voters simply aren’t paying close enough attention for these “game changers” to matter. “The 24-hour news cycle has not really affected the average American who isn’t into politics.” And the people who do pay attention are the type likely to have made up their mind about the candidates long before they saw any ads or heard about any indelicate statements.
So if much media-driven coverage of the campaign didn’t matter, what did? The economy, for a start. Although many observers were convinced the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession would weigh down the Obama presidency, the rate of growth in 2012 was strong enough in historical terms to make Obama the favourite. It helped also that Obama was an incumbent president, and that his favourability rating was slightly higher than expected.
As the authors summarise: “Presidents in their first term who were presiding over even modest improvement in the economy have been likely to win.” These “fundamentals” were all apparent even a year out from the election.
Nonetheless, Sides and Vavreck are careful to clarify that they do not consider campaigns to be meaningless. The importance of a strong campaign was particularly apparent during the primary season, when news events played a powerful role in bringing to prominence Republican candidates like Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. All of these politicians benefited from increased media attention, but none had the campaign infrastructure to capitalise on it. Similarly, although Rick Santorum found favour amongst socially conservative Republicans, he couldn’t turn his occasional victories into sustained successes the way the well-financed, well-organised Romney campaign could.
Even in the general election, the campaign played a crucial role, say Sides and Vavreck. But rather than a boxing match, Sides and Vavreck conceive of the 2012 contest as a political tug-of-war. Both the Democratic and Republican sides were well matched and although their advertising assaults and voter outreach efforts were able to move Americans, each could only do so temporarily, before his opponent would counter and neutralise his effort. “In a tug-of-war, the flag in the middle of the rope does not move if both sides pull with equal force,” the authors explain. If one side were to let go, however — to quit campaigning altogether — it would become immediately apparent how powerful all those speeches and 30-second spots really were. As it is, they’re mostly just fighting one another to a draw.
All of this is important stuff, if a bit drily presented. Sides and Vavreck are both capable communicators, but The Gamble is political science first, page-turner second. Indeed, some of the structural devices they use in their narrative are so perfunctory that their presence seems little more than window-dressing. The title’s “gamble” refers to the uncertain outlook the relevant players had of the election, but it provides more in the way of chapter headings (“Ante Up”; “High Rollers”) than overarching organising principle. The authors’ sojourns to a Santorum rally or an Obama field office are efforts at on-the-ground reporting so trivial to function almost as asides. And while a tight focus on what did and didn’t matter in the campaign is the book’s raison d’etre, without a reporter’s more impressionistic eye, the authors seem to forget that politics is bigger than a single election season. Careful analysis, for instance, might demonstrate that Latino voters did not respond to an Obama executive action ending the deportation of the children of illegal immigrants, but does it not seem reasonable to suppose that the tendency of Democrats to undertake such policy action is part of the reason the party has such high Latino support in the first place?
Ultimately, The Gamble functions as much an argument for punditry-driven journalism as it is against it. As misguided as the mainstream media can be, its take on politics, filled with personalities and storytelling and, yes, “game-changers” tells us much about how our politics operates. The true revolution in campaign coverage, then, might come not from the political scientists, but the yarn-spinning wordsmiths who read them and absorb their lessons.
August 1, 2022
Most political non-fiction, particularly when dealing with US elections, tends to be skewed by the author's biases. Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's books, Game Change and Game Change: 2012, which I read back in 2020, prove this. Even the best books that dissect elections and their implications, like Jared Yates Sexton The People Are Going To Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore, succumb to this.
It was a breath of fresh air, then, to find The Gamble. Decidedly non-partisan, this book dedicates itself to dissecting the statistical data available during and in the wake of the 2012 election. It offers insights into what aided Obama, what hurt Romney, and what actually led to Obama's win.
While some may find it dry for that reason, I adored it. Not only did I learn a lot about election statistics and fundamentals, but the information had facts and figures to back it up (seriously; the appendix is 100 pages long, or thereabouts).
Despite the 2012 election being a decade ago, this was still a valuable read and one I recommend to those who are interested in political science.
It was a breath of fresh air, then, to find The Gamble. Decidedly non-partisan, this book dedicates itself to dissecting the statistical data available during and in the wake of the 2012 election. It offers insights into what aided Obama, what hurt Romney, and what actually led to Obama's win.
While some may find it dry for that reason, I adored it. Not only did I learn a lot about election statistics and fundamentals, but the information had facts and figures to back it up (seriously; the appendix is 100 pages long, or thereabouts).
Despite the 2012 election being a decade ago, this was still a valuable read and one I recommend to those who are interested in political science.
June 17, 2016
2012 is a good election to study because you get a little bit of everything: a contested primary (Republican) leading to a face-off against an incumbent (though in a situation where it was unclear if it would help or hurt him). Throughout the election, the media deemed hundreds of events as "game-changers." This book aimed to uncover which events were actually worthy of that title.
As it turns out, almost none were; elections, based on precedents, are fairly predictable. But if they are so predictable, then why does the outcome seem like a surprise every time? It seems that the predictability is only clear in hindsight. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20.
First, the primary. The author, contrary to almost any other analyst, thinks that it was predictable as well. Every candidate went through the same cycle: discovery, criticism, downfall. One candidate would, through some means, come into the spotlight. There, their ratings would surge. However time in the spotlight brings criticism, makes others more eager to uncover dirt, and makes every blunder noticeable and dramatic to both the public and the media. Candidates can't maintain this for long. As humans, they'll mess up, and their once-great standing in the polls plummets. The author argues that Romney was, in retrospect, the winner because he maintained a consistent standing in the polls and didn't fall prey to this 15-minutes-of-fame cycle.
Coming into the general election, the fundamentals favored Obama. Historically, incumbents have almost always won when the economy was making positive progress, however slim. In 2012, the economy was making a slow comeback. What was unique about 2012 compared to previous elections was that the public didn't agree. Though unemployment was steadily decreasing, public polls showed that most people thought unemployment was getting worse. It was a vulnerability that Romney could have exploited, but didn't well enough.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this book is that few things in campaigns change the outcome. Advertising changes opinions, but only for a couple of days. Furthermore, any progress made by one candidate via advertising or other campaigning is often negated by similar progress made by he opposition. In the end, it evens out. Most voters are decided from the beginning and view campaigning efforts through the lens of confirmation bias. They only seek out news that will confirm their choice.
There is a small sliver that is truly either undecided or changeable. As mentioned, campaigning efforts negate each-other. So what helps these voters decide? Back to the fundamentals. Since FDR/Truman, the only time a party has controlled the White House for more than 8 years was Reagan and then George H.W. Bush. The public, for lack of better words, gets tired of a party after 8 years. That's what helped George W. Bush win in 2000, and Obama in 2008. In 2010, the Republicans won the mid-term elections and then notoriously shut things down, creating a slight Democratic favor. That combined with the economy put the election in Obama's favor before the election even began.
After the election, pundits on either side blamed the outcome on a million different reasons: Romney was a weak candidate, the Republican Party was on a downhill slide, the country has become more liberal over the past years, etc. But, in fact, the country had not become more liberal. In addition to tiring of a party, the country actually grows more conservative under a Democratic president and more liberal under a Republican president. It's part of the reason why the party controlling the White House often switches after 8 years.
All in all, this was a good book, but not what I was expecting. I expected a narrative walkthrough of the 2012 election, told in a way that could've been fiction. Instead, I got a book written by a statistician. As a result, it was incredibly well-researched with every opinion backed by an absurd amount of data, but was a pretty dry read. I think I spread it out over the course of two quarters because it was so dense and not necessarily enthralling. I learned, but reluctantly.
As it turns out, almost none were; elections, based on precedents, are fairly predictable. But if they are so predictable, then why does the outcome seem like a surprise every time? It seems that the predictability is only clear in hindsight. Hindsight is, after all, 20/20.
First, the primary. The author, contrary to almost any other analyst, thinks that it was predictable as well. Every candidate went through the same cycle: discovery, criticism, downfall. One candidate would, through some means, come into the spotlight. There, their ratings would surge. However time in the spotlight brings criticism, makes others more eager to uncover dirt, and makes every blunder noticeable and dramatic to both the public and the media. Candidates can't maintain this for long. As humans, they'll mess up, and their once-great standing in the polls plummets. The author argues that Romney was, in retrospect, the winner because he maintained a consistent standing in the polls and didn't fall prey to this 15-minutes-of-fame cycle.
Coming into the general election, the fundamentals favored Obama. Historically, incumbents have almost always won when the economy was making positive progress, however slim. In 2012, the economy was making a slow comeback. What was unique about 2012 compared to previous elections was that the public didn't agree. Though unemployment was steadily decreasing, public polls showed that most people thought unemployment was getting worse. It was a vulnerability that Romney could have exploited, but didn't well enough.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this book is that few things in campaigns change the outcome. Advertising changes opinions, but only for a couple of days. Furthermore, any progress made by one candidate via advertising or other campaigning is often negated by similar progress made by he opposition. In the end, it evens out. Most voters are decided from the beginning and view campaigning efforts through the lens of confirmation bias. They only seek out news that will confirm their choice.
There is a small sliver that is truly either undecided or changeable. As mentioned, campaigning efforts negate each-other. So what helps these voters decide? Back to the fundamentals. Since FDR/Truman, the only time a party has controlled the White House for more than 8 years was Reagan and then George H.W. Bush. The public, for lack of better words, gets tired of a party after 8 years. That's what helped George W. Bush win in 2000, and Obama in 2008. In 2010, the Republicans won the mid-term elections and then notoriously shut things down, creating a slight Democratic favor. That combined with the economy put the election in Obama's favor before the election even began.
After the election, pundits on either side blamed the outcome on a million different reasons: Romney was a weak candidate, the Republican Party was on a downhill slide, the country has become more liberal over the past years, etc. But, in fact, the country had not become more liberal. In addition to tiring of a party, the country actually grows more conservative under a Democratic president and more liberal under a Republican president. It's part of the reason why the party controlling the White House often switches after 8 years.
All in all, this was a good book, but not what I was expecting. I expected a narrative walkthrough of the 2012 election, told in a way that could've been fiction. Instead, I got a book written by a statistician. As a result, it was incredibly well-researched with every opinion backed by an absurd amount of data, but was a pretty dry read. I think I spread it out over the course of two quarters because it was so dense and not necessarily enthralling. I learned, but reluctantly.
January 24, 2014
Years after every election you can guarantee there will be book after book dissecting it and plotting out each factoid about how and why it went the way it did. By the time those books come out, there is more sunlight on the details inside the campaigns, but also many readers have long since forgotten about it and they’ve moved to more current affairs. So these two authors, Sides and Vavreck, decided to see if they could write a book like this, but compile it concurrently while the election was actually happening. This would enable them to release it while the event was still fresh in the minds of the readers and be able to look at the event using an in-person viewpoint instead of the through the more objectified lens of history. Their efforts resulted in this new book, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election.
Sides and Vavreck took every moment along the long, hard slog of the 2012 campaign and broke it down into what we heard from the media (on both sides of the political spectrum) and what the polling data told us at the same time. They also dive into those things not laid out to the public in either cases, the missing details which can sometimes have incredibly dramatic effects on the context in which those presupposed facts get taken in. They back all this up with tons and tons of data points, resulting in enough charts to make Ezra Klein weep with joy.
One of the main thrusts in the book is the overused and misunderstood term “game-changer”:
"All told, Murphy found that the term “game-changer” had been mentioned almost twenty thousand times in the ten months before the election. It was, according to one reporter, the single worst cliché of the campaign"
This shines some light on how the political reporting establishment works to keep us all tied up and tuned into each nightly report and every breaking news blog post by declaring these innocuous, superfluous moments as huge turning points for the campaign. Even the infamous “47%” video for Romney actually moved the polling data very little in the end. It actually just cemented those people who were already for or against him and made those undecideds who were leaning to either side retreat back to their former choice.
The authors also debate the idea that if all these gaffes, political slip-ups and outright mistakes meant nothing then maybe the whole campaign cycle is also meaningless in the end. They suppose that might be true, but only in both sides of the contest agreed not to campaign at all. If one side goes full-bore and the other does nothing, the polls and voting behavior of the country will certainly swing towards the more active campaign. So in the end, especially in the 2012 version, both sides must campaign in equal amounts with equal pressure and equal money to cancel each other out. If an equilibrium like that is reached, then the authors claim the fundamentals of every election in history will likely decide the winner (where the economy is, direction of the unemployment numbers, among a few others.)
The Gamble breaks down the entire election cycle into tiny, graphed out bits to show the how it really works and what really matters in those frazzled days and nights. Not a book necessarily for the casual reader, but for the political wonks and data junkies out there, this will fill your cup nicely.
Sides and Vavreck took every moment along the long, hard slog of the 2012 campaign and broke it down into what we heard from the media (on both sides of the political spectrum) and what the polling data told us at the same time. They also dive into those things not laid out to the public in either cases, the missing details which can sometimes have incredibly dramatic effects on the context in which those presupposed facts get taken in. They back all this up with tons and tons of data points, resulting in enough charts to make Ezra Klein weep with joy.
One of the main thrusts in the book is the overused and misunderstood term “game-changer”:
"All told, Murphy found that the term “game-changer” had been mentioned almost twenty thousand times in the ten months before the election. It was, according to one reporter, the single worst cliché of the campaign"
This shines some light on how the political reporting establishment works to keep us all tied up and tuned into each nightly report and every breaking news blog post by declaring these innocuous, superfluous moments as huge turning points for the campaign. Even the infamous “47%” video for Romney actually moved the polling data very little in the end. It actually just cemented those people who were already for or against him and made those undecideds who were leaning to either side retreat back to their former choice.
The authors also debate the idea that if all these gaffes, political slip-ups and outright mistakes meant nothing then maybe the whole campaign cycle is also meaningless in the end. They suppose that might be true, but only in both sides of the contest agreed not to campaign at all. If one side goes full-bore and the other does nothing, the polls and voting behavior of the country will certainly swing towards the more active campaign. So in the end, especially in the 2012 version, both sides must campaign in equal amounts with equal pressure and equal money to cancel each other out. If an equilibrium like that is reached, then the authors claim the fundamentals of every election in history will likely decide the winner (where the economy is, direction of the unemployment numbers, among a few others.)
The Gamble breaks down the entire election cycle into tiny, graphed out bits to show the how it really works and what really matters in those frazzled days and nights. Not a book necessarily for the casual reader, but for the political wonks and data junkies out there, this will fill your cup nicely.
January 11, 2024
By coincidence this happens to be the 3rd book I’ve read in the Sides/Vavreck series on American elections (first 2016, then 2020, now this), but it is just as stellar as the other two. The Gamble is truly groundbreaking for its ability to present complex, rigorously tested political science terms and attempt to place them into the mainstream discourse/punditry around US politics. Their central claims are that “fundamentals” (i.e. economic performance and the incumbent party) are as crucial–if not more so–as the campaign itself, both in the primary and general elections; and that “game-changers” in hotly-contested campaigns are few and far between, with their effects usually proving small and ephemeral.
What makes this title different from other books about elections is that it’s not an in-depth summary of the events of the campaign; it eschews this and revels in the desire to separate the salient from the inane drivel we are subjected to by the news media. In party primaries, where voters cannot use their partisan affiliation as a cue and huge imbalances exist in the strengths of each candidate, coverage in the media is useful. But the cycle of “discovery, scrutiny, decline” for insurgent candidates always resulted in that eventual decline, leaving the well-known, well-liked establishment-friendly Mitt Romney to seize the nomination. The fundamentals were in his favor, and it propelled him to victory.
Ditto for Barack Obama in the general election, even if some believed that the economy was in the shitter. Economic conditions were poor but improving/growing, and voters are generally in a “what have you done for me lately” mood in an election year. So with two disciplined and well-financed campaign, a “dynamic equilibrium” formed where the race stayed roughly at the fundamentals: political gaffes like Obama’s “you didn’t build that” or Romney’s 47% comment caused some brief negative coverage, but the ones most likely to hear these remarks were news junkies who already had strong and static opinions about the candidates. To be clear, some things mattered: the DNC in consolidating Democratic support, the 1st debate in bringing the race back from a 4% Obama lead to something closer to 1-2%, and the final two debates in returning any wavering partisans turned off by the President’s (perceived) disastrous performance in Denver. But what a lot of the media hyped as “game changers” were more like “game-samers”.
This is an easy 5/5. It’s short, not too boring (the hard data analyses are mostly saved for the appendices), and backed by convincing statistical evidence. If you want to understand the 2012 election, forget all the other books you’ve read and pick up The Gamble.
What makes this title different from other books about elections is that it’s not an in-depth summary of the events of the campaign; it eschews this and revels in the desire to separate the salient from the inane drivel we are subjected to by the news media. In party primaries, where voters cannot use their partisan affiliation as a cue and huge imbalances exist in the strengths of each candidate, coverage in the media is useful. But the cycle of “discovery, scrutiny, decline” for insurgent candidates always resulted in that eventual decline, leaving the well-known, well-liked establishment-friendly Mitt Romney to seize the nomination. The fundamentals were in his favor, and it propelled him to victory.
Ditto for Barack Obama in the general election, even if some believed that the economy was in the shitter. Economic conditions were poor but improving/growing, and voters are generally in a “what have you done for me lately” mood in an election year. So with two disciplined and well-financed campaign, a “dynamic equilibrium” formed where the race stayed roughly at the fundamentals: political gaffes like Obama’s “you didn’t build that” or Romney’s 47% comment caused some brief negative coverage, but the ones most likely to hear these remarks were news junkies who already had strong and static opinions about the candidates. To be clear, some things mattered: the DNC in consolidating Democratic support, the 1st debate in bringing the race back from a 4% Obama lead to something closer to 1-2%, and the final two debates in returning any wavering partisans turned off by the President’s (perceived) disastrous performance in Denver. But what a lot of the media hyped as “game changers” were more like “game-samers”.
This is an easy 5/5. It’s short, not too boring (the hard data analyses are mostly saved for the appendices), and backed by convincing statistical evidence. If you want to understand the 2012 election, forget all the other books you’ve read and pick up The Gamble.
December 16, 2014
I was happy to finish this.
I'm giving this four stars because it is very wonkish, with lots of poll numbers and details, and all of it backed up with references. It is very thorough. However, it is also very dry, and only for people who are hardcore political junkies. Without the detail and references, I would give it three stars.
The main thing I took away from this is that we spend billions of dollars on presidential campaigns because it is political theater. How much better off would we be if we invested that money on repairing our infrastructure or on education reforms? The persuadable independent voter is a myth. There is actually a very small percentage of true independents. The vast majority of people already lean towards one of the two major political parties. What ultimately determines the outcome of an election is the fundamentals: the economy and employment. Everything else is just chatter and diversion.
Presidential campaigns spend all this money and time and effort when people have pretty much made up their minds months in advance. I'd love to see campaign reform that allows for two months of primaries and once the nominees are chosen, two months of campaigning and debates before the election. Of course, that will never happen, because elections are big business in this country, aren't they?
Speaking of that, another thing I took away from this book was the ridiculous influence that the media has on campaigns. They can shape the narrative with their news coverage, giving certain candidates more coverage, or positive or negative coverage. They control what the majority of people see about campaigns and candidates, and it's a bad system all the way around.
Although this was well-written and informative, it left me feeling rather disgusted at our political campaign feeding frenzy. And it's all going to be starting up again in just a few months. ::sigh::
I'm giving this four stars because it is very wonkish, with lots of poll numbers and details, and all of it backed up with references. It is very thorough. However, it is also very dry, and only for people who are hardcore political junkies. Without the detail and references, I would give it three stars.
The main thing I took away from this is that we spend billions of dollars on presidential campaigns because it is political theater. How much better off would we be if we invested that money on repairing our infrastructure or on education reforms? The persuadable independent voter is a myth. There is actually a very small percentage of true independents. The vast majority of people already lean towards one of the two major political parties. What ultimately determines the outcome of an election is the fundamentals: the economy and employment. Everything else is just chatter and diversion.
Presidential campaigns spend all this money and time and effort when people have pretty much made up their minds months in advance. I'd love to see campaign reform that allows for two months of primaries and once the nominees are chosen, two months of campaigning and debates before the election. Of course, that will never happen, because elections are big business in this country, aren't they?
Speaking of that, another thing I took away from this book was the ridiculous influence that the media has on campaigns. They can shape the narrative with their news coverage, giving certain candidates more coverage, or positive or negative coverage. They control what the majority of people see about campaigns and candidates, and it's a bad system all the way around.
Although this was well-written and informative, it left me feeling rather disgusted at our political campaign feeding frenzy. And it's all going to be starting up again in just a few months. ::sigh::
November 13, 2014
In-depth look on the 2012 election There was much hullabaloo over the 2012 election. How did Obama win? Why did Romney feel so sure of himself? How could pollsters be so wrong? What about gaffes? What were the game-changers? Was it such a surprise after all?
Actually, according to the authors, not so much. Although in the real-time drama of reporting instantly via social media, this book shows that there wasn't really a lot of drama for the 2012 election. An examination of the polling numbers, media mentions, tone of articles, etc., showed Obama held a lead for most of the election, especially in the so-called battleground states.
The authors look at what feels like everything--media mentions, gaffes, the "likeability" of a candidate, whether the Republicans went through a "Anybody but Romney" stage, the length of the Republican primary, etc. Arguably they don't look at at strategy such as communications and there's a distant tone (as opposed to other books that take you right into the thick of things within a campaign) that is a tad off-putting. But then again this is an attempt to look at the election in a more dry, scientific manner than the emotional ruckus of a campaign.
I'm not sure if the authors really uncover anything earth-shattering, but then again I followed the election very closely. Not a bad read for those looking at the history of elections or are concerned with "optics". But otherwise I'd definitely recommend borrowing it from the library.
Actually, according to the authors, not so much. Although in the real-time drama of reporting instantly via social media, this book shows that there wasn't really a lot of drama for the 2012 election. An examination of the polling numbers, media mentions, tone of articles, etc., showed Obama held a lead for most of the election, especially in the so-called battleground states.
The authors look at what feels like everything--media mentions, gaffes, the "likeability" of a candidate, whether the Republicans went through a "Anybody but Romney" stage, the length of the Republican primary, etc. Arguably they don't look at at strategy such as communications and there's a distant tone (as opposed to other books that take you right into the thick of things within a campaign) that is a tad off-putting. But then again this is an attempt to look at the election in a more dry, scientific manner than the emotional ruckus of a campaign.
I'm not sure if the authors really uncover anything earth-shattering, but then again I followed the election very closely. Not a bad read for those looking at the history of elections or are concerned with "optics". But otherwise I'd definitely recommend borrowing it from the library.
April 15, 2014
I have trouble thinking about where to put this book because it wasn't at all what I thought it would be, but there were still interesting points in it.
The good: It is a thorough examination of the campaigns of 2012. It cuts through the bullshit punditry to look at what actually mattered. And there are even some charts.
The bad: It is ridiculously repetitive. It starts from the primaries and on through the post-mortem, and it covers much of the same territory in each new chapter. Any wonkiness is contained in the appendices, which are at best boring and (you guessed it) very repetitive.
The summary: Obama won because the fundamentals in the economy said he would, and he was the incumbent. Ground games matter for shit. Game changers are garbage. Each candidate spending a boatload of money in a billion dollar tug of war means that unless one opponent quits, basically the needle doesn't move.
There, now you don't have to read it. It was a thoroughly depressing read about our electorate, that's for sure...but it's not like a I didn't know how dire and stupid our elections are anyway.
The good: It is a thorough examination of the campaigns of 2012. It cuts through the bullshit punditry to look at what actually mattered. And there are even some charts.
The bad: It is ridiculously repetitive. It starts from the primaries and on through the post-mortem, and it covers much of the same territory in each new chapter. Any wonkiness is contained in the appendices, which are at best boring and (you guessed it) very repetitive.
The summary: Obama won because the fundamentals in the economy said he would, and he was the incumbent. Ground games matter for shit. Game changers are garbage. Each candidate spending a boatload of money in a billion dollar tug of war means that unless one opponent quits, basically the needle doesn't move.
There, now you don't have to read it. It was a thoroughly depressing read about our electorate, that's for sure...but it's not like a I didn't know how dire and stupid our elections are anyway.
October 20, 2013
I loved it, but I am suffering from the worst kind of bias. I bought the book because I had one of the authors (Sides) for two classes in college and I loved both. Also I love wonky, stats heavy stuff.
I think if you have a casual interest in politics, or even a more developed interest, but you don't keep 538 or Wonkblog on your RSS, this might not be the book for you. It is for sure not as accessible as some of blurbs make it out to be. With books like this, there are no twist endings, we all know what happened less than a year ago, so it's up to the authors to make the subject matter interesting. I liked the polling models, the electorate experiments, and the dressing-down of "conventional wisdom." But I can see how some might not.
I think if you have a casual interest in politics, or even a more developed interest, but you don't keep 538 or Wonkblog on your RSS, this might not be the book for you. It is for sure not as accessible as some of blurbs make it out to be. With books like this, there are no twist endings, we all know what happened less than a year ago, so it's up to the authors to make the subject matter interesting. I liked the polling models, the electorate experiments, and the dressing-down of "conventional wisdom." But I can see how some might not.
November 6, 2014
The points made in this book are worthy of praise. The authors do a good job of presenting the basic, and I mean layman basic, political theory and science behind the way the campaign unfolded and the overall outcome.
That being said, the book is extremely dry and repetitive. The chapters seem to be regurgitating the same information in slightly different ways, making progressing through the book a chore. The structure, prose, and writing do not do a good job of keeping attention and is overwhelmingly boring.
I applaud the ideas, I criticize the execution and writing.
That being said, the book is extremely dry and repetitive. The chapters seem to be regurgitating the same information in slightly different ways, making progressing through the book a chore. The structure, prose, and writing do not do a good job of keeping attention and is overwhelmingly boring.
I applaud the ideas, I criticize the execution and writing.
October 22, 2014
A data-driven look at what really mattered in the 2012 election. Given that both candidates ran very good campaigns, it boiled down to "the economy, stupid". Economic conditions had been slowly improving throughout the entirety of President Obama's time in office. Things weren't fantastic, but they were slowly, continually, getting better. That turned out to be just good enough to keep voters happy with the President they had, propelling Mr. Obama to reelection.
March 19, 2014
I did not like this book, I had to read it for my Political Science class. I found it very biased and dry . The authors took way too long just restating the same points over and over again with hard to understand charts. Maybe if you really like political science and elections then you might find this book interesting but I did not enjoy it.
March 9, 2015
Great book! Easy read. This book brings you from pre presidential primary all the way through the general election of 2012. This book is very insightful and makes you feel as if you are right there on the ground watching the 2012 election happen right in front of you. Great read!! HIGHLY recommend this book for all of the political junkies out there !
June 8, 2014
Good stuff, and goes a long way to debunking the importance of "game changers" in campaigns. However, the authors equivocate on nearly every conclusion they draw, and some major effects of campaigns, like turnout and fundraising are largely neglected- they focus primarily on vote share.
December 27, 2014
Sides was my professor at GWU this semester, and this was assigned reading. Generally, professors assign dull textbooks, but this one was more than bearable. It was informative and well-researched. I would not have picked it up willingly, but it wasn't bad.
May 3, 2016
Let me sum it up: if economic growth is 2% or more in January to July of the election year, the incumbent will win. Everything else is an even tug of war. Advertising losses and wins are temporary. People do not adjust their set.
November 21, 2013
Simply put, this is what good political science looks like. If you want to better understand presidential elections in general, and the 2012 election in particular, this is where to start.
Read
March 11, 2014Interesting - very detailed though. In the end I didn't finish all of it, but put it aside as a reference.
February 15, 2014
It was dry at some points and the source data is questionable at times, but the main points are still salient. An interesting and valuable read for anyone wanting to know "what really happened?@
April 1, 2015
Very dense, but very smart and interesting.
April 22, 2014
Disappointed. Kinda' boring.
September 29, 2014
In The Gamble professors Sides and Vavreck debunk presidential lore about game-changers and debates. Fundamentals are decisive and campaigns must work off them. Pundits should read this book
December 28, 2015
A great review of the 2012 election and a good reminder, looking forward to 2016, of the factors that are significant in presidential elections.
October 5, 2016
Analysis of polling and the 2012 election. Well researched. Good insights as to the outcome of the election.
February 12, 2014
Disappointingly wonky, even for a political junkie like me - not particularly recommended.
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